Discovering the When of Purpose

This month we released Pharus, and we have been sitting with a feeling that is difficult to fully name. It is a humble kind of pride, perhaps: the kind of pride that comes from knowing how much work went into something.

All of that pride is shared with a colleague. We got to build Pharus alongside a truly professional and talented developer, House Lawlez LLC, and we learned far more about the technology and the art of making an app than we anticipated. Some of it was technical. Much of it was taste: learning the difference between when a screen looked finished and when it was actually, functionally finished.

But what is staying with us most is not so much what Pharus is, but how building it felt. There were real puzzles along the way. We wanted a screen to look a little more this way than that way, or wanted the app to do a little less of one thing and a little more of another. Each puzzle was a chance to think our way to a solution, and somewhere in the thinking the work stopped feeling like work. It felt more like finding the fuller shape of joy.

Most of what we say about purpose is about what. Pharus is built around when.

That is what Pharus is for. Most conversations about purpose focus on the what: what someone’s purpose is, what they should be working toward. But a sense of purpose rises and falls through an ordinary week, and it may matter just as much to notice when it shows up. Pharus helps people catch those moments. They can notice when they feel purposeful, log it, and see it again through the photos, sketches, and videos they capture along the way. Over time, that builds into a portfolio of purposeful moments. People can keep it entirely private, or share it with a Crew of others they care about and let them see into it, together.

There is a considerable sense of both pride and joy in this app. There is also something we are genuinely excited about: it is a place where some of the most interesting science on purpose finally gets to live inside technology, instead of in a journal few people read. If building it taught us anything, it is that the when is worth paying attention to. Ours was in the building. We hope Pharus helps you find yours.