Intention

CHAPTER 16How to Uncover Your Values

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

—Carl Jung

Meet Anika—a young software developer working at a trendy tech startup. This is her first job out of college, and she's there to kill it. She goes in every day, makes a cup of steaming coffee, and sits at her desk. The hustle and bustle of the office fades into the background, and she becomes completely immersed in her code. Her entire world becomes a matrix of functions and algorithms.

The company that Anika works for is one of the hottest startups in the country. Everyone says it's likely to be the next billion-dollar unicorn. All you have to do is spend a few minutes at the office to feel the optimism like static in the air. They're out to do something really hard, and they just might have a shot.

When Anika first joined as a fresh graduate a few years ago, she was bubbling with enthusiasm. She couldn't believe how far she had come. It was all like a dream. But as the months and years passed, something began to gnaw at her. The product she was working on had taken a slow turn from the grandiose vision she had joined the startup to support and was becoming something else. It was starting to feel like a cash grab for investors. She can temporarily push away the gnawing, but it can't be ignored. She knows it's there. The passion for coding and for the meaning of the project that had driven her when ...