Purpose Lab's FREE MAINTENANCE VS. MEANING MAP

It's Time to Stop Saving the Best Parts of Your Life for Later

The Maintenance vs. Meaning Map is a free workbook for seeing where your time, energy, and attention actually go, and for making real room for the things you keep meaning to get back to.

Most weeks, you get a lot done.

The work gets handled, the groceries get bought, the cat gets to the vet...

Meanwhile, the things you care about most wait at the edges of the week: the watercolor set you bought in the spring, the friend you keep meaning to call, the book you're reading two pages at a time before you fall asleep.

Maintenance comes with built-in urgency, and the things that make life feel like yours rarely do. Nobody emails to ask why you haven't worked on your novel outline in four months. So, without you consciously deciding it, maintenance expands to fill the week, and everything else lives on whatever capacity remains. 

The Maintenance vs. Meaning Map helps you change this.

You'll list what takes up your time, energy, and attention, sort each item into maintenance, meaning, or both, and then use a few guided prompts to decide what to simplify, what could hold more meaning, and which things you love gets an actual place on your calendar this month.

Hi, I’m Amanda—the founder of Purpose Lab

M.A. Psychology, Columbia University

My work is about helping thoughtful, values-driven people build lives that feel like theirs and connect them to something larger: lives shaped not only by what needs to get done, but by what gives them meaning, connection, and a sense of contribution.

I created these monthly journals because I believe purpose is something we practice, not something we figure out or "discover" once and for all. My hope is that each edition gives you a place to pause, ask better questions, and make what matters to you a little more visible in the way you actually live.