What Do You Want to Want? The Question That Reveals Your True Purpose
What would you actually pursue if fear, laziness, and excuses didn’t exist?
That question sounds simple. It’s not. Most people never ask it honestly because the answer terrifies them.
There’s a better version of the question. One that cuts through every excuse: “What do you want to want?”
This piece was adapted from my second book, 10,000 Hours of Play. If you find it useful, you’ll love the full book.
⚡ Speed Run Notes
- “What do you want?” is a corrupted question. “What do you want to want?” is the clean one. The first question pulls surface cravings — food, comfort, approval — shaped by whatever was marketed at you this week. The second question pulls desires you respect, the version of you you wish you were already being. That gap is where real purpose lives.
- Second-order desire is the philosophical technology underneath every meaningful life change. Philosophers call it “meta-wanting.” A smoker wants a cigarette and wants to not want a cigarette. The second desire is the one that matters. Any intervention that doesn't engage the second-order level is doomed to be undone by the first.
- The question cuts through advertising because advertising only reaches first-order wants. An ad can make you want a car. It cannot make you want to want a car. The second-order layer is ad-proof by construction. Asking it is a kind of privacy from the marketing layer of civilization.
- Most people have never been asked the question seriously, which is why they have no answer ready. First-order wants are rehearsed every day — people have practiced saying them out loud. Second-order wants are almost never spoken. The first time you answer, the answer will be awkward and probably wrong. The second time will be better. The tenth time will be honest.
- The deepest move the question performs is inviting permission. Many people secretly want to want things they don't feel allowed to want — a quieter life, a weirder career, a different relationship with money. The question gives them permission to say it to themselves. That permission is often the only thing stopping the whole life rearrangement that follows.
Table of Contents
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
The “Want to Want” Question
When I ask someone, “Do you want to go to the gym every day for two hours?” the typical response is, “No, that sounds like too much work.”
But when I rephrase it as, “Do you want to want that?” something shifts. They pause and say, “Hmm, yeah. I wish I was someone who wanted to do that. My life would be so much better.”
What they’re telling me is that they do care about the activity, just on a deeper level.
When we ask, “What do I want?” we get answers filtered through fear, laziness, and self-doubt. When we ask, “What do I want to want?” those filters disappear. We’re left with what actually matters to us.
Ask yourself: “Do you want to be healthy?” Of course. Everyone says yes. Now ask: “Do you want to exercise three hours every day?” Most people say no. But ask: “Do you want to want to exercise three hours a day?” And suddenly it’s, “Oh, I wish I had that motivation. I really do.”
That gap between what you want and what you want to want is where your real life is hiding.
The Core Drives Behind Your True Purpose
In the Octalysis Framework, I call this the battle between Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning and Calling and Core Drive 8: Loss and Avoidance.
Core Drive 1 is the part of you that craves purpose. It’s what makes you dream of starting a company, writing a book, or changing careers to do work that actually matters. It’s the voice that says, “This is what I was meant to do.”
Core Drive 8 is what kills those dreams before they start. It’s the fear of failure, the avoidance of hard work, the tendency to stay comfortable. “It’s too risky.” “I’m not ready.” “What if I fail?” That’s CD8 talking.
When someone says, “I don’t want to take the LSAT,” they’re letting Core Drive 8 speak for them. When they say, “I want to want to take the LSAT,” that’s Core Drive 1 breaking through.
Sometimes Core Drive 4: Ownership and Possession joins the fight. You want to own a new identity, a new version of yourself, someone who has the discipline and drive to pursue what matters. That desire to possess a better self is a powerful motivator once you acknowledge it.
The “want to want” question works because it strips Core Drive 8 out of the equation. It removes the fear, the excuses, the laziness. What’s left is your true self, the version of you that exists when nothing is in the way.
The Relative Who Waited for Permission
I have a relative who is one of the smartest people I know. High integrity. Excellent at execution. When he knows he should do something, he does it quickly.
But his whole life, he went with the flow. His father was a military man who taught him to do what your environment requires. So he did.
He had a successful, respectable career. Then one day in his fifties, he said something that stunned me: “I wish when I was in college, more of my classmates went to study abroad. Because if they did, I would have studied abroad too.”
Notice what he didn’t say. He didn’t say, “I wish I studied abroad.” He said, “I wish my classmates would have studied abroad.”
He knew himself well enough to know he wasn’t the type to break from the herd. But if the herd had gone, he would have followed. He “wanted” himself to want to study abroad, but he needed Core Drive 5: Social Influence to give him permission.
That story says a lot about what holds us back. We wait for friends to do it first. For a teacher to suggest it. For the environment to make it easy. We outsource our dreams to other people’s initiative.
Stop hoping that others would pursue your dreams and bring you along. Stop hoping you’ll one day become someone motivated enough to pursue them on your own. Just go and pursue them.
The Game is waiting for you and you alone.
The Two-Lists Exercise
Here’s an exercise I give to my Octalysis Prime members. Grab a piece of paper and make two lists.
List 1: What do you want? Write down your obvious goals. Read a book every week. Get a promotion. Save more money. These are the things you’d tell a career coach.
List 2: What do you want to want? This is harder. These are the goals you’d pursue if you had unlimited courage and zero excuses. Start a company. Move to another country. Write that screenplay. Train for a marathon. Leave a job you hate.
Now compare the two lists. The gap between them is made up entirely of things you’re afraid of, things you don’t think you’re capable of, things that feel too far beyond what seems practical.
Look at that gap. Is overcoming those barriers actually impossible? Or have you just never tried because the fear was louder than the desire?
If anything on List 2 surprises you, if you find yourself thinking, “I didn’t realize I actually wanted that,” then you’ve found something worth pursuing. That surprise is Core Drive 1 finally getting a word in.
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification and Behavioral Design
- 10,000 Hours of Play: Unlock Your Real-Life Legendary Success
- Turning Life Into a Game: Lessons from Yu-kai Chou
- Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning and Calling
- Core Drive 8: Loss and Avoidance
- How to Add Epic Meaning and Calling into Your Lifestyle Design