Have you found your North Star?

It's a metaphor for a destination or mission that you focus on. Something that inspires and guides you. It's what gives you direction and keeps you going when things get tough.

It's like a beacon of light that shows you the way in the darkness. No matter how hard the journey gets, it keeps you focused on your destination and reminds you why you're headed there.

I really like this metaphor because it nicely captures what having a purpose means. As we get caught up in the day-to-day grind and the torrent of noise around us, many of us have forgotten what it means to have that guiding light.

So in an attempt to illustrate this ambiguous idea, I recently designed a guided journal inspired by this metaphor.

Another inspiration is the book Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. I love how it vividly articulates the collapse of our attention in recent years due to modern distractions. It has tons of relatable stories and metaphors that got me thinking about our attention in new ways.

Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out and would definitely use it myself. It features a step-by-step guide and some visual thinking exercises that hone in on the process of finding what matters to you. Here are a few pages on mockups:

Check out my other shots to see how I turned ideas into simple but meaningful illustrated versions.