My book Initiative helps people learn their deepest values and greatest passions by acting on them. I’m consistently surprised at how poorly people know their greatest passions, even shocked.

It makes sense, since the things we care about most are also our greatest vulnerabilities, so we often protect and hide them, even from ourselves. The benefit of protecting ourselves is we don’t get made fun of, manipulated, or otherwise hurt. The cost is that we don’t live our greatest values. We do more small talk, less intimacy.

Combine that lack of awareness with a culture that markets everything as desirable and many people chase things they don’t care about, unable to distinguish mere shiny objects from life passions. The quintessential illustration is the college student with a double major, two minors, a few extracurriculars, and an internship, but nothing meaningful. Many adults live such lives.

The tragedy that results

If you can’t distinguish which of your top ten priorities is the top, you’re spending 90 percent of your life moving away from what you value most. I’d bet most Americans spend most of their time and other resources on things that detract from a better life.

One of the top results from people who do the exercises in Initiative is to find more free time.