Everything positive is an act of piety, from smiling to strangers, answering Stack Overflow questions, to simply getting a contract done quickly and above expectations. Avoiding anything that pulls me towards sin - things like banking/finance institutions is the major temptation for sin, as well as day trading.
Never focusing on money as a goal in itself. Money is there to do good and to invest into good deeds. I would invest all my money and energy into something if it is good enough for the world.
Being honest, especially when it is bad for me. Never be deceptive. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Never promise or commit to that which can't be done, never hide flaws when selling.
Liberating others. People are trapped in dead end jobs, especially where I live. They are forced to accept bribes, lie, and other immoral things. I like to work with people whose goal is to train and improve pay for their staff and avoid jobs whose only goal is to disrupt and make life difficult for the majority.
Craftsmanship. I see craftsmanship as not the process of creation, but extracting the meaning of what is already there.
Like when you take photographs, you don't just look for a subject matter with beautiful lighting, colors, crisp focus. A food photographer tries to capture temperature, flavor, moisture. A wedding photographer tries to capture emotion and even inject a little sexiness.
With programming or UX/UI, you are not just building features. You are solving a problem. You understand the pains of the user, the emotions, the process, find a way to cure it.
It's not about creating something new, but deeply understanding, appreciating, and immersing myself in God's creation, both the good and the bad.
Subordinate to that, my purposes are to love my wife, to love my children, to raise them well, to be kind and helpful to those I meet in life.
I live this out imperfectly, on all fronts. But that's my purpose.
I believe there are some universal truths and that they are able to be understood by man. I try to identify these very very basic truths, confirm them, then apply them to my life.
I am still young (24) and recently have focused on learning about what other people think those truths are, to give myself a basis of understanding. Part of this is freeing myself from my own beliefs, so I purposefully don't totally follow any religion/political allegiance/ideology. So for example, I have studied some of the major religions (Hinduism & Buddhism so far) and have delved into philosophy. I think understanding what other people think is truth will help me understand.
We'll see how this all goes in the long term, but it has inspired and motivated me to keep learning.
On the career side, I am setting myself to start a PhD in Accounting so I can hopefully become a tenured professor. Helping people is a big part of what I want out of my career, and this falls in line with that.
My reasons are selfish unfortunately. I'm also not extremely motivated to make a personal impact on my own, so I aim to earn a high salary so I can donate to people who know what they're doing.
I think humans are wasting a lot of time doing things that don't really accomplish anything important.
Real simple tasks like cooking food, doing laundry, scheduling things, etc.
Really any super simple task that has repeated and predictable steps: I want to remove those completely but not at the subordination of other humans or high cost.
There are basically two issues with current solutions: Humans are involved and they aren't completed without input from me. I still have to decide the task I want to be done and I still have to pay lots of money to have it done. These solutions should be affordable, ubiquitous and low touch (much like you don't think of your refrigerator) where basically every person uses automation, which frees up time for everyone to do enjoyable tasks.
My big pet peeves with lots of startups are that they are pointless (they don't solve a problem, just introduce a solution or toy) and they are almost always targeting well-off customers. Why do the rich Millenials (forgive me) get all of the products and everyone else doesn't?
When I grow up, I want to file all day. I want to claw my way up through middle management. Be replaced on a whim. I want to have a brown nose. I want to be a Yes Man. Yes Woman! Yes sir! Coming sir! Anything for a raise sir! When I grow up…I want to be under appreciated. Be paid less for doing the same job. I want sunshine blown up my dress.
(He's now a front-end web developer.)
In all seriousness though, that's one of the reasons I dislike academia. It seems to have a propensity towards limiting people, maybe it's just been my experience so far.
No research papers, and thus no publishing to journals. Lots of basic research and epistemic hygiene. Emphasis on understanding core mechanics of things from the ground up. Clinical trials used only as mere regulatory formalities, not as crutches to throw things at the wall and see what sticks.
Secondary goal is to bring about the creation and large-scale deployment of robotic infantry to fix the security and human rights situation in some of the world's poorest countries. The technology to do that has already existed for some time.
Beyond that I'd really love to write and direct an HBO series based on X-COM. Bringing back a ton of 90s games with AAA production values would be really fulfilling as well. Recapturing the magic of SimCity 2000 with modern technology is to me what dreams are made of.
The low hanging fruit is human communication. It's ridiculously inefficient. We need another revolution, like Gutenberg's printing press or the Internet.
Nothing is more frustrating to me than seeing people build more apps and websites. I have over 100 apps on my phone and over 1000 online accounts. Everything now has its own app (city, festival, school, bank, store, appliance, car, restaurant, grocery store, airline, taxi, band, currency, etc). Clearly, it doesn't scale.
My mission at the moment is to build a general-purpose computer-assisted communication interface (think IDE for the mind) that will replace 80% of applications.
All problems on this Earth, and perhaps life, no, evolution itself is simply a function of "education".
Helping people adapt better to the variety that is existence is my life goal. Unfortunately, the monetization aspect is in direct, to say the least.