I wrote a post in 2009 called “What’s your tag line?” My point was that one way successful college applicants stand out is by doing something interesting that can be summed up in one sentence on a college application. But as Dan Pink points out in Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, this thinking actually has a much broader and more important application than just impressing an admissions committee:
In 1962, Care Boothe Luce, one of the first women to serve in the U.S. Congress, offered some advice to President John F. Kennedy. “A great man,” she told him, “is a sentence.” Abraham Lincoln’s sentence was: He preserved the union and freed the slaves. Franklin Roosevelt’s was: “He lifted us out of a Great Depression and helped us win a world war.” Luce feared that Kennedy’s attention was so splintered among different priorities that his sentence risked becoming a muddled paragraph.
You don’t have to be president—of the United States or of your local gardening club, to learn from this tale. One way to orient your life toward greater purpose is to think about your sentence. Maybe it’s: “He raised four kids who became happy and healthy adults.” Or “She invented a device that made peoples’ lives easier.” Or “He cared for every person who walked into his office regardless of whether that person could pay.” Or “She taught two generations of children to read.”
As you contemplate your purpose, begin with the question, "What’s your sentence?"