This is why we are excited to announce The Net Project on iOS and Android.

The mobile experience makes it easier to return to reflection in the middle of real life: not only when you are sitting at a desk, but between classes, during a commute, at night, or in those quieter moments when something is on your mind and you want a place to meet it honestly. Mobile lets reflection fit more naturally into the rhythms people already have, instead of asking them to step outside of their daily lives to do it.

We built them this way because the kinds of reflection that help people live with more meaning, purpose, and well-being often break down at the level of everyday life. Reflection can feel important in theory, but hard to return to in practice. It can start to feel like something you need the perfect mood for, or a block of free time, or a level of energy many people simply do not have at the end of the day.

That gap matters. Especially now.

We live in a time full of noise, speed, distraction, and constant pressure to react. It is easy to drift further away from the parts of ourselves that know what matters, what feels true, and what kind of life we actually want to build. Healthy, productive reflection is sometimes dismissed as indulgent, slow, or impractical. We see it differently. We think reflection is part of how people reconnect with their better impulses, build alignment over time, and live with greater intention. The problem is not that reflection matters too little. It is that too often it feels too hard to do consistently.

Right now, that means a few practical things.

You can reflect on daily cards we have carefully crafted, designed to help you build greater consistency and alignment through repetition over time. You can use private, unprompted journaling when you do not want a prompt and simply need to get your thoughts out. And you can begin engaging with social features like creating memories with others, something we hope to say more about in future posts.

We hope that topics like meaning and purpose or fulfillment and flourishing will become easier to think about and share with others. There is a wealth of information on these topics informed by decades of research, and we’re translating that into everyday language while making our own contributions to the field.

That fits the larger vision behind what we are building.

We want to improve meaning and flourishing for you, for all our users, and eventually for the world we share together. We believe people who are more grounded in meaning and flourishing are more likely to build healthier relationships, healthier communities, and a healthier society.

Headwinds and Tailwinds: Meaning-making and Flourishing with AI

Artificial intelligence is affecting different corners of our life. Whether you’re an avid user or not, we are seeing generative AI beginning to affect how people relate to work, relationships, identity, purpose, and meaning. Future automation areas will continue changing how human behavioral norms evolve. These carry significant implications for what the future of human meaning-making, purpose, and flourishing will look like.

There are a number of important questions to explore and monitor here, including:

• How will these technologies shape our role as an organization and our goals?

• What do these changes mean for humanity?

• What role can we play as an organization and as individuals to improve the likelihood that humans, and the earth more broadly, can flourish?

• What becomes more precious, more fragile, or more confusing in that world?

These are questions we’re exploring from a variety of angles including future-of-work, labor and workforce transformations, social and emotional self-regulation, agency and autonomy.

This is an area we are taking seriously, both for what it means for our own work and for how we may contribute as a thought partner to others thinking carefully about human flourishing in a changing world. We hope to contribute usefully to these conversations, both for readers trying to make sense of these shifts in their own lives and thought partners for organizations in the space.

A Meaningful Life for a Flourishing You

Experience Net Project

58% of youth, and 40-50% of people generally, say they struggle with a sense of meaning and purpose. Chances are that you or someone you know are included in this statistic. This is a big deal because having a strong sense of meaning can help us live a flourishing life, excited to tackle challenging goals, and build strong relationships.

Unfortunately, not having a strong sense of meaning can keep us from being the best version of ourselves. It can lead to higher rates of depression, suicidal ideation, loneliness, and deteriorating physical health. This is both a strength-building and preventative necessity.

When I started The Net Project, my goal was to not only raise awareness about the issue, but to create an intervention that could help. Over the past two years, I quit my job and worked with amazing, passionate volunteers to dive deeper in researching, testing, and creating an intervention.

In my own journey, I’ve struggled with meaning and purpose, and have spoken with hundreds of people from around the world about their experiences. Consistently, people told me the questions felt scary to face and life felt easier to manage on autopilot—until it didn’t, whether it was a quarter or mid-life crisis, or an awakening of another kind. I learned quite a few things in these conversations that guided The Net Project:

• We’re asking the wrong question—instead of asking generally “what is the meaning of life?”, we should be asking ourselves “how do we cultivate a sense of meaning that fulfills us?”

• Meaning isn’t built or found one time—it’s committed to, repeatedly.

• We don’t know where to start—conversations can feel taboo, and it can be hard to tell what to actually do.

These are many more insights, and truth be told, we’ll always learning how to better help people build and commit healthy approaches to meaning. We believe that succeeding here will benefit the health and well-being of millions of people, as well as enable them to lead fulfilling lives that positively impact their loved ones, communities, and the world.

How does The Net Project’s first intervention work?

• When you first create an account, you’ll receive a “flourishing card.” These cards will help you learn about what makes you flourish as an individual. Each card has unique questions—answer them all to learn about yourself!

• After making your way through flourishing cards, you will complete your Meaning of Life (“MOL”) profile. This will help your investigate deeper patterns of how you’ve been approaching your life.

• What comes next? Everyday, you receive 1-2 new cards or parts of your MOL profile. The questions are carefully curated to help you connect the threads of your life.

We’re working hard to improve the experience and have a several exciting new features on the way, including game modes that make the experience even more fun, as well as a social mode to build meaningful, supportive relationships.

This is only the beginning. If you’re inspired by what you see, consider making a contribution. We’re a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so we’ll only be able to make an impact with your support. What are you waiting for?

We’re also always looking for technical and marketing people who want to contribute. If that’s you, send a quick email at flourishing@netproject.org.

Escape the void.

With Gratitude,
Ali Kapadia

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• Finalizing onboarding a new engineering lead, Isaiah. He’s already contributing toward our open beta. Stay posted for when this launches! He joins our other volunteers: Marina, Megan, Hannah.

• We received our 501(c)(3) nonprofit status (this means you have a final chance before the year-end to support our mission with a tax-deductible donation!).

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• We have had ~70 of you test some form of The Net Project experience! We heard all sorts of feedback, and some of you even referred friends and family that you wanted to share the experience with.

• There were lots of discoveries, discussions, and growth made along the way; here’s what some of you had to say:

  • “I felt proud and confident after the experience. I realized how my perspectives have grown over life and my growth. Acknowledging my weakness sparked curiosity in myself and motivated me to grow.” - S.N.

  • “I felt energy and motivation immediately after the experience. There were things I was avoiding that I was able to better connect with and actually feel excited to tackle.” - S.T.

• We were recognized as a part of the Lookup Innovation Awards for Youth Mental Health!

Learnings and growth:

• Building an innovative socially conscious tech for good is hard. I suspect anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t done it. It can be hard to remember, but accepting and allowing discomfort helps in any task worth doing build resilience.

  Know when to seek feedback. This is hard when you want things to be perfect, but as the saying goes, perfection is the enemy of progress. As we our beta is now live, reach out to us at flourishing@netproject.org if you want to be included in our group of trusted users or otherwise support us.

What we’ve been reading:

• An October 2023 Harvard GSE report finds 58% of young adults report a lack of purpose, with many expressing a deep sense of disconnection that impacts mental health and broader societal well-being–issues central to our mission at The Net Project.

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The most popular question I get asked about meaning is one you’ve probably heard before: “What is the meaning of life?” As a teenager, I used to obsess about this question. However, my readings and conversations others have taught there’s maybe a better question: “How does the way we think about meaning affect us?” Do the stories we tell ourselves shape us, others, and the world?

The narratives, or stories, we tell ourselves play a role in what we believe is meaningful and important. These inform the way we think about the world and our place in it. Two popular narratives are the orderly narrative and the chaos narrative. To investigate these, I’ll ask you to first imagine yourself with the orderly narrative and then the chaos narrative:

In the orderly narrative, the universe has natural patterns, structure, and meaning. In this narrative, your existence in the universe matters. With a story of order, you could have a persistent urge to uncover your significance and why you exist. In this story enough, you might even obsessively look for meaning or larger explanations where there aren’t any.

In the chaos narrative, the universe is naturally random, disorganized, and meaningless. In this narrative, your existence in the universe is incidental. With a story of chaos, you could feel relief that there is no deeper significance behind existence that needs discovering, and you can just exist. In this story, you might even apathetically disregard the significance of absolutely important or consequential things when they’re there.

I’ll ask you to resist the tempting urge to debate which narrative is true. Instead, let’s turn to the question: “How does my narrative affect me?” To understand how it affects you, we need to explore the deep relationship between narratives and meaning.

Meaning is the “why” behind what you do and why you believe it’s important. Some approaches to meaning can give you a sense of purpose, inspire resilience in the face of challenges, and provide a way for you to look at the universe and your place in it. Meaning can catalyze your identity, values and virtues, motivation, time, and energy. Personal narratives organize your life experiences into a story with yourself as a character, with your approach to meaning explaining why your character interacts with the world in the way it does.

Is there a narrative that can consistently affect us positively? If there is such a narrative, I didn’t find it in my personal lived experiences with the orderly narrative or the chaos narrative.

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Growing up, I believed in the orderly narrative: everything happened for a reason and carried significance. I could never simply exist or appreciate a thing for what it was. I was constantly trying to piece together some significance from the experience. Everything that did or did not happen to me was some sign or message from the universe for me to decode. This created a neurotic, exhausting perspective and interpretations that would likely feel ridiculous to others if they heard them.

The job interview, the project, or the date: if it’s something that has a lot of meaning or importance, it can fill us with strong emotions like anxiety, avoidance, and devastation. There can be a hidden belief that we are destined for the perfect career, dream school, or relationship. And when it doesn’t go our way, we may have remarkable resilience with the orderly narrative. “Everything happens for a reason,” we’ll say. I did too until one day I couldn’t keep convincing myself and asked the taboo question: “What if it doesn’t?” This led to chaos narrative.

If you believe the orderly narrative, you might relate to a great deal of this. If you don’t believe in the orderly narrative, it might seem unbelievable that others identify in this way, but in my conversations, I learned a great many do.

Embracing the chaos narrative, I became convinced I would no longer deceive myself so readily. There was a cynical relief to respond to something unfortunate with “nothing matters anyway” It was initially a freeing response to things that had before felt too meaningful or important. I observed others around me also use it. Business meeting didn’t go our way? An exam or date didn’t go our way? Does it matter? No, nothing does.

But meaninglessness (“Nihilism”) is not a treatment without side effects. For one, you can become cynical when faced with any challenging task or setback, believing it isn’t worth the effort and ultimately doesn’t matter. Also, consider what might happen if things do begin to go your way. We can’t easily switch from telling ourselves nothing matters in response to undesired outcomes to telling ourselves things do matter in response to desired ones. When we tell ourselves nothing matters enough times, we begin to believe it. It can get to the point where our experiences feel dulled due to the inability to acknowledge any meaningfulness. This belief robs us of the ability to discern what matters from what doesn’t. It robs us of the chance to learn from outcomes that don’t go our way and from how to navigate our anxieties around things that matter to us.

When meaninglessness gets adopted as our Meaning of Life (MOL), it comes with detrimental mental and physical health outcomes. To someone whose life feels full of meaning and purpose, this experience might feel puzzling and difficult to understand. In my own life and from the conversations I’ve shared, the nihilistic narrative of meaninglessness sometimes provides an immediate sense of release from overwhelming burdens. However, this initial catharsis shifts into depression, loneliness, and frustration. During my nihilistic period, I found myself retreating to feelings of despair, isolation, and irritation. When your responsibilities have lost meaningfulness, you question the purpose of your days. You might even go so far as to question if the people around you–and their narratives–matter. And unfortunately, when you start to tell yourself that nothing matters, you begin to question if you matter.

If neither the orderly narrative nor chaos narrative can consistently affect us in a positive light, is there a narrative that can? To quote a friend I had made during my research travels: “Sometimes some things can happen for a reason.” I’ve personally adopted this as my perspective and present narrative on the world. Sometimes some things happen for a reason. I don’t have to investigate everything that happened as some sign from the universe. But I could choose to investigate the things that felt significant. I could choose my own approach to meaning (what philosophers call “Existentialism”). For things that didn’t feel important, I could simply let them go. And for many other things, I could appreciate that it gave me personal meaning without needing to place its importance in the grand scheme of the universe. We can call this the “sometimes narrative” unless someone thinks of something catchier.

We’ve made progress, but we still haven’t fully answered every question on these topics. Some of these questions you’ll have to search and investigate the answers for yourself. Luckily, you can do so at The Net Project. Our platform helps people create coherent, positive narratives in their life, so anyone can making sense of their meaning and all the ways it affects them.

There’s much more to say about the subject. I can write follow-ups on Existentialism, its critiques, and on how we can resolve them for an approach to meaning that lets humanity flourish and thrive. Other areas of interest worth exploring are the intersection of meaning and topics like escapism, art, authenticity, technology, AI, and more.

As other volunteers and I continue working on the nonprofit, we strive every day to raise awareness about the Meaning Crisis and address it. I left my job in December 2022 to do so full-time. If you want to join our mission or contribute to making it financially sustainable, you can reach out at flourishing@netproject.org, and you’ll hear back from me directly.

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Last edited in July 2025 for clarity and small updates as part of our website and blog migration.

Dictionary:

Personal narratives organize your life experiences into a story with yourself as a character, with your approach to meaning explaining why your character interacts with the world in the way it does.

Existentialism is the world philosopher use to describe choosing one’s own approach to meaning

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☛​̳𝙀​̳𝙨​̳𝙘​̳𝙖​̳𝙥​̳𝙚​̳ ​̳𝙩​̳𝙝​̳𝙚​̳ ​̳𝙀​̳𝙢​̳𝙥​̳𝙩​̳𝙞​̳𝙣​̳𝙚​̳𝙨​̳𝙨 ̳☚ :

Spring 2019, I was living in Hong Kong, completing a new research project on meaning. It was my second project on the subject. During the first project, my interest in the “Meaning Crisis” originally swelled from my own existential anxiety about how to approach the meaning of life. However, the curiosity that compelled me this time was wondering if questions about meaning were really a near-universal part of the human experience like many philosophers claimed. So, this project started differently, with me asking: “Did everyone think about meaning?” or am I, perhaps like the 20th century philosophers I was studying, over-intellectualizing personal curiosities?

During my first project, people often confessed they resonated with these questions, but suspected this was uncommon. This suspicion was so frequent, it motivated me to conduct a second project. The readings during the first project were quite important; however, this time I decided to interview people (with a philosophical style of questioning) about their experiences with meaning to see just how common reflections on the subject were.

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In the weeks that ensued, I traveled through Japan, South Korea, China, and Malaysia, staying in hostels, couchsurfing, and occasionally spending uncomfortable nights in airports. I interviewed both locals and travelers from across the world, representing six continents, varied nationalities, hometowns, religions, and overall life experiences. Six years later, it’s still one of the most impactful and personally meaningful experiences of my life. There were many memorable moments and thrilling tales, which I’d love to share one day. Right now, however, I want to focus on some of the key insights that inspired me, and the many volunteers who have joined me, to build our vision of The Net Project:

Not investigating our approaches to meaning and purpose, and building these thoroughly can have deadly implications. Depression, addiction, suicide, strokes, heart attacks, and premature death are all linked to lacking a strong sense of meaning.1 Unfortunately, for something so critical to our health, only 25% of people believe they have a clear sense of purpose and know what makes their lives meaningful, while nearly 40% of people feel neutral or say they do not.2 This was in 2008. And with social developments since then, there is reason to believe people feel greater hopelessness, isolation, and pessimism. Nowhere is this more apparent than in youth: in a 2023 study nearly 3 out of 5 young adults (58%) reported lacking meaning or purpose.3 These figures demonstrate a concrete problem that demands a sense of urgency.

To scratch beyond shallow surfaces in this conversation, it might be useful to introduce some terms philosophers commonly use. “Nihilism” is the word philosophers use for a belief that life is meaningless. It can be a dangerous feeling. As many who have experienced a severe bout of nihilism can attest, it’s an extremely depressive sentiment that very naturally leads to low points. This is an experience I can also personally attest to. Not having a sense of meaning and purpose can leave us feeling empty inside. Many contemporary narratives tell us to minimize our yearnings for deeper significance. The narratives might tell us we’re overthinking and that we should aim to escape feelings of emptiness with conformity and distraction—even if, in all its contradiction and confusion, that conformity and distraction can never fulfill our deeper human need for meaning.

For many years following my own bout of nihilism, I believed it was something we needed to fight if we were to reverse the trends described above. Lately, however, I think we need to focus on normalizing conversations around the feelings and beliefs. I think doing so will better equip us to identify the things that do fulfill us and give us meaning so we can figure out how to allocate more of our intention towards that.

As other volunteers and I continue working on The Net Project, we strive every day to raise awareness about the Meaning Crisis and address it. I left my job in December 2022 to do so full-time. If you want to join our mission or contribute to making it financially sustainable, you can reach out at flourishing@netproject.org, and you’ll hear back from me directly.

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Last edited in July 2025 for clarity and small updates as part of our website and blog migration.

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