An excellent New York Times article from 2007 recounted the 20th annual “Operator’s Challenge” — aka the “Sludge Olympics” — a competition for New York sewage treatment workers. The participants compete to show skill in their work and often do so with great passion. Emily Lloyd, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, said of the work the competitors do, “It’s tough work. It’s frequently unpleasant work. And they’re terrific at it.” And as you read the article, you note the pride the competitors have in their work and the purpose they find in doing it well. One man, George Mossos, noting how anonymous their work can be, is quoted saying, “It’s enough to serve the public.” Find meaning in your work!
Why is it that some people can be extraordinarily well-paid and work in pampered settings but feel empty, while others can work in the sewers of New York City and feel fulfilled? Part of the answer is purpose.
As I noted recently in a recent article, for most people, purpose is built not found. Working with a sense of purpose day-in and day-out is an act of will that takes thoughtfulness and practice. Having observed friends and colleagues working with and without purpose for years, I’d offer the following advice on how to consciously endow your work with purpose regardless of your profession.
Advice from John Colemen to find meaning
John Coleman, author of the book, Passion & Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders, set out the following suggestions.
Connect work to service
When I was in graduate school, I once heard Bill George tell a story about how he’d highlight both patients and employees at the Medtronic annual meeting when he was CEO. He’d invite a person whose life had been saved by a defibrillator, for example, to speak to his assembled colleagues and tell them how their work had saved his life. Bill would highlight someone in the Medtronic quality control department and explain how her dedication and rigour were saving thousands of lives. He’d connect his colleagues directly to the people they served.
While everyone may not handle situations of life and death at work, we each do serve someone in what we do. Teachers can see every day the young lives they are shaping — and visualize the lasting impact they may have on the young lives they touch. Corporate accountants can connect themselves mentally to the larger work of their organizations and take pride and purpose in the customers they help. Who do you serve? Connecting our day-to-day jobs — consciously and concretely — to those we’re ultimately serving makes completing that work more purposeful.
Craft your work – and make work a craft
Yale Professor Amy Wrzesniewski once did an in-depth study of hospital custodial staff in a hospital to determine what helped certain members of the custodial team excel. Her results (recounted by David Zax) were fascinating. Wrzesniewski uncovered a practice among the happiest and most effective custodians she termed “job crafting.” These custodial workers, focused intensely on serving patients, would “[create] the work they wanted to do out of the work they’d been assigned—work they found meaningful and worthwhile.” One would rearrange artwork in rooms to stimulate comatose patients’ brains; others devoted time to learning about the chemicals they used for cleaning rooms and figuring out which were least likely to irritate patients’ conditions.
They were pursuing excellence in service to others and would adapt their jobs to suit that purpose. They enhanced their assigned work to be meaningful to themselves and to those they serve. Wrzesniewski and her colleagues have even begun to think more deeply about exercises that can help anyone focus on crafting their work into something that gives them purpose to find meaninwhile still getting the core of their job done.
In another sense of the term, this crafting was also a demonstration of treating work as a craft — focusing on the skill needed to complete one’s work and dedicating oneself to perfecting those skills. This atmosphere of constant improvement in service of craft — so ably demonstrated by the sewage treatment workers of New York — in itself seems to fill professional pursuits with a higher purpose.
Invest in positive relationships
Who we work with is as important as what we do. Psychologist Martin Seligman has written extensively on the importance of relationships to happiness and fulfillment. It is a core element of his “PERMA” model. The now-famous Harvard Grant Study found that happiness and even financial success are tied to the warmth of one’s relationships. The study’s chief architect famously concluding, “Happiness is love. Full stop.”
Making Work More Meaningful
While relationships necessarily (and appropriately) look different within the workplace than outside of it, they still matter. We’d all be served by identifying more ways to develop positive collegial relationships at work. Identify a newer or younger employee you’d like to empower, and offer to help them navigate your firm. Take the lead in scheduling an event that will allow you and your colleagues to know one another more fully. Just take the time to reflect on a new colleague each day, trying to understand him or her and why you’re grateful to have the opportunity to work with them. Whatever your approach, efforts to enhance the positive relationships you have with others at work — often investing in serving them — can give work greater meaning.
Remember why you work
Most of us don’t have the luxury of working solely for fun. We may enjoy our jobs, but we also work to earn money and pay bills. For most of us, work in and of itself is a meaningful act of service. Parents often work hard to invest in their children, and those without kids often help support ageing parents or other relatives. Those without families often use their resources to support organizations they love in the community or their friends in times of need. It’s rare to find someone working with only their personal needs in mind.
Who are you working for? Identify that person or group of people. When the hours are long, or the tasks are unglamorous, remember that your work is an act of service for those you care about in your personal life. Keeping this front of mind will help you tie more purpose into your work, even when accomplishing the most tedious of tasks.
Purpose isn’t magic — it’s something we must consciously pursue and create. With the right approach, almost any job can be meaningful.
Advice from David Brooks and Arthur Brooks to find meaning
In 2016, David Brooks and Arthur Brooks offered advice on how to turn a job into a vocation in their Atlantic article titled ‘7 Ways To Find Meaning at Work’. It is a compelling topic, not least because so many of us are in jobs purely for the paycheque. According to a Gallup poll referenced in the article, which quizzed people from 142 different countries about their job satisfaction, only 13% of people are engaged at work.
The article quotes Gallup, saying that about “one in eight workers … are psychologically committed to their jobs and likely to be making positive contributions to their organizations.” If this is still reflective of the state of play professionally, then there is a severe career gap that needs to be closed.
The Aspen Ideas Festival recently hosted a conversation David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, and Arthur Brooks, the president of the American Enterprise Institute to look at ways people can actively take control and bring more meaning to their jobs. The following are the key points of advice from that conversation.
Attach Work to Ideals
Try to see your work as a contribution towards a larger goal. If that is impossible in your day job, then try to find a means outside of that which gives you a way to make a meaningful impact on a cause that matters to you.
David Brooks gives the example that churning out columns offers no meaning to him because the pace at which he must produce new work does not let him think about the potential impact they might have on readers. Whatever you do for a living, try to get a sense of the bigger goal to take you out of the mundanity of the daily grind.
Recognize Meaningful Moments
Take the time to notice the aspects of your job that matter to you, and what you find most fulfilling or meaningful. If you can concentrate on those small moments that connect you to the meaning and your ideals, it will make all the less pleasant stuff more palatable.
Serve Others or Serve the Work
“The happiest people feel like they’re needed. The greatest engine of misery in our society is a sense of social and economic superfluousness.” — Arthur Brooks
Whether that sense of being needed comes from a sense of serving people, serving society, or just doing excellent work, focus on what provides most meaning for you.
Think About Why You Do What You Do
We are often judged by our answer to the question “what do you do?” However, we are rarely asked – and indeed we rarely ask ourselves – why we do it. Think about what your motivations are and recognize the ‘why’ of your career. By knowing what drives you, you will be better able to work in a meaningful way.
Follow Fear
Ask yourself: what would I do if I were not afraid?
The answer to that question could point you in the direction that you have been looking for all along. So many of us avoid the work that matters to us because of fear of failure, rejection, societal disapproval; the list goes on. Admit to your fears and see if your purpose is hiding behind them.
Be Conscious of Life Stages
The rhythm of our lives dictates a lot of how and when we work. Depending on what you do, it is essential to know what the cadence is for careers like yours and to try to step into that flow. By, for example, trying to achieve things before you are ready and knowledgeable enough to do so, you may end up just frustrating yourself. Accept that you are a beginner that can improve and will reach a higher standard with more experience.
Do not Invest Everything in Work
The happiest people, according to Arthur Brooks, are those who have “balanced portfolios” in the four critical areas of life: faith/spirituality/philosophy; family; community; and work. If you put everything you have into just one aspect of your life, you will end up feeling unsettled and lacking a grounding in other areas. Recognize when you are tipping too far in any one direction. Meaningfulness in work is not just the luxury of those who can afford it. Wherever you stand of the financial or social scale, you have the right to derive meaning from how you spend your days.
“There is no income level at which people are not desperate for meaning. The churches, synagogues, and mosques of the world are filled with people who need moral purpose in their life.” — David Brooks
So, if you need to find some purpose in yours, hopefully, the above tips can give you a little direction.
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Knowing yourself is the first step to being happy. Moreover, staying happy is an ongoing process of regrounding your long-term goals with your current objectives. When those align, you’re on the path to a job you can adore. Know when to find a better job as your best option may be to fall in love with your job (again) We also offer a personal development plan to help you achieve career success and satisfaction.
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