Happy Mondays: Finding work you love
There’s a quiet revolution going on in the workplace. Instead of money and status, we’re increasingly looking for meaning and purpose. Anita Chaudhuri discovers how we can find work worth doing.
Something fundamental has shifted in our attitude to work. Only 10 years ago, work was still all about success in the traditional sense – ambition, promotion, status and money – or it was just something we did to pay the bills. Now, more and more of us care less about classic career ladders or corner offices, but we care more about what we do, how we do it and – more importantly – why.
A recent survey revealed that 70 per cent of managers are looking for a greater sense of meaning in their working lives. Meanwhile, a study by Lifestyle Matters recently identified the TIREDS – Thirty-something, Independent, Radical, Educated Drop-outs – people with good prospects who are quitting high-flying jobs to do something more meaningful. And, at a time when mortgages are sky-high, a growing number are opting to take an unpaid, mid-life gap year. How did so many of us end up feeling unfulfilled?
Louise, 40, knows the feeling of disillusionment well. ‘I spent three years at university itching to get to work – I wanted the classic “big career”. I went into HR at a big corporation and worked 12-hour days. I wanted to show how committed and good I was, and I identified myself proudly as a “career-orientated” woman. Two years ago, I was made a director, and this year I was off sick for a month – the longest time I’ve ever been out of the office. I’m convinced the sickness was a reaction to my gradual realization that this isn’t what I want after all. I don’t care whether our product X beats the competition’s product Y, or what my bonus is. I went into HR because I thought it was about people, but it’s just about keeping people in line. I feel as if I’ve given the best years of my life to something that turned out to be worthless.’
The search for meaning
Is it unrealistic – even spoiled – to want meaning, as well as a job and a salary (the kind of position our grandfathers might have been grateful for)? No, says philosopher Julian Baggini. ‘Work is no longer a necessity that people do to get by. If you go back to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, once man’s basic needs are met, we naturally strive upwards towards self-actualization and a greater sense of purpose. As we grow more affluent, so we have come to demand more meaning.’
If we once looked for that meaning outside of work – in our families, faith or community – the changing nature of work means that more of us are now looking for purpose and meaning in the nine to five. We’re no longer content to turn up, put in the hours, get paid, go home and forget it. Work occupies too much of our time and energy for that. If we’re lucky, we work with ideas, or we’re engaged in some way with the end product, but many of us feel distanced from our work and have no sense of purpose or satisfaction. ‘We know people do have a heartfelt need to experience a sense of meaning in their life,’ observes career coach Miranda Kennett. ‘Increasingly, that area is our work, and it’s creating high expectations.’
The quest for meaningful work, like all the best treasure hunts, can be an unpredictable journey. We may feel an undefined sense of ‘is this all there is?’ without knowing what else we want. Or we may feel trapped in one role, looking longingly at a different one but not believing it is possible to cross over. Either way, we long for a sense that what we do all day has some meaning beyond the money we earn for ourselves or our business.
But there are many paths to meaning and the one you choose will depend on what motivates you. For some, ‘meaning’ comes from the relationships and interactions of everyday lives. Clare Lewis, 33, works for a small advertising agency, where she’s part of a team of five. ‘We’re like family. I genuinely like and admire the people I work with. Because we’re a small team, we work incredibly closely together, and that’s very bonding. When my mother was sick last year and I had to stay with her, two women I work with went to my house every day to feed my cat and water my plants, and when I came home, they’d filled up the fridge. I could work for a bigger agency and get more money, but I don’t want to leave the people here.’
Learning curve
For others, ‘meaning’ is about being part of an organization or profession that works for the good of humanity, rather than just for profit – such as charity work. But not all meaning has to come from virtuous work, or from downshifting. For Carrie Somers, 44, it came in the form of a big job and big salary. ‘I’m a divisional director for a large retailer. People think “meaning” has to come from earning less, but people who do important jobs have shown great strength of character, and a range of positive personality traits. I feel I’ve developed people skills, finance skills and retail savvy, and pulled them all together in a way a lot of people can’t. The salary shows me that I am valued and rewarded, and it’s because I’m good.’ For Carrie, meaning comes from a sense of continual personal and professional development, and from the satisfaction of being acknowledged and rewarded.
If you’re lucky, you’ll have known from a young age what your true calling is, but what if you don’t? How do you discover what you really want to do? ‘People typically begin with an undefined longing for something more, often talking about ‘wanting to make a difference’, says career coach John Lees. ‘So the first step is to identify what your key motivators are – what aspect of work will provide you with a sense of purpose and satisfaction?’
Because ‘meaning’ will be different for everyone, career coach Ros Taylor suggests the first step is to identify your career ‘drivers’ (see bottom) from a list that includes power and influence, affiliation, creativity, autonomy, security and material rewards. Then you have a choice: do you need to change direction and find a new career, or do you need to change your attitude to the way you work now?
‘If a person is in a career where the meaning base is out of sync with their ‘drivers’, then often a complete change is necessary,’ Taylor observes. ‘But, sometimes, there are ways of making less drastic changes. A corporate lawyer might be better suited to working in-house for a charity, or setting up their own small firm. Or you may choose to switch from the private to public sector, or vice versa, where the values are different. Sometimes you just need a tweak.’
Jane, a 29-year-old fitness instructor, made a small change that created a big improvement. ‘I was working as a freelance personal trainer, but something felt way off track. I felt dissatisfied and questioned whether I should change career. When the opportunity arose to work exclusively with a large health-club chain, I took it, because I thought it would buy me time. In fact, that is all I needed, security. I just didn’t realize it.’
Caroline, 42, worked as an assistant in a garden center, a job she found boring. ‘But then I went on a course, which helped me identify what I’m good at, and I discovered that I love dealing with people and feeling I could make a difference. The course leader suggested that I try thinking of my shop-assistant job as a real service. So I set out to go the extra mile, helping old ladies find the right plant for their rock garden, telling children about how things grow, and lending a hand when someone was trying to load a tree into their car – none of these things I have to do. I went from being bored and surly to engaged. I can see how pleased people are to get so much more than they expect. It gives me a real sense of satisfaction.’
Call to action
But what steps should we take if a larger change is needed? ‘Most of us do know what it is that would bring meaning into our work,’ says Lees. ‘But we’re either too scared to say it out loud, because then we’ll have to do something about it, or we haven’t found a way of putting it into words yet. For the latter group, I suggest examining your hobbies outside of work – what is it that brings you the greatest sense of fulfillment in life? Performance and applause? Service? Learning? Winning? Being physical? Being with other people? Being alone? Once you name it, you can claim it by setting an action plan in motion.’
As jobs become more stressful, finding the time to hatch an escape plan can be daunting. ‘People think you have to make a career change all in one bound,’ says Miranda Kennett. ‘That’s a mistake. You can – and probably should – do it in small steps. The first step might be finding out about further training, then going down to a four-day week, to begin with.’
Typically, people who yearn for career transformation are held back by two familiar excuses. ‘It’s too late’ and ‘I can’t afford it’. Joanne, 36, was working as a theater administrator when she finally applied to art school. ‘After my A-levels, my parents steered me away from art college and into a ‘sensible’ history degree. But the desire to paint never left me. One night, I was telling a friend how my dream was impossible because I’d be 40 before I graduated. Her response stopped me in my tracks. She asked, ‘And what age will you be in four years’ time if you don’t apply?’ I called the college the next morning. Three years on, I have never been happier. Yes, I have had to make major financial sacrifices, but I hardly notice. I realize how much money I used to waste on cheering myself up when I had a job.’
But beware. The need for meaning is a nagging voice, but it’s part of the human condition, and may not necessarily be tied up with our jobs. Sometimes, what we really want is more fulfilling relationships or a sense of community, but finding those difficult to manage, we focus entirely on work as the answer to all our problems.
The quest for the perfect job has become as mythical as the search for the perfect soulmate. Increased choice often creates option paralysis, where we get addicted to imagining ourselves living different lives. And it’s easy to fall back into the lazy option of being negative about work, when we have to examine our own motivation and input as much as the values and opportunities of our place of work.
Sometimes, too, we get bogged down by what we think we ought to do, instead of what we want to do. ‘We are a conformist society, and part of conforming nowadays is attaining a certain level of material status,’ says Baggini. ‘Many people feel very uncomfortable about stepping away from that and earning less than their peers. A life worth living is a life in which you’re doing things that fulfill you in some way. But whichever life you choose has a mixture of trade-offs, and if you want to make changes, the chances are you will have to earn less, at least temporarily. You need to be honest with yourself. How much do you really want to live differently?’
Sometimes, despite all the soul-searching in the world, we still remain stuck. Herminia Ibarra, a professor of organizational behavior, has worked with many people in career transition. ‘Introspection is not always helpful. We understand ourselves best by taking action,’ she advises. ‘Most people don’t have an inner calling that’s just waiting to be discovered. What is more likely is that a person is inspired by observing a charismatic role model doing something they’d never thought of. Experiment, try new things, connect with different people and see what happens. Very often, we have no idea what it is we really want. We need to have the experience, and only then will we know whether it’s right.’
One of Ibarra’s clients, an investment banker, dreamed of running a scuba school. She advised him to first try it out on a temporary basis, before he gave up his day job. This proved to be sound advice as he quickly realised that diving was not going to provide him with meaningful work after all. ‘People fall into the trap of polarized thinking. So they’ll say, I’m stifled in this financial environment, what I need is a job where I’m creative. So they go off and do that, and find that’s not appropriate either. All that was needed was to integrate some more creativity into their existing job. It’s about recognising that we have several different possible selves, and working out how to combine them.’
John Clark, author of The Money or Your Life (?10, Century), advocates that making small changes is more powerful than rash ‘frying pan into the fire’ moves. ‘Like an aircraft carrier, your life needs to be turned around slowly, degree by degree. Change need not be momentous. It will take five years or more to do all the things needed to put your life on a new course. The question is not whether a change will bring about nirvana tomorrow, but whether it will keep nudging you towards the path of your calling.’
What motivates you?
Career coach Ros Taylor has identified nine career drivers, listed below. Give each a rating out of 10 – those with the highest scores are your main drivers. Your job should satisfy these as much as possible.
MATERIAL REWARDS: Seeking possessions, wealth and a high standard of living. Affluence and material comforts matter to you.
POWER/INFLUENCE: Seeking to be in control of people and resources. You like to be in charge, and feel more comfortable leading than being led.
SEARCH FOR MEANING: Seeking to do things valuable for their own sake. You want a job that matches your values and that you feel contributes to something larger than yourself.
EXPERTISE: Seeking a high level of accomplishment in a specialised field. Being very competent in a specific area is important to you.
CREATIVITY: Seeking to innovate and be identified with original output. You like to work with your own ideas or talents.
AFFILIATION: Seeking nourishing relationships with others at work is key to you. You enjoy working with like-minded individuals.
AUTONOMY: Seeking to be independent and able to make key decisions for oneself. You relish being in charge of your own workload, whether you work for yourself or for an organization. You don’t enjoy feeling that you are a cog in a wheel.
SECURITY: You want to create a solid and predictable future. A job with long-term security appeals to you.
STATUS: Seeking to be recognized and admired, whether by colleagues, management or the world at large. Job title and achievements matter to you.
There’s a quiet revolution going on in the workplace. Instead of money and status, we’re increasingly looking for meaning and purpose. Anita Chaudhuri discovers how we can find work worth doing.
Something fundamental has shifted in our attitude to work. Only 10 years ago, work was still all about success in the traditional sense – ambition, promotion, status and money – or it was just something we did to pay the bills. Now, more and more of us care less about classic career ladders or corner offices, but we care more about what we do, how we do it and – more importantly – why.
A recent survey revealed that 70 per cent of managers are looking for a greater sense of meaning in their working lives. Meanwhile, a study by Lifestyle Matters recently identified the TIREDS – Thirty-something, Independent, Radical, Educated Drop-outs – people with good prospects who are quitting high-flying jobs to do something more meaningful. And, at a time when mortgages are sky-high, a growing number are opting to take an unpaid, mid-life gap year. How did so many of us end up feeling unfulfilled?
Louise, 40, knows the feeling of disillusionment well. ‘I spent three years at university itching to get to work – I wanted the classic “big career”. I went into HR at a big corporation and worked 12-hour days. I wanted to show how committed and good I was, and I identified myself proudly as a “career-orientated” woman. Two years ago, I was made a director, and this year I was off sick for a month – the longest time I’ve ever been out of the office. I’m convinced the sickness was a reaction to my gradual realization that this isn’t what I want after all. I don’t care whether our product X beats the competition’s product Y, or what my bonus is. I went into HR because I thought it was about people, but it’s just about keeping people in line. I feel as if I’ve given the best years of my life to something that turned out to be worthless.’
The search for meaning
Is it unrealistic – even spoiled – to want meaning, as well as a job and a salary (the kind of position our grandfathers might have been grateful for)? No, says philosopher Julian Baggini. ‘Work is no longer a necessity that people do to get by. If you go back to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, once man’s basic needs are met, we naturally strive upwards towards self-actualization and a greater sense of purpose. As we grow more affluent, so we have come to demand more meaning.’
If we once looked for that meaning outside of work – in our families, faith or community – the changing nature of work means that more of us are now looking for purpose and meaning in the nine to five. We’re no longer content to turn up, put in the hours, get paid, go home and forget it. Work occupies too much of our time and energy for that. If we’re lucky, we work with ideas, or we’re engaged in some way with the end product, but many of us feel distanced from our work and have no sense of purpose or satisfaction. ‘We know people do have a heartfelt need to experience a sense of meaning in their life,’ observes career coach Miranda Kennett. ‘Increasingly, that area is our work, and it’s creating high expectations.’
The quest for meaningful work, like all the best treasure hunts, can be an unpredictable journey. We may feel an undefined sense of ‘is this all there is?’ without knowing what else we want. Or we may feel trapped in one role, looking longingly at a different one but not believing it is possible to cross over. Either way, we long for a sense that what we do all day has some meaning beyond the money we earn for ourselves or our business.
But there are many paths to meaning and the one you choose will depend on what motivates you. For some, ‘meaning’ comes from the relationships and interactions of everyday lives. Clare Lewis, 33, works for a small advertising agency, where she’s part of a team of five. ‘We’re like family. I genuinely like and admire the people I work with. Because we’re a small team, we work incredibly closely together, and that’s very bonding. When my mother was sick last year and I had to stay with her, two women I work with went to my house every day to feed my cat and water my plants, and when I came home, they’d filled up the fridge. I could work for a bigger agency and get more money, but I don’t want to leave the people here.’
Learning curve
For others, ‘meaning’ is about being part of an organization or profession that works for the good of humanity, rather than just for profit – such as charity work. But not all meaning has to come from virtuous work, or from downshifting. For Carrie Somers, 44, it came in the form of a big job and big salary. ‘I’m a divisional director for a large retailer. People think “meaning” has to come from earning less, but people who do important jobs have shown great strength of character, and a range of positive personality traits. I feel I’ve developed people skills, finance skills and retail savvy, and pulled them all together in a way a lot of people can’t. The salary shows me that I am valued and rewarded, and it’s because I’m good.’ For Carrie, meaning comes from a sense of continual personal and professional development, and from the satisfaction of being acknowledged and rewarded.
If you’re lucky, you’ll have known from a young age what your true calling is, but what if you don’t? How do you discover what you really want to do? ‘People typically begin with an undefined longing for something more, often talking about ‘wanting to make a difference’, says career coach John Lees. ‘So the first step is to identify what your key motivators are – what aspect of work will provide you with a sense of purpose and satisfaction?’
Because ‘meaning’ will be different for everyone, career coach Ros Taylor suggests the first step is to identify your career ‘drivers’ (see bottom) from a list that includes power and influence, affiliation, creativity, autonomy, security and material rewards. Then you have a choice: do you need to change direction and find a new career, or do you need to change your attitude to the way you work now?
‘If a person is in a career where the meaning base is out of sync with their ‘drivers’, then often a complete change is necessary,’ Taylor observes. ‘But, sometimes, there are ways of making less drastic changes. A corporate lawyer might be better suited to working in-house for a charity, or setting up their own small firm. Or you may choose to switch from the private to public sector, or vice versa, where the values are different. Sometimes you just need a tweak.’
Jane, a 29-year-old fitness instructor, made a small change that created a big improvement. ‘I was working as a freelance personal trainer, but something felt way off track. I felt dissatisfied and questioned whether I should change career. When the opportunity arose to work exclusively with a large health-club chain, I took it, because I thought it would buy me time. In fact, that is all I needed, security. I just didn’t realize it.’
Caroline, 42, worked as an assistant in a garden center, a job she found boring. ‘But then I went on a course, which helped me identify what I’m good at, and I discovered that I love dealing with people and feeling I could make a difference. The course leader suggested that I try thinking of my shop-assistant job as a real service. So I set out to go the extra mile, helping old ladies find the right plant for their rock garden, telling children about how things grow, and lending a hand when someone was trying to load a tree into their car – none of these things I have to do. I went from being bored and surly to engaged. I can see how pleased people are to get so much more than they expect. It gives me a real sense of satisfaction.’
Call to action
But what steps should we take if a larger change is needed? ‘Most of us do know what it is that would bring meaning into our work,’ says Lees. ‘But we’re either too scared to say it out loud, because then we’ll have to do something about it, or we haven’t found a way of putting it into words yet. For the latter group, I suggest examining your hobbies outside of work – what is it that brings you the greatest sense of fulfillment in life? Performance and applause? Service? Learning? Winning? Being physical? Being with other people? Being alone? Once you name it, you can claim it by setting an action plan in motion.’
As jobs become more stressful, finding the time to hatch an escape plan can be daunting. ‘People think you have to make a career change all in one bound,’ says Miranda Kennett. ‘That’s a mistake. You can – and probably should – do it in small steps. The first step might be finding out about further training, then going down to a four-day week, to begin with.’
Typically, people who yearn for career transformation are held back by two familiar excuses. ‘It’s too late’ and ‘I can’t afford it’. Joanne, 36, was working as a theater administrator when she finally applied to art school. ‘After my A-levels, my parents steered me away from art college and into a ‘sensible’ history degree. But the desire to paint never left me. One night, I was telling a friend how my dream was impossible because I’d be 40 before I graduated. Her response stopped me in my tracks. She asked, ‘And what age will you be in four years’ time if you don’t apply?’ I called the college the next morning. Three years on, I have never been happier. Yes, I have had to make major financial sacrifices, but I hardly notice. I realize how much money I used to waste on cheering myself up when I had a job.’
But beware. The need for meaning is a nagging voice, but it’s part of the human condition, and may not necessarily be tied up with our jobs. Sometimes, what we really want is more fulfilling relationships or a sense of community, but finding those difficult to manage, we focus entirely on work as the answer to all our problems.
The quest for the perfect job has become as mythical as the search for the perfect soulmate. Increased choice often creates option paralysis, where we get addicted to imagining ourselves living different lives. And it’s easy to fall back into the lazy option of being negative about work, when we have to examine our own motivation and input as much as the values and opportunities of our place of work.
Sometimes, too, we get bogged down by what we think we ought to do, instead of what we want to do. ‘We are a conformist society, and part of conforming nowadays is attaining a certain level of material status,’ says Baggini. ‘Many people feel very uncomfortable about stepping away from that and earning less than their peers. A life worth living is a life in which you’re doing things that fulfill you in some way. But whichever life you choose has a mixture of trade-offs, and if you want to make changes, the chances are you will have to earn less, at least temporarily. You need to be honest with yourself. How much do you really want to live differently?’
Sometimes, despite all the soul-searching in the world, we still remain stuck. Herminia Ibarra, a professor of organizational behavior, has worked with many people in career transition. ‘Introspection is not always helpful. We understand ourselves best by taking action,’ she advises. ‘Most people don’t have an inner calling that’s just waiting to be discovered. What is more likely is that a person is inspired by observing a charismatic role model doing something they’d never thought of. Experiment, try new things, connect with different people and see what happens. Very often, we have no idea what it is we really want. We need to have the experience, and only then will we know whether it’s right.’
One of Ibarra’s clients, an investment banker, dreamed of running a scuba school. She advised him to first try it out on a temporary basis, before he gave up his day job. This proved to be sound advice as he quickly realised that diving was not going to provide him with meaningful work after all. ‘People fall into the trap of polarized thinking. So they’ll say, I’m stifled in this financial environment, what I need is a job where I’m creative. So they go off and do that, and find that’s not appropriate either. All that was needed was to integrate some more creativity into their existing job. It’s about recognising that we have several different possible selves, and working out how to combine them.’
John Clark, author of The Money or Your Life (?10, Century), advocates that making small changes is more powerful than rash ‘frying pan into the fire’ moves. ‘Like an aircraft carrier, your life needs to be turned around slowly, degree by degree. Change need not be momentous. It will take five years or more to do all the things needed to put your life on a new course. The question is not whether a change will bring about nirvana tomorrow, but whether it will keep nudging you towards the path of your calling.’
What motivates you?
Career coach Ros Taylor has identified nine career drivers, listed below. Give each a rating out of 10 – those with the highest scores are your main drivers. Your job should satisfy these as much as possible.
MATERIAL REWARDS: Seeking possessions, wealth and a high standard of living. Affluence and material comforts matter to you.
POWER/INFLUENCE: Seeking to be in control of people and resources. You like to be in charge, and feel more comfortable leading than being led.
SEARCH FOR MEANING: Seeking to do things valuable for their own sake. You want a job that matches your values and that you feel contributes to something larger than yourself.
EXPERTISE: Seeking a high level of accomplishment in a specialised field. Being very competent in a specific area is important to you.
CREATIVITY: Seeking to innovate and be identified with original output. You like to work with your own ideas or talents.
AFFILIATION: Seeking nourishing relationships with others at work is key to you. You enjoy working with like-minded individuals.
AUTONOMY: Seeking to be independent and able to make key decisions for oneself. You relish being in charge of your own workload, whether you work for yourself or for an organization. You don’t enjoy feeling that you are a cog in a wheel.
SECURITY: You want to create a solid and predictable future. A job with long-term security appeals to you.
STATUS: Seeking to be recognized and admired, whether by colleagues, management or the world at large. Job title and achievements matter to you.
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