3 ways How Society Can Stop Material Gain from Outweighing Meaningful Work.
Why You’re Miserable at Work?
Before I start, I don’t want to be ignorant and suggest that blog you’re about to read wholeheartedly answers the question as to why western workforces are miserable. That is a large topic, with many causes and effects. This piece will be focusing on this issue through the lens of the world not caring about meaningful work and what we need to do to change that.
In the last blog, we spoke about why it is difficult to get a meaningful job, as the prerequisite to this, is differentiating how we look at employment. When searching for a job. Are we extrinsically motivated by money, status, and pride rather than intrinsically motivated by how the activities of the job make us feel content and fulfilled and that we are following our purpose?
Catch up here if you have not read part one
Today we’ll briefly unpack why it’s so easy for society to be in this little rut we find ourselves in, where material gain outweighs meaning, in the context of entrepreneurship and employment, and 3 quick tips society can do to move in a direction where meaningful work is better prioritized.
Why Is Society Like This?
The way we view employment causes not only us as individuals to suffer but the economy as a whole. People always work better, more efficiently, more enthusiastically, and harder when their true selves are engaged. Don’t get me wrong, hamsters on a wheel can work incredibly hard and achieve great results too but will suffer from a fleeting sense of purposelessness after decades of slaving away mindlessly.
In addition, most jobs are meaningless, which is a probable cause in our current economy. Driven by capitalism, the economy is propped up for consumerism. Generating profits from selling to people. Selling things that are not necessarily helping the individuals in any way.
From working in the marketing industry, whenever strategizing the marketing communication of a new service or product. I always urge my fellow teammates to look at how and where this product or service sits on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
I have recently chosen to opt-out of consumerism as much as I can, attempting to go with a less is more approach to life. This coupled with my time working with business owners to help communicate the benefits and features of their products and service to their target audiences has made me realise one thing.
Currently, most of us have a dangerously loose hold on what really brings us satisfaction in the long term. Making it easier for savvy marketeers, capitalists, and entrepreneurs to prey on the lack of self-command that a lot of the general populous suffer from. This lack of awareness is not only when we are in “consumer mode”, but it shows when we are choosing what to study, what career path to choose, or even what job role to apply for.
Even for myself when conducting marketing for businesses that I really had no interest in compared with the impactful work as a program facilitator for graduate prison officers. Showed in the quality of my work. One did not feel like a job, it felt like a lifestyle whereas, with the other, I knew I was not really helping anyone at the end of the day there was extraordinarily little meaning in marketing for companies I did not care for.
For those who may work in organizations where the result of their work does genuinely help people, improve humanity, and have a lot of meaning. Individuals who work in such large organizations lose their meaning and passion for their work.
Imagine you’re one of 10,000 people spread across continents working towards a product or service with an accompanied meaningful goal. You will lose the thread of what the real purpose of it all is.
This is why it’s not abnormal to have a higher level of satisfaction and fulfillment whilst running a successful SME, with a community of customers. The very scale of modern enterprise and slow-moving bureaucratic structures have taken away from work a sense of meaning.
3 things society can do to help meaningful work become better prioritised.
This diagnosis helps to point the way to what we might begin to do to make work more meaningful for people. Firstly, pay a lot more attention to helping people find their vocation. Their real working authentic selves through moves like career psychotherapy, extended work placements, and changes to school and university curricula, allow students to start to analyse their identities and aptitudes from a much younger age. Something our lead mentor at Trio Ventures does for people coming out of prison who do not want to lead a life of crime.
Secondly, the more we as customers can support businesses engaged in meaningful work, the more meaningful jobs there will be. Consumers have enormous power over what kinds of lives we can have as producers. By raising the quality of our demand. We raise the number of jobs there are, which can answer to mankind’s deeper needs. Whilst working in the crypto space, I showed the COO of a blockchain start-up to see the synergy between him and me and more importantly the brands we were representing. My company joined the blockchain4good initiative. Where they urge communities, and customers of mission-driven blockchain projects to aim to make a profit for good. The social impact industry is coming to fruition being innovated to ensure social impact can be monetized to keep the industry, the businesses, and the people within it sustainable and scalable.
Thirdly, in businesses that do meaningful work, but on to larger-scale over to longer period for it to feel meaningful day to day. We need to get better at telling stories of what the business is up to. We need to give workers some of the intimacy of a small MMA gym, even if it is a giant multinational. ensuring that work is meaningful is vital. It’s not a luxury. it determines the greatest issue of all in modern economics and politics. How hard and well, people will work, and therefore how successful and wealthy, our societies can be. Plus, something that is dear to our hearts at the Trio. Ventures. Which is storytelling. It’s human nature to tell and hear a good story.
We believe that anyone willing to try can shape the world we live in. Storytelling has shaped reality, let us use it as a force for good.
