Creating Meaningful Work
How to find fulfillment in your job
My wife and I had a conversation a few days ago about why so many people seem to fail to find their jobs meaningful. We can all think of examples of jobs that sound unfulfilling, but even doctors and nurses complain that they only treat the symptoms, not causes of illness. Public health workers, my wife’s former profession, feel burdened by stifling bureaucracies and the emotional distance between policy debates, white papers, and real-world impact.
On its face, this makes no sense. The people who touch the ill and mend their hurts want to have a broader impact. The people whose job is to consider those broader impacts feel bogged down in the administrative responsibilities required to make sweeping changes. Are we all doomed to a lifetime of complaining? We are not. But the solution is an active process, a practice that is never mastered but always pursued.
My generation was taught that we should pursue whatever made us happy and that a college degree would guarantee us the option to do what we wanted. Much has been written about the privileged attitudes that engendered in young employees and a lot has been exaggerated. It’s also true that many people have found that after a few years in the workforce, a few raises and some bonuses they’re beginning to ask, “is this it?”
What is fulfillment? Our Partner Tony Robbins teaches that fulfillment is what we should design our lives around. We can find fulfillment in the love we have for our friends and families. We can find fulfillment in growth — in continuously improving ourselves and our abilities. In particular, we are fulfilled when we give to others in whatever way works for each of us.
If you are a doctor or a nurse it may be easy (or it may not) to see what you are giving others. If you are optimizing pricing strategy for Frito Lay (and I mean no offense to Frito Lay; I love a salty crunch as much as the next guy) your work’s contribution to society may be more nebulous.
It is important to note that our work does not have to be how we find fulfillment. Religion, volunteer work, caring for family members are age-old ways we find fulfillment. The important thing is that you feel you are contributing to something greater than yourself. This is why we don’t feel fulfilled after going on a shopping spree but doing the exact same thing for someone else can be immensely rewarding. Once you understand this, it can become one of your most valuable tools to generate great work products.
Let’s say your boss comes to your desk (you may also have to imagine you still work at a desk) Friday afternoon and says you’ll have to work late because a client forgot to send over a document earlier. You need to go through a list of 1,000 names and compare them to another list to find which ones match. You would undoubtedly find this mundane task terribly boring. You might be angry, possibly resentful, and certainly a bit annoyed. Compare that with this alternate: I tell you I have a tight deadline and a family emergency came up. Could you please help me complete this assignment? We’ll both split the work. You may actually feel good about the opportunity to help a friend. Now consider a third. A terrible accident has occurred but no one was hurt. I need you to hunt through a database to find emergency contact info for the people involved so that we can tell these people their loved ones are safe. Several people listening to this conversation would raise their hands to volunteer to help.
“Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.”
The task is the same in each of these situations. It is a repetitive, dull, task that a computer could do faster and better than a human, but you’ve been asked to do it. But the emotion you feel in each is vastly different. What changed is the meaning you assigned to your work. Ok, so what? Well we all want to be fulfilled don’t we? We need to connect the sorts of things we do daily like answering emails, leading meetings, or putting together presentations with a higher purpose — serving others.
When people asked what I liked about working at Asseta, where we helped semiconductor factories source spare parts for emergency equipment failures, I always said I knew we weren’t curing cancer but we were helping someone who was having a really bad day. That feels good!
At Prime Movers Lab, I’m given the opportunity to help our team members every day. The companies we invest in use the breakthroughs they’ve invented to solve real problems our society faces. Every morning, I take a few minutes to reflect on how the small actions I take help people do their jobs better and ultimately help change the world for billions of people. It doesn’t happen overnight and let’s face it, the role I play is pretty indirect. But it’s a role and it’s my role and it does move the needle.
So my recommendation to you is to spend 5 minutes each morning focusing on the connection between a large impact you’d like to have on the world and the small steps you take today. If you do this every day for a month, I’m confident you will feel better about what you’re working on or maybe you’ll realize you’re ready for a change. Regardless, you’ll gain clarity in what fulfills you and how to achieve it and as a bonus, you’ll also be more productive as you find yourself motivated to take a couple more steps toward your worthwhile goal.
Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation, and agriculture.
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