One Simple Idea that Explains Why Every Job You Had Was Meaningless or Demotivating

Here is how to stop falling into a pattern of meaningless jobs in the future.

One day, a woman passed along a street and saw three bricklayers.

She was intrigued by how busy they were.

So she asked the first man, “what are you doing?”

“I am laying bricks”, replied the first man.

The woman then approached the second man and asked, “Hey, what are you doing?

“I am building a wall”, answered the second man.

The woman decided to approach the third bricklayer and asked the same question to him as well.

To her question, the third man responded, “I am building a cathedral”.

The difference in response to the same question is starking between the three bricklayers.

They are all doing the same task but each one of them sees it differently.

In today’s business language, the first bricklayer sees what he is doing as a job. He is like a corporate employee who pulls himself to work every day. He is just in it to pay the bills.

The second bricklayer sees it as a career. It is his specialization that he has been doing for a while and became quite good at it.

But the third bricklayer sees it as a calling. It is his purpose. He gives it his all and he enjoys every bit of it.

If you are like most people, you probably have experienced the sensation of the first man in the above parable. At some point in your career, you felt like just laying bricks.

You lacked purpose in your work. Your work felt meaningless and you had no sense of fulfillment. You were not sure how what you are doing can make an impact on someone, let alone transform the world.

Lack of purpose is one of the main reasons why your job has always felt demotivating and meaningless.

What activate purpose at work

“I wonder what my soul does all day when I’m at work.” — Dan Cable

Adam Grant, the prominent organizational psychologist, attempted to study fundraising efforts in organizations.

He studied 3 groups of fundraisers at a university.

The first group followed their regular way of fundraising by making calls.

In the second group, before they made any calls, they were given a speech by a leader about the importance of raising funds for students and how it helps them.

The third group was asked to meet with one of the students who typically receive these scholarships. The third group spent some time asking the student about the impact of the funds on his studies and life

The result of the study was fascinating.

The third group was able to raise 171% more funds than the remaining two groups. This happened just because they spend a few minutes talking to a student who benefits from these funds.

The findings of the study show that people’s purpose at work gets activated when they can experience the impact of their work on others.

Surprisingly, in the second group, the leader’s speech on the benefit of fundraising had no significant impact on the fundraising ability.

The big gap between research and reality

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him” — Victor Frankl

Here is the paradox.

While research proves that people are motivated by contributing to a bigger purpose and seeing the impact of this contribution, companies do little or nothing to create a higher purpose.

In the situation above, most companies would adopt the approach of the second group. A leader will show up to talk to people about the benefits of what they do to others and that is it.

Little will be done to connect people with ways to experience the real-life impact of their work.

This problem goes back to how organizations were initially designed.

The organizational system, developed initially to fit the industrial age, does not encourage you to find your purpose. In fact, it is a lot easier to manage you if you have no purpose at all.

Since the industrial age, scientific management was based on the idea of repetitive work. For the process to be efficient, workers needed to learn to repeat a task over and over again in the same fashion.

A worker was nothing more than a small gear in a big machine. The gear has no idea what the whole machine is supposed to produce.

Over time, this system conditioned us to believe that work is boring. We resigned ourselves to the idea that work has to be torturous and normalized with it.

I remember one of my friends used to say, “ Of course work has to be boring. That is why it is called work after all.”

Unfortunately, her words are not unique. They summarize the stance that many people hold about work.

Is your Seeking System in order?

“When the seeking systems are not active, human aspirations remain frozen in an endless winter of discontent” Jaak Panksepp

You’ve probably heard many statistics about employee disengagement in the workplace.

Disengagement in the workplace is old news.

Here is what is new.

Employee disengagement is not a motivational problem. It is a biological problem.

Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp identified 7 primary emotional systems in humans that generate positive or negative responses when stimulated.

These primary emotional systems are Seeking, Care, Play, Lust, Fear, Sadness, and Anger.

The system we are concerned with here is the Seeking System.

The Seeking System allows us to search and explore resources in our environment that are important for our survival. It is how we live and work.

The Seeking System is dopamine energized. The search itself, rather than the end reward, gives us a euphoric feeling of satisfaction.

It is the reason why you wake up in the morning in search of everything around you (your coffee, your cell phone, the news you missed overnight…etc)

It is also the reason why you feel excited when you are pursuing a new endeavor/ project or learning new things.

Your seeking system always creates a natural impulse to learn about your environment and extract meaning from your circumstances.

The problem is most organizational systems are designed to de-activate your seeking systems.

Here is how:

• Every time you were dictated to follow the company “rules” of completing a task, your seeking system was deactivated
• Every time your manager indicated they had no time or patience for experimenting, your seeking system was deactivated.
• Every time the bosses prioritized metrics over personal development or profit over purpose, your seeking system was deactivated.

This is a serious status to reach.

Studies show that people that have a purpose in life tend to live longer.

On the flip side, research indicates that just as the activation of the seeking system causes people to live longer, the deactivation of it causes depression.

Depression signs are subtle in the beginning until they are too big to ignore.

Depressive symptoms can start with a feeling of sluggishness at work, trouble waking up in the morning, or frequent headaches.

These symptoms have become commonplace to many people that they are considered now “ normal”

They are not.

In many cases, they are the result of a long-deactivated seeking system in a suppressive environment.

From Profit-Driven to Purpose-Driven

‘‘Her son had been in a terrible accident… had her son been driving any other car, he would have been killed… The policeman said he was sure the Volvo had saved his life… the work we do at Volvo genuinely saves lives.’’ — Bob Austin, Volvo manager

The good news is many organizations now are shifting from profit-driven to purpose-driven.

The pace of change around us forced many organizations to adapt.

They now more than ever need employees to change and innovate.

They need employees’ new perspectives and insights.

They need employees’ creative ways of figuring out new technologies that may not be as easy to figure out by their managers.

One practice that purpose-driven organizations use to connect people with their purposes is to let people choose their titles.

For example, in Make-A-Wish, a non-profit organization that brings joy to children diagnosed with serious diseases, employees are allowed to choose self-reflective titles that represent them and how they see their work.

Some of the interesting titles were:

- The Fairy God Mother of Wishes — instead of the CEO

- The Magic Messenger — instead of the PR manager

- The Director of First Impressions — instead of a receptionist

The employees were skeptical about how these titles will impact the work environment.

Yet, a study that attempted to explore the effect of self-reflective titles found a significant reduction in stress among employees.

It turned out that these light-hearted titles served to

• Connect employees with their purpose
• Remind employees of their impact when the going gets tough
• Create a psychological safety at work whereby self-expression is encouraged.

You may want to pause for a second and try the same exercise as well.

Choose a self-reflective title that represents you and the impact of your work.

At the least, this can help you think differently about your job and reflect on whether it is aligned with your calling.

How to stop falling into a pattern of meaningless jobs

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Will my presence or absence matter? I don’t think anybody will even notice it”, said Jason, one of my direct reports when I asked about his desire to take one extra day off.

Jason’s answer was shocking to me.

Jason worked as a junior researcher in my team. He was hired fresh out of college and was still learning the basics of the field.

Jason was smart and skillful in his job. He was a fast learner as well.

Yet his self-talk was dangerous.

It reflected a lack of a sense of purpose.

He essentially told himself that he doesn’t matter and is hardly noticeable to others.

Jason’s story is not unique.

Many people wallow for years in a status of lack of purpose at work, thinking they don’t matter.

This is often the result of a disconnect between their work and its impact.

So what is the solution?

Well, it is easy for me to tell you the solution is to work for a purpose-driven company like the one mentioned in the above section.

Yet, the reality is purpose is very personal.

It is created internally not externally.

It is all about the narrative or the story you tell yourself about the work you do in this world every day.

Ensuring you work in a purpose-driven organization is a good first step. But ensuring you tell yourself the right narrative is the most powerful of all.

The most purpose-driven organization will not motivate you unless you connect the dots between what you do today and a cause that matters to you.

Instead of resigning himself to the fact that he is new and doesn’t matter, Jason could have seen himself as offering a fresh new perspective to the team.

Instead of focusing on the short-term task on hand, he could have focused on the big impact of this task on the team, the organization, or even his society at large.

Instead of thinking of extending his holiday, he could have thought of extending his mindset and impact.

The answer is always inside not outside.

And no job has a meaning until you give a meaning to it.

Parting Thought

“ Purpose helps keep you grounded in the sense of gratitude and meaning in a way that financial metrics or quarterly targets just don’t”. Elizabeth Lotardo, VP at leadership development consulting firm McLeod & More.

Nothing gives life to a job as a sense of purpose.

A lack of purpose is a key reason why many jobs feel boring or meaningless.

Humans are created to seek, explore and contribute to a bigger cause than themselves.

Any organizational system that deprives them of this instinct is broken.

Modern organizations are realizing the flaws in the old system. They are gradually shifting from profit-driven to purpose-driven.

While the type of organization you work in can impact how you feel about your work, purpose is by and large an inside job.

You can assign great meaning to whatever you do today and create a purposeful feeling every time you show up at work.

Whatever job you hold today, it might be worthwhile to pause, reflect and ask yourself:

“Am I laying bricks today or am I building a cathedral?”