Finding Meaning at Work
How to find meaning in what you do
(even when you're not really feeling it)
“The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”
- Carl Jung
Sometime ago we at Orange altered how we articulate what we do. Our new definition was simple: “we help people”. We help producers by making their already stressful jobs less stressful. We help creative people by helping them realize their visions. We help clients by offering them an organization they can trust. And when we find ourselves in a position where we can't help, we happily connect those in need to others who can.
This simple shift in how we define what we do made a big difference: the work became more meaningful.
In her article, "How To Find Meaning In A Job That Isn't Your True Calling", Emily Esfahani Smith asks the question: why do so few people find fulfilment in their work?
Smith states that "meaning" is the top requirement Millennials want from a job. And yet her research shows that less than 50% of people see their work as a calling. This leaves many feeling anxious, frustrated and unsatisfied by what should be considered very good jobs.
"What they fail to realize", says Smith, "is that work can be meaningful even if you don’t think of it as a calling."
Smith suggests that common occupations such as salespeople and office clerks have something in common with jobs typically considered to have more meaning such as teachers or doctors: they exist to help others. And as Adam Grant, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has shown, people who see their work as a form of giving consistently rank their jobs as more meaningful.
Smith recounts a story about a janitor that John F. Kennedy ran into at NASA in 1962. When the president asked him what he was doing, the man said, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.”
Not everyone finds their one true calling, says Smith. But that doesn’t mean we’re doomed to work meaningless jobs. If we focus our minds on the daily opportunities we have to help others, anything and everything we do can be meaningful.