What is Meaning to Work?
We’re getting a lot of new readers these days, so I just wanted to take a moment to explain what this site is all about. The whole point of this site is captured in its name: Meaning to Work.
Most of us spend our lives searching for how to make our lives more meaningful. We hop from job to job hoping that the next one will make our lives more meaningful. But the truth is, no job brings meaning to our work.
A friend of mine went to work for a non-profit. He had worked as a marketer at a big marketing firm and over time grew disillusioned with trying to “trick” (his word) people into buying a product. He saw this new opportunity as a way to break free from that feeling. So he joined the non-profit. After a few weeks I asked him what he thought. He paused for a moment and shrugged, “it feels like a job” he said.
While he loves his work at the non-profit, it’s still a job. It still requires us to get up out of bed when we’d rather be sleeping in and to work on weekends we’d rather be sitting outside. Jobs don’t provide meaning, they provide us with a way to make money.
No job will ever give you meaning.
However….
…If you take your meaning to work with you, then you’ve got an entirely new conversation. While it’s still a job, your meaning provides context to those long hours at the office. The meaning you bring to work makes the headaches that come with working with others, more bearable because you know why you’re there. You see where you’re supposed to go. What you’re supposed to be doing.
As a society we have it all wrong. We don’t get meaning from work. We have to take our meaning to work.
And that, my friends, is what this site is all about.
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