Do you ever feel like you’re just going through the motions at work, wondering if there’s something more fulfilling out there? You’re not alone—countless people struggle to find purpose and meaning in their professional lives.
Finding your professional purpose isn’t just about personal fulfillment. Leading experts have explored how purposeful work benefits individuals, entrepreneurs, and entire organizations. From Sinek’s Find Your Why to Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection, Duckworth’s Grit, and more, these authors provide practical strategies for transforming any job into meaningful work—whether through changing your perspective, pursuing your interests, or overcoming the self-doubt that keeps you stuck.
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The Importance of Meaningful Work
Before we jump into how to find purpose at work, we’ll start by explaining why it’s so important. In Find Your Why, Simon Sinek says that making better decisions and being more persuasive benefits individuals, entrepreneurs, and organizations. Here are the specific ways these benefits of having a clear purpose apply to each group:
1. Individuals: Knowing your purpose helps you get clear on what moves you. It can inject new passion into your work if it’s already fulfilling, or it can direct you toward a more fulfilling path.
2. Entrepreneurs: A defined sense of purpose in your work helps you identify and appeal to the right potential investors, clients, and customers—those with whom your message will resonate.
3. Organizations: Knowing your organization’s purpose helps you in three ways:
First, you can increase the loyalty and creativity of your employees or members by involving them in your purpose. This can make your success more sustainable than that of organizations driven solely by profit.
Second, you can motivate and guide your teams by showing them the unique role they play within the organization and how they contribute to its broader purpose.
Third, you can more easily find and keep the right people. When you know your purpose, you can hire for what Sinek calls “cultural fit.” This matters because while you can fill skill and experience gaps through training and support, it’s hard to inspire and harness the potential of a team misaligned at its core.
More Benefits of Discovering Your Purpose
Sinek discusses three benefits of knowing your purpose:
1. When you know your purpose, you can seek out work that fulfills you—that is, work that matters and makes you feel that you’re part of something bigger. Sinek believes everyone, no matter their role or status, deserves to find fulfillment at work.
2. Finding your sense of purpose at work helps you make more persuasive appeals to people. Your energy and commitment to your purpose are contagious, so having clarity on it helps you pitch your ideas in a way that’s more authentic and enticing to others.
3. Knowing your purpose helps you make better decisions because you can measure each choice against your purpose and make the decision that best aligns with it.
| What Is “Work”? In Brown’s view in The Gifts of Imperfection, meaningful work is work that enables you to use your gifts and talents. This work might be paid work (although Brown acknowledges that finding a job that perfectly fits your skillset is difficult). However, it doesn’t have to be: Meaningful work can be anything from parenting to volunteering to engaging in a hobby. According to Brown, failing to find meaningful work that uses your gifts and talents can trigger numerous negative emotions, like shame and anger. In contrast, finding meaningful work can provide such benefits as increased happiness and fulfillment, increased sense of purpose and, if you’re spiritual or religious, a feeling of being closer to your higher power. Similarly, in The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt writes that work doesn’t have to be narrowly defined as a career. It can be anything that’s action-oriented and sets things in motion. Importantly, people desire occupational self-direction—work that is complex and challenging, engages their interests or talents, and allows for a high degree of independence and autonomy. It is what Csikszentmihalyi called “flow.” |
Finding and Living Your Purpose
Whether you have decades of job experience or are just starting out, you’ve probably wondered how to make your career and life purposeful and fulfilling. In I Wish Someone Had Told Me…, Perino argues you can build a meaningful life and career path by following your interests and being open to the unexpected. Here are four key pieces of advice:
- Look for meaning, not just success.
- Chase your joy.
- Be willing to change your plans.
- Overcome self-doubt.
1. Look for Meaning, Not Just Success
Perino argues you should try to make a meaningful difference, not just achieve success. Meaning can come from your work, your volunteer pursuits, or even the donations you make. When you contribute to something meaningful, you transform your professional success into something more substantial and personally fulfilling. This prevents the feeling of meaninglessness that can come from achieving professional success without a deeper purpose, and it allows you to find fulfillment regardless of your job. Perino suggests two key ways to pursue meaning in your life, both at work and outside of it:
- Imbue your daily actions and choices with meaning. Don’t expect your employer to provide meaning through the organization’s mission or your job title.
- Look for ways to serve others. Volunteer, find opportunities to support your community, or mentor younger people.
Additionally, in Grit, Angela Duckworth argues that because purpose often develops through this predictable process, you can consciously nurture it in your existing profession, thus turning your current job into a calling without changing jobs. The key is in seeing your tasks not just as obligations that have to be done, or as opportunities that will lead to personal success, but instead, as something that will connect you to a greater good—a larger purpose that serves humanity.
Duckworth discusses three techniques that can help you find purpose at your current job:
1. Reflect on how the work you’re doing can positively contribute to society.
Researchers asked students to connect what they were learning with how the world could be a better place. The one-time intervention took just one class period. Compared to a control group, students increased their GPA (from 1.9 to 2.1), doubled their time studying on practice questions, and completed more math questions.
2. Think about how you can change your current work to connect to your core values, even if just in small ways.
The idea is that even if you don’t think of your job as particularly “purposeful,” you can still adjust your work practices to align with your interests and values. Duckworth discusses studies that show employees working in positions like sales and finance, who didn’t think of their positions as very purposeful, but were significantly happier and more motivated weeks after being asked to come up with ideas for changing their daily routines to make their work more meaningful.
3. Find a purposeful role model.
Identify someone who inspires you to be a better person, and who acts on behalf of other people. This exemplar proves to you that it’s possible to be successful carrying a mission greater than yourself. In turn, this inspires your own belief that you can personally make a difference.
She uses the example of a man who took a job as an entry-level engineer working on New York City’s subway system. At first, he took the job because he needed rent money and he had no better plan, but he ended up becoming more and more interested in the work and started to look for ways to deepen his knowledge and skills. He eventually came to see his work as a vital part of the city, helping to keep the trains running. Once he saw how he was making a contribution to society, he started to view his work as a calling.
Marie Kondo and Scott Sonenshein agree with this sentiment in their book Joy at Work.
| How to Find—and Make Time for—Meaningful Endeavors How do you identify what’s most meaningful to you? In Tribe of Mentors, Tim Ferriss interviews Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann, who recommends journaling to clarify your values. Take a break from your urgent daily tasks to reflect on what matters—write down what’s most important for you to do in the next few days, the next few months, and especially in the next several years. People feel lost and confused when they lose sight of their long-term intentions. After you’ve identified what’s most important to you, you can find fulfillment by spending time on that meaningful purpose, such as volunteering in your community, starting a charitable foundation, or mentoring younger colleagues. However, another expert Ferriss interviews—historian Sarah Elizabeth Lewis—asserts that life is full of distractions that keep you from pursuing what matters most. You might intend to contribute to your neighborhood’s clean-up drives, but never find the time to participate. To overcome this, Lewis recommends blocking out time every day to make progress on your most meaningful goals. |
2. Chase Your Joy
While meaning is important, don’t forget to have fun. Former NYPD inspector Paul Mauro suggests you look for the intersection of meaning and enjoyment. While you can’t always be having fun, don’t waste your life working at a job that never brings you joy. Also, if societal expectations push you in a joyless direction, singer-songwriter Dierks Bentley says you should reject them. Doing what you love is non-negotiable because it increases your chances of long-term happiness and success.
| We All Just Want to Have Fun Why is enjoyment so important? Mauro might be referring to what Catherine Price calls “True Fun,” the kind of fun that leaves you feeling energized and inspired. In The Power of Fun, she argues that, besides being enjoyable, True Fun is also good for your physical and emotional well-being. If your work is currently unenjoyable, Price’s definition of True Fun might help you unlock opportunities for fun. She defines it as the intersection of playfulness, connection, and flow: Playfulness is a liberating attitude of curiosity, openness, and willingness to experiment. Connection is a sense of belonging and intimacy that arises from feeling understood and valued. Price notes that most instances of True Fun involve connecting with other people. Flow is a state of complete absorption in an activity, where you’re fully immersed in the present moment and lose track of time. It involves effortless concentration and a feeling of being in control, but still challenged. If you can’t find playfulness, connection, or flow at work, maybe follow Bentley’s advice and find a new, truly fun career. |
3. Be Willing to Change Your Plans
While chasing your joy is important, Perino warns that you need more than passion to build a career. Sometimes, you need to let go of unrealistic dreams and discover new paths that may be better suited to your actual talents. To find these new paths, it’s crucial to remain flexible and open. For example, Perino dreamed of becoming an Olympic gymnast, but she realized at age 15 that she lacked the talent to compete at that level. Instead of pursuing an impossible dream, she pivoted and joined the speech team. That pivot led her to a career in communications.
Surgeon and researcher Mark Shrime adds another reason why it’s okay to change your plans: No single choice will define the rest of your life. Most decisions—even mistakes—are reversible, and they can help you discover and live out your true purpose. For example, you might realize after college that you no longer want to pursue what you majored in. Your major wasn’t a mistake; it helped you understand where your interests lie, and it may have equipped you with perspectives and skills that’ll make you stand out in a new field.
4. Overcome Self-Doubt
In her discussion of meaningful work, Brown touches on a major barrier you may face when trying to engage in it: self-doubt.
Self-doubt can take many forms. Brown notes that some people doubt they have gifts and talents that are “good enough” to use in meaningful work. (For example, you might believe that you’re better than average at cooking, but not good enough to become a professional chef.) Others doubt that they have any gifts and talents at all. These self-doubtful attitudes hinder meaningful work because if you don’t believe you have gifts and talents that are worth using, you won’t try to find meaningful work that uses them.
Another common doubt is wondering whether pursuing paid meaningful work is the “right” choice, particularly if such work is low-paid or carries little prestige. You might worry that people will look down on you for engaging in such work, even if it makes you happy.
In Brown’s view, a powerful way to overcome these self-doubts is to first, accept that they exist: We can’t address things that we don’t acknowledge. Then, commit the doubts to paper: Write them out in full.
Brown believes that writing your doubts down will give you a clear opportunity to challenge them and remove their power over you. To challenge the doubt that you have any gifts or talents, you might ask yourself why you feel like you’re talentless. Is it because a bully once told you so? If so, why should you listen to that bully? They weren’t telling the truth—they were just trying to hurt you. In all likelihood, you do have gifts and talents that the bully simply chose to ignore.
| Other Strategies for Overcoming Self-Doubt In addition to Brown, many other authors have tried to answer the question of how to combat self-doubt. For example, in The Secret, Rhonda Byrne suggests replacing self-doubtful thoughts with positive ones such as “I can do this.” In the context of finding meaningful work, you might say to yourself, “I do have gifts and talents that I can channel into meaningful work,” or “My meaningful work is worthy and worth doing, regardless of how much it pays.”Jen Sincero, author of You Are a Badass, also cites replacing negative thoughts as an effective strategy to combat self-doubt (as well as other unhealthy thought patterns like guilt and self-loathing). Other strategies she suggests include repeating positive, self-praising affirmations and avoiding using self-deprecating humor. For instance, if you constantly joke with friends that you’re talentless or have no gifts, stop doing this—the “jokes” are probably negatively affecting your confidence more than you think. Finally, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO and author of Lean In, suggests reminding yourself of your past achievements when you feel self-doubt creeping in. This will challenge your belief that you can’t succeed or that you’re talentless. If you doubt that your talent is “good enough” to use in meaningful work, you might remind yourself of a time when you used it successfully—for example, a talented singer might remind themselves of a time when they performed and received positive feedback. |
Discover More About Finding Work With Meaning
To learn more about finding meaningful work, check out Shortform’s guides to the books mentioned in this article:
- I Wish Someone Had Told Me… by Dana Perino
- Grit by Angela Duckworth
- Find Your Why by Simon Sinek
- The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown
- The Power of Fun by Catherine Price
- The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
- You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero
- Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
- Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss
- Joy at Work by Marie Kondo and Scott Sonenshein
- The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
