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The meaningful work guide: How to craft a fulfilling career - RescueTime
Connected with a Purpose
Meaningful work is when we feel a genuine connection with what we do for a living and our larger spectrum of life.
It is motivating, creates deep relationships and helps others.
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Key Ideas
Meaning in Life
- Many of us struggle with finding meaning, as we are busy with our daily work and distractions.
- Meaning in life provides us with the purpose of getting up daily, energized and pepped up about the day, being productive in whatever we do.
- Meaningful lives lead to happiness.
Meaningful Work
21–35% of our life is spent at work, making it a crucial part of our lives to spend at something we find meaning in.
Meaningful work should be:
- Motivating and purposeful.
- Should be coherent and make some sense.
- Should be significant.
The Two Myths
... about meaningful work:
- Going after happiness gives you meaning.
- Following your passion guarantees meaningful work.
Building a Meaningful Career
To build a meaningful career, identify work that has these ingredients:
- It's engaging
- It helps others
- You're good at it
- It has supportive people
- Has no major negatives
- You can do it the rest of your life
Then you can do a self-assessment, asking yourself what your interests are, what motivates you, what are your skill sets and method of working, etc.
Show your Work
Simply sharing and showcasing what you are working on, by going public, sharing what you love, can attract like-minded people to you.
Creating Meaning Now
- Job crafting: A technique to make your current job more meaningful
- Task crafting: Doing a different kind of work in your existing job, to learn and expand your capability.
- Relational crafting: Making deeper relations at work.
- Cognitive crafting: A shift in thinking about your role, and what it means.
Review your Work
Conduct regular reviews (weekly, monthly and annually) to check if your work aligns with your values.
Finding meaningful work is a long-term process and it helps to get both the micro and macro views.
Create Space
Create space for deep and high-impact work by planning in advance a distraction-free schedule.
Plan ahead and ensure there are no interruptions during the time you do deep work.
The Most Important Thing
By giving priority to meaningful work during the day, you eventually give it a priority in your life.
Small Wins Matter
Keep an eye for the small victories, the small steps that are taking you towards your bigger goal.
Celebrate the small wins because they take you closer to your desired career.
Be a Different Person
Allow yourself to behave differently occasionally, and be out of character if required.
In the course of making massive changes, you may start being a different person. Embrace that change, as it is in pursuit of something meaningful.
Lack of Meaning at Work
Managers in many workplaces are a cause of lack of meaning when they:
- Create differences between personal and official values
- Do not appreciate employees
- Give them pointless work
- Treat them unfairly
- Disempower them
- Play Divide and Rule
- Create potential unsafe situations for employees.
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Belonging To A group
Quickest way to add meaning to your life is to see your group of people more often.
Not part of a group? Join one. No groups to join? Start one. It’s as easy as texting people to...
Give Your Work A Purpose
It is less about what you do and more about how you see what you do.
Qualities a purpose needs:
- It's a stable and far-reaching goal. You need something that motivates you and that you can organize your actions around.
- It involves a contribution to the world. It makes a difference in the lives of people who don’t happen to be you.
Craft Your Story
You have a story you tell yourself about your life — whether you realize it or not.
A trend in the stories that people with meaningful lives tell themselves - redemption stories: the tellers move from suffering to salvation — they experience a negative event followed by a positive event that resulted from the negative event and therefore gives their suffering some meaning.
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Find What Gives Your Work Meaning
Is it a connection to a certain cause? Is it engaging one of your skills or personal passions? Is it serving a specific population? Everyone has their own causes, the things that give their ...
Cultivate Self Awareness
Ask yourself concrete questions to reveal your truth:
What are you working for? What impact do you want to create in your job? What skills do you want to develop and leverage?
Write a Career Mantra
Keep it short and simple—just focus on what gets you out the door every day.
Your mantra should encompass who you are, where you want to go, and the impact you want to make during your 9-to-5.
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Authenticity is under threat
The idea of authenticity has been changed into an excuse to be cruel without feeling bad about it.
Reclaiming authenticity is essential because it is a key piece of a meaningful life.
Authenticity
Authenticity is about being your true self and not pretending to be someone else. It is also the way to take ownership and refine and improve your true self toward the best you can become.
Therefore, if your true self is aggressive, entitled or immature, you don't have permission to mistreat others.
Know yourself
You can only know yourself if you are honest and accepting of all the parts of you.
- Acknowledge the good parts about yourself. This can include strengths, talents, knowledge, skills.
- Don't overlook the bad parts. The bad of you will hurt others and sabotage your path toward a meaningful life.
- There might also be ugly parts, like being awkward, off-putting, or distracting from the good.
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