Building a Meaningful Career

• 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.

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.

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.

... about meaningful work:

• Going after happiness gives you meaning.
• Following your passion guarantees meaningful work.

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.

Simply sharing and showcasing what you are working on, by going public, sharing what you love, can attract like-minded people to you.

“No one owes you a great career. You need to earn it—and the process won’t be easy.”

• 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Managers in many workplaces are a cause of lack of meaning when they:

1. Create differences between personal and official values
2. Do not appreciate employees
3. Give them pointless work
4. Treat them unfairly
5. Disempower them
6. Play Divide and Rule
7. Create potential unsafe situations for employees.