Feeling like your work is meaningless?

“You can find meaning in any job — even if it sucks” — Adam Poswolsky. The Quarter-Life Break-Through

Try asking your best friend if she thinks her job is meaningful, and she might give you a look and then a snarky laugh. It goes without saying that the job we choose to do is a prevailing force in our lives in terms of the impact it has on us. Our job forms part of our identity and shapes how we feel about ourselves. It can make us feel invigorated, inspired, determined and motivated. But it can also leave us feeling bored, lost, stressed and undervalued. These feelings we have about our work, good or bad, can seep into every other aspect of our lives, whether we realize it or not.

Meaningless work: What does it mean?

Meaningless work is work which contributes nothing and accomplishes nothing. It is often busy work, ‘should work’, dissatisfying work, or work that does not really matter to you or the world. Often, our propensity to engage in meaningless work is born out of a fear of not appearing to be busy. We do not want others to think that we are lazy. Indeed, it has become a matter of social acceptance and professional respect to be constantly busy, buried under the pile of ‘too much work’.

But then, when the work you are doing has no clear goals, you could feel that there is no clear point to the work. Meaningful work requires that you understand what you are working towards. If leaders are not able to share the ‘why’ behind the plan, then trouble will follow fast.

Also, meaningless work is working with fear. Feeling stuck and scared is a bad combination, but it is especially toxic at work. When leaders are unable to make decisions because they are anxious about being wrong, it could seem to the team like no real action is ever taken. You would eventually stop trying altogether when your ideas and potential are left to collect dust.

When ideas are collecting dust, the team’s skills also feels wasted. Since no meaningful work is getting done, people are left with no opportunity to use current skills or any chance to hone new ones. It may feel like you are just treading water until a new opportunity comes into view.

But what is most prevalent about meaningless work is a feeling of just showing up and doing something without really doing anything. You could just be spending work time managing perceptions, being more concerned with appearances than doing actual work. It is more hype than output, ambiguous goals than clear goals. And this could have an effect on your mental and physical health.

Meaningless work: How does it affect you?

Yes, the boring and tedious nature of your meaningless work could take a toll on your mental and physical health. You could end up feeling sluggish most days, your body feeling stiff from sitting at your desk too long or your brain feeling like it is filled with fog. In fact, you could end up leaving the office everyday feeling like a zombie, heavy with lethargy and being mentally drained.

Even worse, your self esteem could be affected. Doing little or nothing in the office could make you feel worthless, pointless, like you may as well not be there. Maybe at the start of this job, you were very much the central part of the team, often busy with responsibilities related to what you are exceptional at. But now, your work makes you feel like a nobody, to the point where your sense of self-worth has utterly diminished; depression and anxiety apparent.

Meaningless work: How do you handle it?

One way to deal with meaningless work is to examine your personality and interests and think critically about how you want your skills to help others. Examining your personality, interests and skills allows you to accurately identify what your purpose is, and from there you can integrate your purpose into your current position. You don’t have to quit your job and start your own company to discover your purpose. Try to craft your job to suit your strengths, passions and interests. This will allow you to think differently about the impact you are having on the organization and thus help you build more meaning into what you do.

You could also empower yourself with small actions. When you are feeling overwhelmed, obsessing over the big things that you cannot influence is bad for your mental health. Instead, try to act on whatever aspect of the situation is still in your control, no matter how minor. This will bolster your feelings of personal effectiveness and make it easier to move to more meaningful goals.

If you manage a team, you have to challenge any longstanding thinking you have that certain tasks must be done in a certain way, by everyone. Instead, understand that your job is to recognize the unique strengths and intrinsic motivators of each of your team members, and gauge what they find most personally meaningful in their everyday.

The truth is that, meaningful work is:

• Self transcendent: This is when your work matters to others more than just yourself. When your work is meaningful to you, you talk about the impact or relevance it has to other people, groups, or the wider environment. A garbage collector, for example, could explain that he finds his work meaningful when he realizes that collecting refuse for recycling actually contributes to creating a clean environment for his grandchildren and future generations.
• Poignant: This is when your work is full of meaning and moments are associated with mixed, uncomfortable, or even painful thoughts and feelings. Meaningfulness is not always a positive experience. You could find your work meaningful in far richer and more challenging times that brings a feeling of motivation, happiness and engagement. A nurse, for instance, can find profound meaningfulness when she is able to use her professional skills and knowledge to ease the passing of patients at the end of their lives. Thus, the experience of meaningful work can be poignant rather than purely euphoric.
• Reflective: Your work is mostly meaningful in retrospect and on reflection when you see your completed tasks and make connections between your achievements and a wider sense of life meaning. A researcher could reflect on how research he did years ago seemed meaningless, but later provided the technological solution for touch-screen technology. You are unlikely to witness someone talking about how meaningful they find their job during the day. The experience of meaningfulness is therefore, often a thoughtful, retrospective act rather than just a spontaneous emotional response in the moment, even if people may experience a rush of good feelings at the time.
• Personal: Work that is meaningful is understood in the wider context of your personal life experiences. A Pastor, for example, could find her work meaningful when she relates the terrible personal experience of a member of her congregation to her own personal life events, and uses that understanding to help and support this member at a time of personal tragedy. When your work is meaningful, it feels more than just work.

Finding work meaningful is something beyond the workplace. It reaches the realm of personal life. It can be a profound, moving, and sometimes an uncomfortable experience. It is rare and somewhat unexpected and it gives pause for thought concerning what life itself is all about. In experiencing work as meaningful, we cease to be workers or employees and relate as human beings, reaching out in a bond of common humanity to others. For organizations seeking to manage meaningfulness, the ethical and moral responsibility is great, since it consists of bridging the gap between work and personal life.

The immense benefits individuals and organizations can accrue from meaningful workplaces cannot be overlooked. Organizations that succeed in this area are more likely to attract, retain and motivate the employees they need to build sustainably for the future, and to create the kind of workplaces where human beings can thrive. At PAT Consulting, we provide robust advice to individuals, organizations and institutions on how to achieve meaningfulness at work. We are here to help. Contact us today at 0907 870 6967 or info@patnigeria.com.

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