Meaning of Work…: Pre-Discussion Primer

Written By Hayoung kim

Overview

Americans are obsessed with work.

Compared to people in other wealthy countries, Americans on average work longer hours and get fewer paid vacation days, of which 55% don’t even take full advantage. Part of this is related to our policies (healthcare, welfare, parental leave, etc.) but not entirely. The rich now work longer hours than anyone else, and being busy is now a status symbol. 

If discussions with my friends are any indication, the privileged among us are full of career angst. Anything less than a job that we feel deeply passionate about, that meaningfully contributes to society, that provides us with enough income and acceptance if not admiration from our peers, while also allowing us to spend “quality time” with our families feels inadequate. 

There are a few potential areas for discussion: 

  1. Finding meaning from work: How do we find meaning from work? Is it a matter of finding the right career, the right workplace culture, or the right mindset? 

  2. Status, success and burnout: Are we chasing meaning or status? How can we balance (meaningful) work and “life”? 

  3. Post-workism: Do we need to find meaning from work? What if a job were just a job and we invested in developing leisure instead? 

Or...are we just ungrateful brats who need to grow up and accept that life isn’t perfect?  

 

1 Finding meaning from work vs. Bullshit jobs

“The American conception of work has shifted from jobs to careers to callings—from necessity to status to meaning”
— Derek Thompson

According to Gallup, millennials believe that “life and work should be worthwhile and have meaning.” Research suggests there are a few ways to do so: 

  • Connecting to a broader purpose (through the “what”). For example, a bricklayer can think that she is “laying bricks” or “building a wall”; or she can believe that she is “building a great cathedral for God.”  

  • Feeling needed at work (through the “how”). Specifically, the three biggest factors are a sense of (1) relatedness, feeling that you and your coworkers genuinely care for each other; (2)  competence, having the skills to solve challenging problems; and (3) autonomy, having choice over what to do.  

“How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist?”
— David Graeber

But what if your job actually does not serve a real purpose? What if our jobs are what David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs,” and amount to just digging a hole to fill it back up again? For example, according to Daniel Markovits, author of The Meritocracy Trap, the sophisticated financial derivatives that we have created in the past few decades resulted in reducing neither the transaction cost of financial intermediation nor the level of fundamental risk borne by individuals. In other words, we have created new high paying jobs, shiny financial products, and GDP growth that seemingly don’t serve a greater purpose for society than to generate more work and wealth for the people who created it (and whatever “trickles down.”) This question perhaps became more salient during the COVID pandemic. Many of us “non-essential” workers nonetheless found ourselves working longer hours than ever ...but for what? 

So...what should we do to find greater meaning in work? Should we change career paths to find a job that brings us closer to a cause that we feel passionate about? Or is it just a matter of finding meaning by living “[your deepest] values, even in small ways, in the everyday work you do?”   

Resources

 

2 Status, success and burnout

According to Markovits, the rich, who had historically prided themselves on not working, have become what he calls “a superordinate working class.” Our status is now defined by how busy we are and how hard we work. 

This is supported by research.

  • According to the Minneapolis Fed, the best paid men in America went from having the lowest working hours in 1980 to the longest working hours in 2005. (The evidence is a bit more mixed with women.) 

  • Working long hours now commands a premium in wages: people working 50+ hours a week in 1980 used to make 15% less per hour than those who worked a normal workweek; today, they make 8% more per hour.

  • Busy people are considered to have more desirable characteristics such as competence and ambition, and to be a “scarce” and “in demand” resource.  

“Work is … how we give our lives meaning when religion, party politics and community fall away”
— Joanna Biggs

The result: the elite is overworked and burning out, chasing productivity hacks and lessons for self optimization. Did you know that you only need 7 minutes to work out, you lazy f---? Do you want more time with your family? Just draw boundaries at work and say no! Never mind that research suggests that formally drawing boundaries may lead to penalties at the workplace. But as HBS professor Lisa Perlow points out, these interventions are mostly focused on changing individual actions, and won't do substantial good because much of the craze stems from the way we interact with others. 

One of the consequences of this culture that expects and celebrates overwork is that elite women are increasingly dropping out of the high-powered workforce “to maximize the family’s income but still keep the children alive.” It makes more economic sense for one person (usually a man) to work 60-80 hour workweeks while the other stays home to take care of the children, rather than for both spouses to work 30-40 hour workweeks, even though this uneven split makes both spouses less happy.  

How much of this is on the individual? To perhaps be less greedy, whether it’s money, status, or a feeling of “specialness” that we are chasing? Or is working really really hard just a prerequisite to having a meaningful, impactful job that matters? 

Resources

 

3 Post-workism

According to a Gallup survey from 2013, people who have been unemployed for more than a year report having depression more than 3 times compared to those who are employed full time (19% vs. 5.6%). Although the causality may run both ways, it is commonly accepted that employment is important for happiness. 

But why? Why can’t we find purpose, a sense of accomplishment, and community outside of work? One answer is that there is something unique about work. But according to “post-workists,” we simply need to build up our capability to enjoy things outside of work. In other words, we need to practice leisure. 

“I felt like I had forgotten how to do leisure. The very concept of leisure had for me become a part of an equation to maximize productivity hours.”
— Derek Thompson

And there are some examples of this. According to Yuval Noah Harari’s new book, ultra-Orthodox Jewish men in Israel who don’t work, but instead dedicate their lives to pursuing religious studies and rituals consistently report higher levels of life satisfaction than any other group of Israeli society. (They are poor but are able to survive due to generous government subsidies as well as income from their wives who often work.) Lawrence Katz, a renowned Harvard economist, believes we may actually return to an “artisanal economy.” We are already seeing an emergence of “makerspaces,” industrial shops where people can use its facilities to practice their own craft, which are gaining in popularity and providing people with a sense of accomplishment and connectivity with others.  

Finland is experimenting with universal basic income while companies like Microsoft and Unilever have tried implementing four-day workweeks. Politicians like Andrew Yang and Jacinda Ardern have normalized these ideas even further. Besides, life without work may not even be a choice as automation increasingly overtakes our jobs. 

However, the question remains. Would these measures free up our time so we can simply pursue more meaningful and pleasurable “work”? Or would we truly finally “solve” the problem as Keynes predicted a century ago? 

Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem--how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.

We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin.

Resources

 

For discussion

  • What does your job / career mean to you and your identity?  How, if at all, COVID changed your relationship with work? 

  • How do we find meaning through work? Should we even find meaning from work? 

  • Do you feel like you have balance? Is there a tradeoff between meaningful work and work-life balance or is one a prerequisite for another? 

  • What can we do as a society to create more meaningful work? Or should we invest in better work/life balance and leisure?  

Hayoung kim
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