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How do we define meaningful work?

The post where I call bullshit on your excuses.

01/02/09

This post is related to a quote by Malcom Gladwell. If you haven’t yet, go read it and then come back here.

Lately, I feel like I’ve had several discussions with friends who feel as if their work lacks meaning. But they don’t know where to go from there. They feel unable to discover the company or next career step that will allow them to do meaningful work. They’re not even sure what that meaningful work would be.

They’re not even sure what that meaningful work would be.

I like Gladwell’s quote, but I think for some people the general idea is a stumbling block. They’re either looking for the quick fix, where meaningful work drops in their laps, or the “high & mighty,” top-level, “save the world” meaningful work, and they can’t find it.

Continue Reading…

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The quote comes from about 26:00 into the interview.

See my followup post on defining meaningful work.

(via Signal vs. Noise)

“

Meaningful work is one of the most important things we can impart to children. Meaningful work is work that is autonomous. Work that is complex, that occupies your mind. And work where there is a relationship between effort and reward — for everything you put in, you get something out…

Malcom Gladwell, Meaningful Work

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01/02/09

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Why saving someone from their existing circumstance doesn’t always help them as much as you might think.

His basic argument is that the very adversity that we encounter in life—our struggles, trials, disabilities, etc.—are what often prompt us to not only work harder to achieve great things in life, but to also remember where we came from.

As a culture, I think we’ve become afraid of this. We’re trying to create in-built success into every aspect of our society. But if everyone succeeds, no one is failing and success becomes meaningless. Often, the very definition of success is overcoming some form of adversity in our own lives.

“

Today, that interpretation has been reversed. Success is seen as a matter of capitalizing on socioeconomic advantage, not compensating for disadvantage. The mechanisms of social mobility—scholarships, affirmative action, housing vouchers, Head Start—all involve attempts to convert the poor from chronic outsiders to insiders, to rescue them from what is assumed to be a hopeless state. Nowadays, we don’t learn from poverty, we escape from poverty…

Malcom Gladwell, The Uses of Adversity

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11/15/08

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