Meaningful work is experienced as an accumulation of moments, not through all-day experiences of transcendent bliss. Thankfully we don't need meaning all of the time in order to love our work, as I discussed in a recent article. Research shows that if just 20% of our moments at work feel meaningful, we're less likely to burn out and more likely to feel engaged in our jobs.
Put differently, meaningful moments are the most valuable moments of our day - yet we may not know what to watch for. Meaning can be sneaky and even counterintuitive.
Here's your guide to what meaningful moments actually look like.
Personal Relevance Is Key To Meaning
Perhaps least surprisingly, we feel like our work matters when we feel like we matter.
Moments when our authentic strengths, interests, and values are utilized and celebrated make us feel deeply fulfilled at work. It's no wonder that in our nationwide survey, Bates College and Gallup found that people who reflect on these attributes while picking their roles are three times more likely to experience meaning and purpose in work.
In a MIT Sloan Management Review study that interviewed workers from a variety of professions, including manual laborers, the researchers found, “Those who could see that they had fulfilled their potential, or who found their work creative, absorbing, and interesting, tended to perceive their work as more meaningful than others."
Therefore, in terms of personal relevance, we experience meaningful moments when:
- We're doing tasks that draw upon our unique and genuine attributes
- Connections are being made between our work and our lives, making our existence feel interconnected and whole
- We're realizing how our personal experiences are related to the task at hand
It's Also NOT About Us
While finding personal connections to our work creates a sense of meaning, transcending ourselves also produces meaningful moments.
In their book The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath identify four elements that create defining moments, including connection. In short, "defining moments are social." In other words, regardless of our personality type, we feel most engaged at work in moments that draw us together with our colleagues.
Research has shown that people who are high in purpose but low in passion about their jobs perform much better at work than the inverse (high in work passion but low in purpose). "Passion is individualistic," Heath and Heath write in explanation. "It can energize us but also isolate us, because my passion isn't yours. By contrast, purpose is something people can share. It can knit groups together." As a result, work performance is fueled by the collective sense of moving toward a goal, not individual desire to be in a particular role.
The MIT Sloan researchers also found evidence of this in their interviews, noting that "people did not just talk about themselves when they talked about meaningful work; they talked about the impact or relevance their work had for other individuals, groups, or the wider environment."
Therefore, in terms of self-transcendence, we experience meaningful moments when:
- We're concretely witnessing how our work, or a byproduct of it, makes a difference to others
- We're discussing a collective vision and goals with our co-workers
- We're seeing how our set of tasks intersects with others' tasks to create a whole
trong Emotions Elicit Meaning
Finally, moments that make us emotional also tend to feel meaningful.
Heath and Heath discuss elevation as being key to defining moments: "Moments of elevation are experiences that rise above the everyday. Times to be savored. Moments that make us feel engaged, joyful, amazed, motivated. They are peaks."
We tend to remember and feel deep gratitude for these peak experiences.
Interestingly, though, the feelings need not be positive for us to experience meaning. The MIT Sloan researchers found many instances when people experienced mixed or even negative emotions while at work, yet recalled those moments as highly meaningful. For instance, nurses they interviewed said they experienced intense meaning and purpose while easing the suffering of a dying patient.
“The experience of coping with challenging conditions led to a sense of meaningfulness far greater than they would have experienced dealing with straightforward, everyday situations," the authors wrote.
This occurs because meaning is not synonymous with happiness. In fact, it's an experience that is often hard won.
Therefore, in terms of emotions, we experience meaningful moments when:
- Our feelings are different from our typical baseline, either in a positive or a negative way
- We are facing a complicated situation and actively working through it
- We're feel like something notable and worth remembering is occurring
Key Takeaways
All in all, since meaning is so valuable for our engagement and fulfillment at work, we need to recognize and capitalize on these moments that matter.
Meaningful moments often arise naturally and we simply need to be aware of them. Simultaneously, we can actively create meaningful moments, either as employees (e.g., with our colleagues and in our own relationship to work) or as organizational leaders (e.g., by creating peak and collective experiences).
Once we know what to look for, both organic and planned moments at work can become filled with meaning and purpose, enabling us to cross the 20% threshold and make the most of our time at work.
A version of this article appeared on forbes.com, posted on August 20, 2019
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EXPERD, Human Resources Consultant, Jakarta - Indonesia