Pick a purpose

Jimmy Fallon spent ten days in the ICU with a serious hand injury. He read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. He had time to wonder, time to reflect, time to just be … and he left the hospital clear: his purpose in life is to help people laugh.

Ten days in the ICU and Frankl's masterwork on meaning. That's one way to get clear on your purpose.

Here's another: Just pick one and see what happens.

A six-year study out of Cornell tried something simple. Give people $400 to make any contribution they want. Could be anything—help their community, their family, even themselves. No strings. Just: what contribution do you want to make?

Eight weeks later, the results were unambiguous. People who made contributions scored significantly higher on every measure: well-being, sense of purpose, sense of belonging, feeling needed and useful. 

The surprising part? It didn't matter what the contribution was. What mattered was picking something—especially something that helps someone else—and taking a concrete step toward it. 

Many who chose healthcare careers did so for the meaning. The meaningful work itself hasn't changed—but perhaps your ability to feel that meaning has. One of the more difficult realities of working in bureaucratic organizations is that the reasons we do the work get buried under process, policy, and other administrivia.

As a result, you lose daily contact with the reasons you showed up in the first place. But Dr. Todd Kashdan notes we might have had it wrong from the start:

Translation for work: You don't need cosmic clarity to have meaning. You just need to decide on a contribution you want to make right now and take a step toward it.

Could be mentoring someone who's struggling with something you've figured out. Could be fixing that one broken process everyone complains about. Could be helping your team get through this quarter without burning out. Could be building a skill you'll need for the work you actually want to do. Could be showing up fully for each patient you see.

Doesn't have to be heroic. Just concrete and repeated. 

The research on purpose is clear: people with it face stressful situations with less negative emotion, show lower cardiovascular risk, experience slower cognitive decline, and are more adaptable during setbacks … not to mention the important motivational benefits that come with having purpose at work.

So if you're feeling unclear about what you're doing or why, or just want to have more clarity on your purpose, how about just picking a contribution you want to make and taking the first step?

Around The Water Cooler ⛲

“We are easily seduced by numbers that look like accounting. Story points. Hours. Percent allocations. Velocity. Capacity utilization. They add up. They fit in spreadsheets. They produce charts. They feel concrete. The danger is that they borrow the authority of financial accounting without actually being accounting. They are proxies, guesses, and social contracts. When we forget that, we start managing the proxy instead of the real work. We chase numbers that sum neatly rather than signals that help us understand reality. Our desire for things that “add up” can get in the way of understanding the system we are trying to improve.” The Seduction (And Folly) of Rollups, Points, and (Most) Time Tracking by John Cutler

We Are Living in a Time of Polycrisis. If You Feel Trapped – You’re Not Alone by Theresa MacPhail

“Research shows that achievement has surprisingly little to do with forcing yourself to choose wisely in the heat of the moment. Successful people rarely rely on inner fortitude to resist temptations. Instead, many exercise situational agency, arranging their lives to minimize the need for willpower in the first place.” Willpower Doesn’t Work. This Does. by Angela Duckworth

It helps to do the work to understand why things aren’t the same for each individual, and even better, how to create the conditions for culture and systems to make the goals you seek more likely to be met.
 When we get smart about what we mean by winning, we can build a more resilient and aligned organization. “Everybody Wants to Win” by Seth

Thanks for reading. Hit reply and let me know your thoughts.

How To Work is healthcare-focused work design inspiration (from the experts!) to nudge your perspectives and practices into better alignment with the world of work as it is, and away from what it was. Here’s my take on what we’re working through.