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More Evidence on the Power of Purpose and Community

The motivating power of feeling as if what you do matters, and the collective power of working as part of a group, team, or community, are not new ideas. For years, I’ve had a little purple postcard posted to a bulletin board in my office with a quote by the anthropologist Margaret Mead that says, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” And in terms of the motivating power of purpose, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, more than 100 years ago, that “he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Come to think of it, as one of our guest essayists (Terry Tegnazian) wrote in her “I Do This Because …” post on this site, even the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead contained the prayer, “May I be given a God’s duty; a burden that matters.”

Humans are hard-wired to be working animals, and we do our best when we believe that our efforts matter. We’re also not well suited to be loners, despite the independent cowboy myth that runs through American culture. We get our greatest happiness, and also our greatest strength, from our connections with others.

Having said all that, the power of purpose and community are both huge subjects. So there’s always room for new perspectives, nuggets of information, or details on how those elements impact us. Take, for example, a recent study by a psychology researcher at the Yale-National University of Singapore. He wrote an essay about his results in The New York Times back in September. The piece was titled “Liking Work Really Matters.” But in reading it, I came to a different conclusion. It appears that the researchers looked at not just how enjoyable subjects thought a task would be (obviously, we focus better and do better at tasks we think are enjoyable), but also the impact on whether subjects thought the task at hand was important. And it’s the second part I believe is most important.

Without belaboring all the details of the article (you can read it yourself, if you’re interested), the researchers did find that subjects did better at tasks they found interesting, with less effort and fatigue. No surprise there. But they also found that if subjects believed a task was relevant to their lives, or important in some way, their interest in it increased. And with that greater level of interest, their level of mental fatigue after performing it significantly decreased, and the qualify of their performance on the task increased significantly. So really, inherent interest in a task isn’t as important as a sense of its importance, or purpose.

As a side note, the author of the essay also noted that separate research he’d been involved with found that students who performed tasks with others, or who simply believed they were performing tasks with another person, were both more interested in the task and less fatigued by doing it.

So what does that mean? Well, obviously, it means that we like working as part of a group, rather than locked up in isolation. Or at the very least, that it takes less mental energy to stay focused on a task when we’re working on a task with others than it does when it’s just us, staring at the blank page or pile of work awaiting us on our desks. But there are other implications, regardless of whether you’re working in a corporate setting or as a solo entrepreneur.

It’s easy to view having passion for your work as a luxury. And pursuit of what pleases you most, regardless of its impact on those, like family members who might be counting on you, can be an appallingly self-absorbed thing to do. I’m a firm believer in balance, and one of the toughest challenges in life is finding that balance point where you take care of both your own needs and the needs of those depending on you to a sufficient enough degree that nobody suffers too much damage or neglect. But passion comes, at least in part, from believing that something is important. And believing that what you’re doing for a living matters–as this and other research shows–is not a luxury. Laboring at a task you don’t think is important is draining. It requires a lot of self-control, which leaves you less self-control energy in other parts of your lives. And it decreases the quality of your performance, which–even if you say you’re staying in that job for its “security”–actually decreases your job security.

In practical terms, this means that while it’s not necessarily responsible to run off to Hollywood because “I always dreamed of directing,” despite having little background in film and three kids to support … making a decision to switch jobs or careers because you don’t feel a sense of meaning or purpose in what you’re doing now is not an irresponsible move to consider.

The other side implication, for anyone who’s a solo entrepreneur (like myself) is that just as a certain amount of silence and solitude is important for clear and deep thought and creativity, there’s something to be said for brainstorming how you can work as a team on some projects. Not only might you accomplish more than you could alone, but it also might help conserve the self-control energy you need to stay motivated and focused on the tasks that do require solo time.

Liking the work we do is a goal we all should shoot for. But in terms of how, specifically, to achieve that goal, it’s worth keeping in mind that what REALLY matters is finding work that matters. Which is to say, a job, career, or set of activities that gives you some sense of worthwhile purpose or meaning in your life.

{ 2 comments… add one }
  • Lakshmi December 15, 2014, 4:35 pm

    I whole heatedly agree with the two reasons that we are better at what we do because: 1) that we like/love the work and, 2) that it is important in some way or matters to the community. But I also think there is a third missing piece: that most people work harder/feel better when that work is acknowledged/appreciated/applauded by peers.
    It is almost like a control system– you input something and you need feedback to know if it is working, sometimes you might need to correct the inputs to get better feedback.

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