Work Sucks, I Know.

Why you shouldn't always be looking for meaning in your work

gm and welcome to the third edition of A Life Examined.

I have to say when I started this, I didn’t think Blink 182 songs would make their way into my email subjects but alas, here we are.

Today I’ll be writing on work and why you shouldn’t always be searching for fulfillment in everything you do. Keep in mind, this is coming from someone who can genuinely look you in the face and say they are in their dream job, having managed to align work and meaning, more than they could have ever dreamed of when they entered the work force.

That said, there have been times when I feel like a mindless drone, wasting away, spending painstakingly long hours in front of a laptop, longing to be on a beach reading a good book, doing yoga, and writing more newsletters.

This doesn’t mean I need to quit or find a new job; it means I need a reframing of how I think about the nature of work.

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“Follow your passion,” they say, “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” All sage advice for proper living. After all, we spend most of our waking lives working, so it remains logical that we should enjoy it. Why suffer through a dreary 9-5 you despise or grind out an 80hr work week just for the paycheck?

Especially since if you’re reading this newsletter, you have access to technology and thus access to an ever-growing abundance of money-making opportunities that for the vast majority of human history were unimaginable. This enables us to be selective and choose work that aligns with our interests.

However, there are unintended side effects to the relentless pursuit of finding meaning in work. It inadvertently skews our perception around the inescapable reality that much of what we have to do is born out of necessity, not desire. We have tasks to complete, not because we necessarily want to but because we have to.

This doesn’t just apply to the those grinding to make ends meet or the corporate slaves working their way up the ladder. Even for those in their dream job, those working for themselves, charting their own path, that seem to have it all figured out – even then there are things assigned or that are necessary to move the business forward that in our ideal world we wouldn’t be doing.

The issue arises when we get too fixated on “doing what we love” that reality never conforms to those expectations, and we’re left with a widening gap between our day-to-day and an idealized conception of what our work life should be. This leads to prolonged unhappiness and perpetual grass is greener on the other side syndrome as we yearn for a job with a perfect alignment between duties and enjoyment.

But that doesn’t exist. And that’s okay.

There’s value in those menial tasks that in your perfect world you wouldn’t be doing; the ones that don’t require much thought, where you’re not exerting yourself, or interacting with others in a meaningful way, that may feel like a waste of time, not bringing you joy, and even that you find yourself loathing but you do them anyways because they need to get done.

This idea of finding fulfillment in mundane activities that on the surface may seem laborious is one that’s been around since the beginning of time. In some of the earliest writings in history, Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi wrote about this being one of the great constraining obligations in this world:

An underling’s service to a boss is responsibility, the response called for by his position; wherever he goes, he is in service to his boss—it cannot be avoided anywhere in this world.

Thus I call these the great constraining obligations… to be reconciled to whatever may be involved in the service you must render to your boss is complete loyalty. But further, in the service you must render to your own heart, to know that nothing can be done about the sorrow and joy it unalterable puts before you, and thus reconcile yourself to them as if they were fated—this is completely realized virtuosity.

Being a son or a subordinate, there will inevitably be things you cannot avoid having to do. Absorb yourself in the realities of the task at hand to the point of forgetting your own existence. Then you will have no leisure to delight in life or abhor death. That would make this mission of yours quite doable!

Regardless of the nature of your work, you have the agency to get immersed in it for no other reason than it being brought before you as the task at hand in this moment. Rather than being caught up in solely doing things that provide clear value to you, that light you up, or stimulate you intellectually, you can lose yourself in the necessary work that found its way in front of you, relishing the fact that you get to complete it solely for the sake of accomplishment and not to derive some external pleasure.

There’s something oddly comforting about the most menial of chores, where for a short time you can turn off the thinking mind and just be with what is, without distraction. Our default mode is often one of hyper productivity that creates a constant underlying tension as we come to expect every moment to be one that we “make the most out of.” To relieve ourselves of this self-induced stress, these unglamorous tasks brought before us can act like a mid-day mind clearing stroll or meditation where we cease to be trying to derive value from our actions and can just get lost in whatever it is we need to do.

This isn’t a masochistic call to seek work you hate and grit your teeth everyday as you push through misery but a framework for how to deal with the not so sexy things you end up having to do when they inevitably come up. You’ll often hear that happiness equals reality minus expectations, and the reality is we’re better off than any other time period in human history despite the doom and gloom we’re inundated with on a regular basis.

So, to lead a contented life, it’s worthwhile to really sit with your expectations and not let them get over inflated such that they are out of touch with the innate nature of work itself – in that individual tasks are often bland, boring, maybe even painstaking at times even, yet doing them doesn’t preclude us from finding deep joy and meaning in our jobs and in fact can help us garner a deeper appreciation as there’s a certain beauty in obligation, honor in perseverance, longstanding happiness that comes from loving that which appears unlovable.