Jargogled Impressions.

I often wonder what makes people genuinely care about the work they do so much. It surprises me often to find their work percolating into every conversation. For something that we spend so much time around, most would much rather dissociate themselves rather than continue. I don’t believe this level of association with work is an indicator of success, but I do find the notion of concentrated focus appealing. Primarily because I find myself lacking in it, but also because of an academic interest in the subject. There is a flow associated with single-minded pursuits that is hard to find elsewhere. Artists – an evidently vaunted profession in the world we live in – find their flow through immersing themselves in their creations. Why can’t the modern professionals adopt a similar approach to their disciplines? When you probe deeper into even the inanest of stones, you’d find something that is worthy of attention. Our professions are actually an experimental platform that offers so much to probe into, across purpose (what makes us believe in the work we do), flow (what drives us to enter this state while working), relationships (how we interact, influence, and work with others), and attitude (what drives it and how we can bring levity to stressful situations).

There is a parable I read somewhere (The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain De Botton) on finding purpose at work –

 A traveler came across three men who were quarrying stones somewhere. They were busy doing their work as the traveler approached them, curious to know what they were doing and why. He asked the first stonecutter what he was doing. “I am cutting a stone!”. Then he turned to the second stonecutter who responded, “I am cutting this stone in a perfect shape so I can sell it at higher price and make a living”. When he turned to the final stonecutter and put forward the same question, the stonecutter said, “I am building a dam.”

It’s important not just to gawk at the third stonecutter and wonder how we would describe what we do at work too, but we’d be remiss to ignore the second stonecutter. We are all chasing perfection at work in some form or fashion, but the purpose shifts between making a living (earning) and intellectual satisfaction (drawing dopamine from solving tough challenges). When we attempt to describe our work though, it may just be more sustainable to do so in a form that loops in the unmistakable tendencies of the human condition – the existential angst that leads us to religion, to meditation, to charity, and ultimately to reconciliation with death. Like what the third stonecutter did. Even when far removed from how your work ends up manifesting itself (more so true for the information workers today), when you draw this line of causation and care about the teleological end, you create a virtuous cycle of care and purpose. For times when your work becomes a bore, a nuisance, a distraction, or an uphill climb, this framing can be instrumental with helping keep your sanity in check. I recognize its hard to do so today, especially trying to find it in your employer’s SharePoint sites, customer success stories, lives touched, and items sold. But try we must. It’s imperative on leaders to ensure the stories they highlight are specific and tie back to how they hold the organization responsible.

Further, flow. That intrinsic state of human endeavor where we forget the noise and become like river, is hard to come by without purpose. It is said that when what we are working on is just hard enough to satiate our intellectual hunger, but not as hard as to de-motivate us, we reach that state of being where we are heads-down into the task at hand and our concentration is at its peak. How we achieve flow is dependent on us though. Some seek clarity in defining the problem statement, so they know what they are solving for (purpose), others require environments that encourage them to think deeper (minimizing noise), and many let feedback and WIP results drive them towards the light at the end of the tunnel. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s seminal work and its reverberations highlight the essence of why we all need flow at work and how to work towards that. Flow flips the question on its head – we care for our work because we love being in the state of flow, working towards something. It meets our primal human need to be useful.

When you turn caring for your work into caring for the world (like that third stonecutter), you make the success of everyone around you a goal. As Lewis Hyde highlights in The Gift, and Adam Grant frames it for the workplace setting in Givers and Takers, the act of caring is manifested in the action of giving and giving is at the evolutional root of human cooperation. For relationships at work when you care and give selflessly, when you turn your work objective into serving and helping those around you, you instill the care and catalyze the relationships that make your care more.

Which brings me to attitude and to the role of levity and infectious optimism in the work life. I have found myself often getting so involved with the daily minutiae of work that I tend to forget I am working with people and not with automatons. The stresses of solving problems for more business can turn us into humorless simpletons like Maslow’s hammer. But creativity and leadership thrive in humor and new ideas can be more palatable with laughter, as the authors of Humor, Seriously point out in their research on Humor as a secret weapon in business and life. Consciously attempting to find the truths in our work life (sitting with an office shirt and a Bermuda anyone?) that tickles the funny bones of those around us can have an outsized impact on the attitude you inhabit and foster. And this sense of levity can be an effective antidote to the seriousness of professional ambitions.

Sources:

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain De Botton

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experiences by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The Gift by Lewis Hyde

Givers and Takers by Adam Grant

Humor, Seriously by Jennifer Aker and Naomi Bagdonas