"What am I meant to do with my life?". Whether you're choosing a career, changing career, retiring, or reaching financial independence and no longer need to earn a paycheck; discovering your purpose is key.
This is where Jeff Goins' book The Art of Work can help. He encounters hundreds of stories to discover the common characteristics of people finding their vocation / calling / life's purpose.
He identifies several key themes and illustrates them with stories of real people. At the end there are exercise and questions to help you along the path to find your purpose. Here are some of the key points I took away from reading this.
Only 13% of workers are engaged in their work. Good for them. But for the 87% who aren't, a working career is a long time to be dis-engaged and frustrated. There's "more to a vocation than punching a clock."
"The habit of thinking about work as something one does to make money is so ingrained in us, that we can scarcely imagine what a revolutionary change it would be to think about it instead in terms of the work done." These words from Dorothy Sayer could easily have been written today but were in fact written almost 80 years ago.
She goes on to say that we should treat work the same way we do our enjoyable pursuits, asking not "'will it pay?' but 'is it good?'".
Victor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning, identifies the three essentials as a project, a significant relationship and a purpose for our struggles.
Frederick Buechner says "Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need."
That's the kind of thing we're looking for.
"We all have some understanding of what we're supposed to do with our lives. We many not realize it or perhaps we lost it, but it's there, waiting to be uncovered. What we need then is not a map, but a shovel - a set of tools to start digging."
"Say you live in Kansas. It's not a bad place to live, but you long for the beach. But you never leave home because you're not quite sure exactly where on the beach you want to go."
Or as another person puts it, "Explore, try new things, keep your feet moving. Something will grab you. It will call to you. It is no different than falling in love. You can't sit on your couch and decide you are going to marry a certain girl."
We can reshape work from being a "monolithic activity" (one employer, 40 hours a week, year after year doing one thing) to being the "group of interests, passions and activities that it is". After all, we're not robots, we're "multifaceted creatures".
We can think of work as being one of: fee work, salary work, home work, study work or gift work (eg. volunteering). Our calling might be in any of these categories.
'Portfolio life' can be very handy - especially if you calling doesn't pay. You can organise your time by days of the year (rather than hours in a day). If you need 200 days of fee work to live, that leaves 165 days for the other areas of your portfolio, which may include your actual calling.
"If you groan about your job or find it has become monotonous and boring, you need to ask yourself 'What do you secretly want to do?' Do it. You can have a break point and reinvent yourself. Sensible people reinvent themselves every ten years".
"If the work we do is only about our own personal success or recognition, then we will eventually lose interest or become overwhelmed with anxiety. But if it's about a greater good ... then we get up every day with a new challenge, a purpose."
Work Optional - includes tips for finding fulfilment after retiring early.
You can see all my other book reviews, or subscribe to receive future ones.
This is where Jeff Goins' book The Art of Work can help. He encounters hundreds of stories to discover the common characteristics of people finding their vocation / calling / life's purpose.
He identifies several key themes and illustrates them with stories of real people. At the end there are exercise and questions to help you along the path to find your purpose. Here are some of the key points I took away from reading this.
Why it's more important than ever
We live longer than any generation before us. Generations ago, men "rarely got to see life beyond careers". Even our parent or grandparents usually worked for several decades to pay the bills before getting the chance to consider their calling.Only 13% of workers are engaged in their work. Good for them. But for the 87% who aren't, a working career is a long time to be dis-engaged and frustrated. There's "more to a vocation than punching a clock."
What is work for?
Why do we work? To pay the bills and gain wealth? What happens when we have enough? Maybe retire early, but to do what? To spend money having fun? Then why do so many rich people give their money away? It's complex."The habit of thinking about work as something one does to make money is so ingrained in us, that we can scarcely imagine what a revolutionary change it would be to think about it instead in terms of the work done." These words from Dorothy Sayer could easily have been written today but were in fact written almost 80 years ago.
She goes on to say that we should treat work the same way we do our enjoyable pursuits, asking not "'will it pay?' but 'is it good?'".
Victor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning, identifies the three essentials as a project, a significant relationship and a purpose for our struggles.
Frederick Buechner says "Vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need."
That's the kind of thing we're looking for.
Looking within
To find clues to the thing we were born to do, we should first look at our lives so far. Awareness comes with practice, but the author also has questions and exercises in the book."We all have some understanding of what we're supposed to do with our lives. We many not realize it or perhaps we lost it, but it's there, waiting to be uncovered. What we need then is not a map, but a shovel - a set of tools to start digging."
Building bridges
Finding your purpose is not necessarily about having an instant realisation. Often it's a "series of small moves rather than a leap"."Say you live in Kansas. It's not a bad place to live, but you long for the beach. But you never leave home because you're not quite sure exactly where on the beach you want to go."
Or as another person puts it, "Explore, try new things, keep your feet moving. Something will grab you. It will call to you. It is no different than falling in love. You can't sit on your couch and decide you are going to marry a certain girl."
The portfolio life
It's predicted that by 2030, the majority of the US workforce will be freelancers, either by force or by choice. This can be good news.We can reshape work from being a "monolithic activity" (one employer, 40 hours a week, year after year doing one thing) to being the "group of interests, passions and activities that it is". After all, we're not robots, we're "multifaceted creatures".
We can think of work as being one of: fee work, salary work, home work, study work or gift work (eg. volunteering). Our calling might be in any of these categories.
'Portfolio life' can be very handy - especially if you calling doesn't pay. You can organise your time by days of the year (rather than hours in a day). If you need 200 days of fee work to live, that leaves 165 days for the other areas of your portfolio, which may include your actual calling.
Reinvention
Our calling is "more than a career, it's the purpose and direction of our life". The company we work for may not exist in 5 years. Portfolio life can give us options. The "Play" aspect of our life is not just a diversion, it's who we are, and may be part of our future calling."If you groan about your job or find it has become monotonous and boring, you need to ask yourself 'What do you secretly want to do?' Do it. You can have a break point and reinvent yourself. Sensible people reinvent themselves every ten years".
A higher level
A continuous theme of the book was to use work for a greater good, to "see work as a means of making us better, not just richer, people"."If the work we do is only about our own personal success or recognition, then we will eventually lose interest or become overwhelmed with anxiety. But if it's about a greater good ... then we get up every day with a new challenge, a purpose."
In short
This is a great book to stimulate your thinking about your own purpose, an gives some handy exercises to help discover what yours might be.Related Reading
Time and how to spend it - getting maximum contentment from our lesiure time.Work Optional - includes tips for finding fulfilment after retiring early.
You can see all my other book reviews, or subscribe to receive future ones.
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