Golden Dayz/Shutterstock
You often hear people say they work in higher education because it’s meaningful. When asked in surveys, education and health care professionals typically rate their contributions to the world as most meaningful compared to workers in other sectors.
But when high expectations for meaning at work don’t match reality — or if our jobs don’t feel meaningful — then we become disengaged. A Gallup poll indicated that only 34% of university faculty and staff are engaged in their jobs.
This disconnect is not exclusive to college campuses. A 2023 Pew Research poll revealed that 71% of Americans felt that having a good job or a career they enjoy is extremely or very important to living a fulfilled life, which, alarmingly, was three times as much as having children (26%), having a lot of money (24%), or being married (23%). But in another Pew survey in 2021, only 17% of Americans thought that their work was indeed a source of meaning.
“There’s a gap between expectations and reality that a lot of people face,” said Brad Stulberg, author, executive coach, and adjunct clinical assistant professor of health management and policy at the University of Michigan. “If we expect work to be this ultimate source of fulfillment in our life and what we get is something that isn’t, that’s a double negative because, one, it’s not that fulfilling and, two, we really feel crappy because we had our hopes up that it is fulfilling.”
Stulberg offered these comments on an episode of his podcast, “Farewell,” that reacted to a recent Business Insider article titled “Why so many Americans hate their jobs.”
Hate or Workism?
The evocating headline is misleading. It’s not that many Americans hate their work, it’s that they place too much of their faith, hope, and love in their jobs. Work has replaced religion and other institutions as a source of meaning and identity in people’s lives. It’s why Derek Thompson coined the term “workism” in his 2019 essay in The Atlantic, describing a new religion where “work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose.”
We also want our jobs to serve us at a time when automation and other technological efficiencies are doing the heavy lifting that once gave us meaning. Part of the blame for people’s discontent mentioned in the Business Insider article is the increase of unfulfilling “fake email jobs,” which are office jobs that largely involve sending emails without producing anything.
Many higher education jobs might seem fake to people, especially with all the administrative bloat and growth of online learning that decrease the student interactions that imbues so much meaning for professionals in academe. We think of ourselves more as a set of hands on a keyboard sending emails than real people.
Three Sources of Meaning
Still, higher education professionals can find fulfillment by working remotely because meaning is found in the belief in an institution’s mission. Beyond that, Stulberg attributes meaning to three psychosocial elements that make up the self-determination theory:
- Autonomy, which is having a sense of control over how you spend your time and energy.
- Mastery, or competence, which is perceiving through positive feedback that you are making progress toward desired outcomes.
- Belonging, or relatedness, which is experiencing connection to other people, places, and traditions.
I explained these in the context of academe in a previous HigherEdJobs article, but I didn’t ask an important question: What happens if you don’t find meaning in your job?
“Then you have to have autonomy, mastery, and belonging somewhere else,” Stulberg said. “When I think about meaning, I think less about needing to find it in work and more about, ‘Do you have things in your life that afford you those three psychological needs that we know make us feel good?'”
Remote work often contributes to greater fulfillment because people can develop hobbies or other areas of their life and be more accessible to family and communities without a commute or fixed office hours.
What to Expect in a Job
If you still desire the meaning you are lacking in your work, Stulberg advises conducting an evaluation of your values: What are your skills and what do you want to contribute to the world? Then, you look at your job and ask yourself, how often do you practice your values?
“(If you’re not), then the conversation becomes, ‘Is that on you or the company you work for?,'” Stulberg said. “Is there a way to shift it so you can spend more time in your role practicing your values? If the answer to that question is ‘no,’ or if you tried and it’s a failed experiment, then the conversation becomes, ‘What would it look like to transition jobs?'”
Looking for a new job that provides meaning requires an evaluation of tradeoffs. Stulberg recommends considering an opportunity that provides at least two of the following:
- Challenge (or something that interests you).
- Money.
- Ideal lifestyle.
Most higher education professionals choose Challenge and Lifestyle, such as a professor who is a subject matter expert in their field of study and has a more flexible schedule with summers off or is not on call like a health care professional.
“It’s hard to find all three of those things in a job,” Stulberg said. “Part of being a mature adult is not expecting to get everything and realizing tradeoffs, being clear about what those tradeoffs are. (…) That’s the best way to find meaning in work without blowing up your life.”
Stulberg added that tradeoffs can change throughout your career and you might have to “blow up” your life for a few years and defer gratification to get to where you want to be in your career.
Closing the Meaning Gap
If your career continues to leave you feeling unfulfilled, you could be over-indexing on work as a source of meaning. Try these three tips:
Recognize when autonomy, mastery, or belonging are lacking in your job and invest more psychic energy in activities and interests outside of your work.
Clarify your values and search for a job that you know will provide you two of the three options: challenge, money, or ideal lifestyle.
Stop thinking about meaning altogether. Focusing on others or doing your job well will distract you from the self-referential rumination of any meaning missing in your work. It’s like trying to be happy. The effort to try to find meaning is often precisely the thing that makes you miserable.
Meaning shouldn’t be pursued at work. It ensues during a career when you recognize tradeoffs and live according to your values.
