Meaningful work and how to cultivate more of it in your life.
Meaningful work — to do something with our time and our effort that we feel is important — is one of the most important tools we have for feeling engaged in our lives.
Gallup has been polling people from all over the world for decades. The results are astounding. Only 13% feel engaged in their work. That means that nearly 90% of people feel something between mild irritation and white hot hatred for the work they do.
Nearly 90% of people spend half of their waking adult lives doing work they’d rather not do.
Are you one of the 10% or the 90%?
Creative Voices is devoted to equipping the people who care about their work the brand and marketing tools they need to succeed. But the big picture is meaningful work. Understanding what it is, why it’s important, and giving you the tools you need if to you it means running your own show.
Work is one of the most powerful tools we have for feeling engaged in our lives. To feel engaged in our lives means that we’re actively moving towards the people and things we find most important. I’m someone who believes that happiness comes by the way. When we’re focused on things that matter to us, happiness comes.
Happiness is not something we focus on, it’s something that comes when we focus on what matters most to us.
Wanting people to have meaning and purpose, and by extension happiness, is worthwhile in itself. But it’s also interesting what happens when someone is engaged in their life rather than disengaged in their life. When we’re engaged, we’re less likely to participate in careless consumption.
Careless consumption is the impulse to consume as a coping mechanism. Not participating in careless consumption means that we’re less likely to buy more than we need. Less likely to participate in harmful habits. And when each of us gets healthier (in all the ways one can be healthier) that is when the wider world starts to shift too.
We know we need to change how we live. How our biggest corporations operate. The evidence is all around us. Lessening the collective footprint of the wealthiest countries is key to long-term survival. Which makes how we work a part of both individual fulfillment, and also a critical piece of moving our society off the path of more-faster-cheaper.
Whether you’re unhappy in your work, actively planning a change, or already running your own shop - this class was made for you.
The world is getting smaller and not in a good way. Fewer and fewer companies, fewer and fewer people, are controlling more and more. Among the casualties of this type of rapacious globalized capitalism are creativity and community. We’re losing individuality. No matter where you go, it’s increasingly the same. The same shops and restaurants and grocery stores. And because most of us get inspiration from the same places and shop from the same places, even our homes and our wardrobes are looking less personal. Money we spend in our communities doesn’t stay, it doesn’t put food on our neighbors tables, it leaves.
Why am I saying all this? How does this relate to meaning in our work lives? Well for starters, increasingly the people doing the bulk of the work in these companies are unhappy. The work is not fulfilling, they’re not granted autonomy or creativity; their labor is a resource to be exploited for profit more than it’s a life to be nurtured. And if our work, our labor, is one of our best tools for feeling engaged in our lives, you can see how this is a big problem.
I want a revival of creativity and community. Of personality and people. And from where I sit, this looks like more people running their own small shop.
If there are no options, there is no choice but to shop corporate. But what if we had not just options, but options brimming with passion and personality? A movement of enough people caring about their work, with a focus on the good it does, and the world can’t help but shift too. A different economy. Less struggle, more meaning.
I can give you tools, but I can’t tell you what to care about. You bring the meaning, that’s what makes it personal and compelling. But if any of this spoke to you, then consider making the time to take this meaningful work mini-masterclass. It was lovingly made for you and it’s completely free. We have never charged for it and we never will. It’s a part of the bigger picture of why we do what we do. Our branding and marketing masterclass is our only paid course, the rest is free and available for anyone who wants to learn. Aches to do it different. Wants to see what would happen if…
