Many people reach a point where they want more meaning in their work. They want to contribute more directly, to feel that what they do matters. Often, the next thought is: I need a different job. Something that looks meaningful from the outside.

Sometimes a different job is exactly what we need. What our work accomplishes, how we are treated, and the freedom we have to make decisions all matter. But meaningful contribution is broader than a job title or a sector. Before deciding what needs to change, it helps to look at both the work itself and how we participate in it.

The same work can mean different things
In research by Amy Wrzesniewski and her colleagues, people described their work as a job, a career, or a calling. A job primarily provided income. A career offered advancement. A calling was work they experienced as fulfilling and socially useful. These different orientations appeared even among administrative assistants doing similar work. It shows that a job description alone does not tell us what the work means to the person doing it.

Research on hospital cleaners makes this difference tangible. Some understood themselves as part of the hospital’s care for patients and their families. That understanding shaped what they noticed and how they approached their work.

One of the cleaners described an encounter with the father of a young patient who was in a coma. The father had been spending his days at the hospital for months. The cleaner had cleaned the room while the father was outside, but when he returned, he accused him of not having done it.

The cleaner initially felt defensive and was about to argue. Then he reconsidered. He understood something of what this father was going through. Instead of insisting that he had already completed the task, he cleaned the room again so the father could see it being done. 

He saw comforting patients and their families as part of his work, even though those responsibilities were absent from his formal job description. That gave him another way to recognize what the situation needed. His purpose could find expression through cleaning, through listening, and through how he responded to a distressed father. He did not need a different job title to make that contribution.

Bringing purpose into your work
Our purpose has ‘be goals’ and ‘do goals’. Do goals concern what you do. Be goals concern who you want to be in doing it. A job change may alter your daily activities, while the wish to be caring, fair, curious, or helpful can find expression in different kinds of work.

Those goals help us recognize what a meaningful contribution could look like in our work: the difference we make to someone or something beyond ourselves. That difference can happen in a hospital or a nonprofit. But it can also happen in an office job: how you run a meeting, how you treat a new colleague, or the care you put into work no one will praise.

Your strengths can help you recognize how you want to contribute. Someone with a strength in perspective might enjoy helping a team understand how a complicated project fits together. Someone whose strength is kindness might pay particular attention to a colleague who is struggling. The question is where those qualities are useful and where the work gives you room to use them.

Seeing who benefits can also make a contribution easier to recognize. It can be that we spend our days completing tasks without hearing what happens because of them. Understanding who uses our work, what it helps them do, and whether it actually helps can give us a clearer sense of what deserves our effort.

What you can change within a job
Researchers call the ways people reshape their work job crafting. Wrzesniewski and Dutton described changes to tasks, relationships, and how people understand the purpose of their work.

You can first look at your tasks. Is there room to change how you approach a familiar responsibility, use more of your abilities, or take on work that matters to you?

You can also look at your relationships. Could you work more closely with the people your work serves, or make time to support a colleague’s development? The hospital cleaners’ attention to patients illustrates how relationships can become part of the meaning of a role.

Finally, you can examine how you understand the work. What does it make possible? Who depends on it? That understanding needs to of course be honest about what the work accomplishes and any harm it may cause.

The room for these changes varies. Some choices are yours to make; others require agreement from a manager, cooperation from colleagues, or a change in how the organization works. Staffing, workload, safety requirements, and job security affect what is possible. When there is little room to act, the solution is not simply finding a more positive way to think about it.

Work does not have to carry your whole purpose
Your purpose is broader than any job. Work can be one of the main ways you express it. It can also provide the income and stability that allow you to be there for your family, friends, or community. Valuing a job for those reasons does not make your life less purposeful.

It is also possible for meaning to make it difficult to recognize when work asks too much of us. In research among zookeepers, the researchers described how a sense of calling could coexist with accepting personal sacrifices and difficult working conditions. Caring deeply about the animals could make those sacrifices feel necessary.

There is a question here for anyone who finds purpose in their work: does your commitment leave room for your own needs? Fair pay, rest, and reasonable boundaries still matter when the work matters to you.

Replacing default with intention here means examining the work you actually have and the choices available to you. You may discover a contribution you had overlooked, make a change within your role, or decide to prepare for something else. What matters is understanding why that choice deserves your effort.

Wrzesniewski et al. (1997)
Wrzesniewski & Dutton (2001)
Bunderson & Thompson (2009)
Schwartz (2011)