I find myself having an existential crisis at work about every six months.
“What am I doing with my life?”
“Am I wasting my time?”
“Does what I’m doing right now matter?”
These questions have continually resurfaced for me over the last decade regardless of what company I’m working for, what project I’m working on, or what my job title is. And my answers to these questions have fluctuated from month to month and year to year.
What I’ve found is that my motivations at work have changed over time. I’m not sure if they are evolving toward a higher purpose or simply changing without an obvious end goal, but they are in fact changing.
Sometimes I’m motivated by the work itself. Is the work technically challenging? Does it push me to learn and grow? Am I interested in the tools and programming languages that I get to work with? Am I solving complex problems? Sometimes just having work that you can get lost in is enough. Learning for the sake of learning can be fun.
Maybe it’s all just a distraction.
Other times I’ve focused more on the company’s mission. As a company, are we working toward a goal that contributes to the world in some meaningful way beyond making money for our shareholders? Do I believe in what the company is doing? Am I excited about the impact we’re having and the product we’re building?
Nietzsche once said, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
Most recently I’ve become more interested in people. Do I have opportunities to impact other people’s lives in a positive way? This could be through management or leadership opportunities, or it could be a mentoring relationship, either formal or informal.
Or am I impacting our customers’ lives in a positive way? Maybe the company’s mission or product isn’t world-changing, but does it at least help make someone’s life better or their job easier in some small way?
I’m undecided if any of these purposes are better than the others or if they’re simply different. Maybe they don’t follow a natural progression and it’s normal to cycle through them.
Many people don’t find meaning at work at all and instead find purpose in other pursuits in life. That’s ok too. Family, friends, hobbies, religion, sports, and volunteer work all give meaning to our lives.
Your job shouldn’t define who you are. As software engineers though we should count ourselves lucky that we’re even in a position to consider our work meaningful.
Top comments (14)
Great post. I find myself often in the same cycles. Sometimes fiddling one day on linter configuration is so much fun, sometimes one day drawing diagram of complex legacy system is super interesting, some other days is just writing feedbacks and improvement plan is all that counts. Some other days, I am asking myself what's the point. Why I care so much. The good thing of this job which I am greatful for, is exactly this variety and size of scope, the challenges and the learnings.
I am not even working yet, I'm in my second year of college and started thinking "Why" and it got worse after I and my girlfriend broke up. I was thinking in the lines "What is even the point of getting a good job". Took me 6 months to get my motivation back. And have been interviewing for internships, but the thought process still is right around the corner, ready to mess up my min anytime.
I think this blog post will help me find meaning, and give you meaning since you're helping someone like me, who's just starting out by sharing your personal experiences. I really appreciate it 🙂
Perhaps we're getting old and we're no longer starting to look for "fun". Instead, we are looking for satisfaction.
Nice post. I share a lot of thing that you said. One thing that rules my life, is that money can buy my free time. So, I do my job the best I can and then:
That time will never return.
I've been doing this for 30 years now. Definitely continuing through similar cycles that you mention. I'd say it's getting tougher now as I balance the end-game of my career between "what I can achieve" vs. "what I want to achieve"...
Well said! There really can be an addiction to needing to be, or feeling, productive -- nearly constantly.
Well said. I’m happy that they pay me to essentially learn and help solve problems for others. :) I’ll take it.
This is great. It shows how you need to reinvent yourself, in the first place for your own well being.
Good post, kudos!
I love my trade. Each project is more than a job for me. Sounds cheesy but they’re my children (I have real children so I know what it worth), and that’s hard to fight for me. It’s important to keep that under control though, and I believe I manage to handle it.
What I want to say is that doing what you love gives your life additional meaning, no matter what you call it — a job, a hassle, or a dream. The importance of finding such a thing is hard to overestimate.
What about doing the work simply to pay the bills and put food on the table? Many people in the world are scrambling to get by on a daily basis, if you have a job that lets you do that and you don't hate doing it then you can already count yourself lucky. Most of the time the thought of that already motivates me sufficiently, even when at a certain moment the work isn't glorious, or isn't that motivating in itself. Sometimes we just need to be grateful for what we have.
I have been feeling this for months now. And it is way more often than every six months :( . Sometimes it is every day; I am asking "why"? "why do I exist?" "what is the purpose"? and the only reason I live for, is work. It is the only satisfaction I see in life. This is dreadful. Thank you for posting this so now I know it is not only me.
Thank you for sharing.
Please, read/watch about clinical and season depression and bipolar disorder.
What you call crisis could be mental disorder, that can be cured.
Good article l, I can really relate to this and my motivations at work have changed or fluctuated many times throughout my career.
One thing though, can you give one example of a meaningless job? 🤔