But the tasks I need to accomplish each day to work towards my audacious and inspiring goal? Yawn. Bleh. I think that’s just because inspiring goals often require boring subgoals and tasks, not because I haven’t picked the right job.
You are indeed lucky to have such inspiring goals. For many people in modern workplaces, the trouble is that they not only have no such exalted motivating goals, but they don’t even have any clear sense of what exactly their work is supposed to achieve—or worse, they often clearly see that the tedious tasks they must perform are completely pointless and useless in the overall scheme of things. I mean the sort of thing which is the basic running theme of Dilbert.
This can have such soul-crushing effects that it’s hard to find motivation even for living, let alone productivity. The real challenge is how to force yourself to be productive (or “productive”?) in ways necessary to prosper in such an environment if you’re condemned to it, as increasing numbers of people are.
The real challenge is how to force yourself to be productive (or “productive”?) in ways necessary to prosper in such an environment if you’re condemned to it, as increasing numbers of people are.
Since I can’t double-upvote this I’ll just add my agreement. Figuring out a way out of this trap has been one of my dominant top-level goals for at least a year and something I’ve been thinking a lot about for longer than that but it is a difficult problem. I know quite a few intelligent and ‘successful’ (by most conventional measures) individuals who are deeply unsatisfied with their careers but have great difficulty breaking out of the cycle.
patrissimo:
You are indeed lucky to have such inspiring goals. For many people in modern workplaces, the trouble is that they not only have no such exalted motivating goals, but they don’t even have any clear sense of what exactly their work is supposed to achieve—or worse, they often clearly see that the tedious tasks they must perform are completely pointless and useless in the overall scheme of things. I mean the sort of thing which is the basic running theme of Dilbert.
This can have such soul-crushing effects that it’s hard to find motivation even for living, let alone productivity. The real challenge is how to force yourself to be productive (or “productive”?) in ways necessary to prosper in such an environment if you’re condemned to it, as increasing numbers of people are.
Since I can’t double-upvote this I’ll just add my agreement. Figuring out a way out of this trap has been one of my dominant top-level goals for at least a year and something I’ve been thinking a lot about for longer than that but it is a difficult problem. I know quite a few intelligent and ‘successful’ (by most conventional measures) individuals who are deeply unsatisfied with their careers but have great difficulty breaking out of the cycle.