The Covid crisis has had a devastating effect on our relationship with work and on our quest for meaning.While some dream of fleeing because they are stuck in their two-room apartment in the city, others are exiled outside the big cities and tasting life in the open air thinking very hard about " change of activity ".
As for those who have already tried (and succeeded) their professional reconversion or who have always done their dream job, they are luckier, they simply say to themselves " how happy I am to do what I do! ". What do they have in common? To have sat down one day to question the meaning of their work. Their point of divergence ? Having drawn sometimes very different conclusions.
At a time when teleworking is spreading, when the recruitment market is showing signs of being blocked in certain sectors, when everyone dreams of new aspirations, where does our vision of work stand? Does work still have a meaning, and if it lacks any, how can we give it some? Here are some avenues for reflection and some tips to adopt if your quest for meaning is at the heart of your professional life...
(Re)give meaning to meaning!
In its most prosaic definition, meaning is quite simply... the management! So, whether you're at the beginning, middle, or end of your career, ask yourself these questions first: Do you feel like your career path is going in the right direction? in the right direction? Being on a side road is not the same as being in a dead end or deviating from a marked route. Are you the type of person who says to yourself " I took the wrong path ", " I was misguided in high school ", " I don't know where I'm going anymore"? To (re)give a real meaning, a real direction to your work, first of all, trust yourself!
Like driving a car, tell yourself that you are the one behind the wheel of your professional career. Whatever the manoeuvre, and even if some routes seem blocked to you today, you will eventually find the right impulse to rectify your route and redirect your route in the right direction. The first thing you need to be aware of in the event of a setback on a route is that nothing is ever set in stone, let alone a trajectory that involves you and all the personal resources you have. Becoming aware that you have the possibility of rectifying the course if you go in the wrong direction is therefore the first thing to do to follow the right professional path, " common sense ".
Combine professional and personal definition and see what effect it has on you
We see it again and again: after the eternal " What's your name? ", the second question we get from strangers is: " And what do you do for a living?" Well, it's true, sometimes we get bored. The pressure is such that we tend to identify with our work and identify our work with ourselves.
It is not surprising that in a recent study, 54% of working people " believe that work is one of the three elements that best suits them, which make it possible to define them". If you are one of these assets and you do not suffer from them, it is undoubtedly because your work has an important meaning for you, that it is one of your identity markers, that it corresponds to your values, your expectations, that it is deeply consistent with your vision of life.
But if you don't identify with your job at all because you don't like it, or if posting your activity makes you downright uncomfortable, try to figure out why and for how long. Is it a question of value? Useful? Burn-out , bore-out, brown-out ? Lack of pleasure? Whatever your answers to these questions, the problem they address is more generally that of your motivation. Whether it is intrinsic (i.e. when it starts from within you) or extrinsic (i.e. when it is linked to the environment in which you evolve), motivation is one of the components that allows you to (re)give meaning to work. The good news is that a loss of motivation that sets in over time can (re)give you the opportunity to put things straight. To re-motivate yourself, there are also tricks.
(Re)find the courage to invent or reinvent your work
Who hasn't heard a colleague say in a half-serious, half-joking tone: " It's decided, tomorrow, I'm packing my bags and moving to the Vercors to raise goats!" Far from the cliché of the dynamic Parisian thirty-year-old who takes over a farm overnight, professional mobility attracts us all one day or another. And that's it! We start dreaming of reconversion, humanitarianism, the South, digital nomadism, crafts, etc.
This sudden desire to leave everything behind is first and foremost linked to our quest for meaning.
However, wanting to (re)give meaning to one's work means that he no longer has it or that he lacks it. And now David Graeber's " bullshit job " is running through your head. You know, this " job" " so useless, absurd, even harmful that even the employee cannot justify its existence, even though the contract with his employer obliges him to pretend that there is a use for his work."
However, we can sometimes have the impression that we are falling into this definition in spite of ourselves. You don't dare to give up your permanent contract in a large urban area for a farm in the open countryside? Maybe think about intermediate options!
If you feel qualified to do a task that makes sense to you but is not within the scope of your work, let your manager know. If a position that is more similar than yours to the one your initial training allowed you to hold becomes available within your company and you want it, announce that you are applying. If you feel like you've found an innovative solution that would solve a problem your team is experiencing, share it with your collective. If you have always wanted to carry out a project that is close to your heart, dare to talk about it around you. Also think about the validation of prior experiential learning (VAE) if you have the impression that the skills you have acquired over time give you access to other positions.
Don't forget about intrapreneurship either . It is possible that a dedicated program already exists in your company. If not, why not dare to set one up yourself? Finally, you also have the opportunity to ask to take stock of your career and your expectations thanks to a free system, professional development advice.
Develop your skills
Maybe it has already happened to you: this feeling of stagnating and looking for benchmarks that combines with a perceived drop in performance. Your first thought? Go and take a look at the " others " to see what they are doing while you are in doubt. And that's it!
You find yourself browsing LinkedIn. And here you are, comparing your career with those of former colleagues, former comrades, former bosses who are at about the same stage of their careers as you, or even at a level of expertise that you have not yet reached. Profile after profile, it clicks: some of them master tools and have skills that you don't know or that didn't seem so useful to you to succeed in the position you hold.
What if you reached out to some of these people to tell you about these skills, these tools, and how they've enriched their work and therefore enriched themselves?
Because yes, the variety of skills that you are required to develop throughout your career feeds the notion of the meaning of work.
Hard skills or soft skills, first of all, list the skills you don't have and whose acquisition or deepening could boost your personal branding, allow you to revive your inner engine, give you (re)psychological flexibility.
Secondly, look for a way to train yourself in it. Training account, schemes articulated by your company, resumption of studies, self-training: your personal case will inevitably adapt to the many possibilities available to you.
In a third and fourth step, train yourself and apply your new skills. The satisfaction of having acquired new knowledge and being able to use it, or even share it, will allow you to update the meaning you give to your work.
Pass on your know-how or use it more to serve the community
" When I see how well you master InDesign, I think I'm useless!" " Hey, you're good at negotiating, don't you have a tip to give me?" " Would you like to brief us on the new project? We need your spirit of synthesis more than ever." Have you ever heard similar remarks or suggestions? Then it may be that you have one or more skills that can inspire, train and strengthen your collective. You know better than anyone, we never really work in a vacuum. No matter what activity you do, you are bound to end up in contact with someone who needs a hand to perform an unknown task.
So, if you have a know-how for which you are constantly asked because you master it perfectly, pass it on or share it with your team. Because beyond the meaning we give to our own work, transmitting, sharing and putting at the service of others a skill related to our professional career is a guarantee of meaning in itself.
This gives you an additional opportunity to network and brings to life sometimes abstract notions of accomplishment and personal development. This can help ensure the success of an individual, team, or company. And this can help make you a change maker who makes projects sometimes bigger than him/her germinate. This is what necessarily gives meaning to work!
