Finding work meaningful & the importance of it.

Food for thought. I read this piece of writing this morning and it got me thinking.

''In 100 years like in 2123 we will all be buried with our relatives and friends.

Strangers will live in our homes we fought so hard to build, and they will own everything we have today. All our possessions will be unknown and unborn, including the car we spent a fortune on, and will probably be scrap, preferably in the hands of an unknown collector.

Our descendants will hardly or hardly know who we were, nor will they remember us. How many of us know our grandfather's father?

After we die, we will be remembered for a few more years, then we are just a portrait on someone's bookshelf, and a few years later our history, photos, and deeds disappear into history's oblivion. We won't even be memories.

If we could only think about this, surely our approaches and our thoughts would change, we would be different people.

Always having more, no time for what's really valuable in this life. I'd change all this to live and enjoy the walks I've never taken, these hugs I didn't give, these kisses for our children and our loved ones, these jokes we didn't have time for. Those would certainly be the most beautiful moments to remember, after all, they would fill our lives with joy.'' (Anonymous, 2023).

Here is some accounting regarding how much of our lifetime we devote to working:

• It is estimated that we spend 90,000 hours?at work in our lifetime.
• This means a worker spends about a third of his or her time sleeping and a third of the time working.

Thus, creating meaningfulness in our work life is truly priceless.

Frederick Herzberg (1960) founded The Elements of a Meaningfulness Ecosystem. An article in the MIT Sloan Management Review (C. Bailey, A. Madden, 2016) focuses on what exactly makes work meaningful. The goal here is to understand what elements are important in creating meaningfulness and how we can foster these.

In my opinion, creating meaning in the workplace looks different for everyone. For me personally, the following aspects add much meaningfulness to my work life:

1. Encouraging and inspiring team members as well as being inspired.
2. Driving a sense of pride and feeling a sense of pride.
3. Recognizing and appreciating meaningful milestones and moments.
4. Deep collaboration.
5. Continuous learning.
6. Setting goals for myself.
7. Connecting with others.
8. Executing innovative and win-win solutions for challenging problems.
9. Being present with the people around me and active listening.

Finding meaning in our day-to-day by living in the present is something imperative to making the most out of the one life we are given.

?C. Bailey, R. Yeoman, A. Madden, M. Thompson, and G. Kerridge. (2016). ?U.S. Academy of Management Conference.