The Purpose of Work is...

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A few years ago, I was giving a talk to a group of recent graduates and current students at a local university. During one of the breaks, I was approached by a young woman from the audience. She spoke eloquently to me about her love of painting and how she felt certain that being an artist was her true calling and purpose in life. Yet, there was a big problem. Apparently, she had absolutely no success at earning even a modest amount of money from her paintings. The young woman was wondering how to go about earning a living with her art. In other words, how to make a living from her passion.

After the young woman finished telling me her story, I asked, “Who is your artwork for?”? The woman appeared somewhat surprised by my question as she replied, “Well, it’s for me!” As gently as possible, I replied, “That perspective is precisely why you have yet to make a living from your artwork.”?

The above interaction illustrates a powerful insight: If you're not creating value for others, then who will consistently pay you to do the things you love to do? If we aspire to make our living at something we're passionate about, we need to shift the focus of our passion from our own enjoyment to creating value for others through the work we do for our living. In other words, the fundamental purpose of all work is to serve other people; not just yourself.

I make the above claim because of a few simple truths:

First, every kind of work that exists within the world of work exists to provide some form of product or service. It doesn’t matter if the provision of that product or service is housed in the legal structure of a non-profit, a for-profit enterprise, or even a governmental agency.

Second, the only reason for any product and/or service to exist is to solve problems for, and to meet the needs and desires of, the people who buy and use those products/services. If you are tempted to doubt this claim, think about your own purchases; do you spend your hard-earned money on things you don’t need or desire in some way?

Third, if you can agree that all work exists to provide a product or service, and that all products and services exist to meet the needs and desires of people, then it’s not a huge leap of logic to assert that the fundamental purpose of all work is to solve problems for, and satisfy the needs and desires of, other people. In other words, all work exists to serve people.

If any of us don't prioritize creating value for others in the work we do for our living, then we're reducing the value we can receive from our work, because we're sub-optimizing the value we create for those who buy and use the products/services we're creating at work.

When it comes to each of us deciding for ourselves how we see the purpose of our work, we need to choose wisely. As this decision will influence all that follows after it.

Excerpt from How To CRUSH That Career Thing, by Kirk Anderson, www.sfcsuite.com

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@KirkAnderson-SFCSUITE/featured

ActionPointe LLC Website:? www.actionpointe.net??

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