This past Monday was Labor Day. I spent it working as usual. I’d like to share a little something about work, mainly about a perspective that, if the work matters, it doesn’t matter if it’s unpleasant.
I’ve just finished reading Zach Mercurio’s book The Power
of Mattering. The book is mainly about showing other people that they
matter, and how to do that, particularly as a business leader, although the
principles apply to parents, friends, and everybody. Near the end is a section
called “Develop a ‘So-That’ Mindset.” Mercurio tells a story of someone he met
as a doctoral student:
When I was a doctoral student, one of the first research
interviews I conducted was with Susan, a sought-after cleaner in the housing
department at the local university. Her interview reflects much of what
researchers know about how people perceive their work as meaningful, and
themselves as mattering. I asked Susan, “What part of your job is the most
meaningful to you?” Without pause, she described cleaning the university
dormitory bathrooms on Monday morning. To me that sounded extremely unpleasant.
She admitted it was, but then pivoted, saying, “I’m cleaning their bathroom so
they don’t get sick. You know?”
Susan told me that she regularly uses this “so-that” framing,
repeating the statement to herself as she’s doing the task: “I’m cleaning this
bathroom so that these kids don’t get sick.”
Later in our interview she recalled a blind student who lived
in the dormitory. “When we cleaned her room, we had to make sure we put
everything back when we vacuumed—make sure the trash can was in the same spot,
and that nothing was moved—so that, when she would come back into her room, she
would not trip over anything.”
Then he added this:
Susan’s story is also a reminder that what’s purposeful isn’t
always pleasurable. Experiencing mattering has less to do with what
we’re doing and more with how we see the impact of what we’re doing.
Everything has a “so that.” If you look hard enough, you’ll see another human
being at the end of almost every act.
That got my attention this week. It’s certainly true that not
all work is pleasurable. There’s a saying that, if you find work you love, then
it never feels like work. It’s a nice sentiment, but in real life work entails
hard things. Sometimes the unpleasantness is icky or dirty-hands kind of
work—like Susan’s cleaning dorm bathrooms. Sometimes it’s mundane, boring tasks,
like paperwork or billing, things that have to be done whether you like them or
not. Sometimes it’s interpersonally unpleasant tasks like laying off employees
or dealing with conflict within a team.
But if you have a larger picture, a “so-that” mindset, you
can see the meaning that makes the unpleasant tasks worth doing.
To read the full article, follow link to Substack.
