Work is a strange arrangement.
We give away a huge portion of our waking lives, and in return someone gives us money.
Obviously, the money matters. We have rent and groceries and children who apparently need new shoes every 14-minutes. But if work is going to consume something like a third of our lives, I’m not sure money is enough to explain what all those hours are for.
At one point, I was interviewing for a role with a huge ecommerce retailer. The role would have paid significantly more than I was making. Thirty percent more, maybe more than that.
Which, as a general rule, is a compelling argument.
I made it through several rounds of interviews. Then, somewhere a little past halfway through the process, I stopped.
I found myself thinking:
Do I really want to spend my days helping sell more cheap stuff to people?
There was nothing inherently wrong with the job. And there was certainly nothing wrong with making more money.
I just couldn’t figure out why I needed to make that much more money doing something I cared much less about.
I already had a job where I believed in what the company actually did. There was a larger mission underneath the meetings, technology, budgets, and PowerPoints. My work contributed, however indirectly, to something I knew mattered.
So I withdrew from the interview process.
That decision has stayed with me because it changed something about the way I think about work.
We tend to talk about careers as transactions. We exchange our time and abilities for money.
There is nothing wrong with that. Work should provide for us and the people who depend on us. Money matters. Sometimes taking the higher paying job is exactly the right decision.
But money eventually runs into a strange question:
How much is enough?
At that point in my life, 30% more sounded fantastic. But I didn’t need 30% more.
I wanted it.
Those are different things.
Maybe work can fulfill something in us while also giving something through us.
Over the years, we collect strange little piles of talent. We learn how to design things, fix things, organize things, teach things, build things, listen to people, solve problems, make spreadsheets slightly less terrible. Some of those abilities come naturally. Others cost us years of frustration to develop.
Either way, they become something we have to offer.
That doesn’t mean everyone needs to work for a nonprofit, become a missionary, or abandon a lucrative career for something that sounds more noble at dinner parties. A plumber serves people. A teacher serves people. A software developer can serve people. So can an accountant, a farmer, a designer, a mechanic, or someone running a company.
Maybe the better question isn’t whether our job sounds meaningful.
Maybe it’s whether we can find meaning in what our work puts into the world.
Who benefits from what I know how to do?
What becomes a little better because I showed up?
And perhaps most uncomfortably: What am I willing to leave on the table to do work I believe is worth doing?
I still want to be paid well. Let’s not get carried away.
But I don’t want the highest number on a paycheck to automatically win the argument.
Work takes too much of our lives for that.
We spend years developing talents, knowledge, judgment, patience, creativity, and experience. Eventually, those things become more than tools for earning a living.
They become things we can give.
And maybe part of a good life is figuring out where they’re worth giving.