Is Your Work Working For You? Reimaging Money and Lifestyle

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implied shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want Working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor Elise Cortez.

1:04 Welcome back to the Working on Purpose program, which has been brought to you with passionate pride since February of twenty fifteen. Thanks for tuning in again this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. If we've not met before and you don't know me, I'm an organizational psychologist and logo therapist, speaker and author. My team and I at gusto Now help companies in liven and fortify their operations by building a dynamic, high performance culture and inspirational leadership activated by meaning and purpose. You can learn more about us and how we can work together at gustodesh now dot com or my personal site, Atliscortes dot com. Now getting in today's program, We have with us today doctor Christopher Wong Michaelson, a philosopher with twenty five years of experience advising business leaders, pursuing meeting and providing work with a purpose. He is the Barbara and David A. Cook Coach, Endowed Chair in Business Ethics and Academic director of the Melrose and the Toro Company Center for Principal Leadership at the University of Saint Thomas and the Business and Society Faculty for NYU's Stern School of Business. Also we have with this doctor Jennifer Tossti Karus, who is the Camellia Latino Spinelli Endowed Term Chair and Professor of Management at Abson College. She teaches researchers and coaches others about what it means to craft a meaningful career and appreciate that risks and rewards of work as a calling. Together, we have written is Your Work Worth It?

2:25 How to think about meaningful work, which will be talking about on today's podcast. Christopher Joins is from Minneapolis and Jennifer Joines from Boston. Christopher and jen Welcome to Working on Purpose. Thank you so much. At least, we're so happy to be here. I'm glad that you were recruitable and I reached out to you when I saw your beautiful book and I was like, this is solid fodder for Working on Purpose. I have got to have them. So thank you for saying yes. Thank you so much for asking us. Welcome. Welcome. So since our listeners and viewers have not missed you the way that I have, because I read my guest books to cover as you now know, and I know something about both of you, but they don't. So let's just if we could open with each of you talking a little bit about your background. And how you found your way into academia because that wasn't your original start.

3:12 Yeah. Absolutely, I'm happy to start. So I was an undergraduate business major and I thought I would definitely go into either management consulting or investment banking. But along the way, I was a TA for a class, and that's where I really got this academic bug. I really really wanted to get experience on the other side of the classroom. I knew what being a student was like, but I didn't know what being a professor was like. I then went on to become a management consultant, living and working in New York City doing strategy consulting and traveling a lot, and it was all very exciting. But after the nine to eleven attacks, like many New Yorkers, I reconsidered what am I doing and why and decided to apply for a PhD program in management in organizational behavior, which is my field. So I have a lot of training in organizational psychology and the rest is history. From there, I went on to become a full time professor, scholar, teacher, and author.

4:17 Love it. There's some interesting similarities there, Christopher. So our experiences converged in New York City around nine to eleven, and we both changed careers after nine to eleven within a year or two. But otherwise my journey is pretty much the exact opposite. I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate, and I never gave even a thought to management consulting or investment banking. Those meant nothing to me whatsoever. But I wanted to make a difference in the real world. And I realized after getting a PhD in philosophy, where I could study the meaning of life, that I didn't really want to be in an insular philosophy department studying smaller questions than the meaning of life.

5:08 I wanted to make a difference in the real world. And so I actually helped launch a business ethics advisory practice in one of the large management consulting firms, and that's how I ended up in the same place around the same time in New York City as Jen. And then it was just sort of by luck and happenstance that I got asked to teach what I was consulting in back in academia, and I went back into academia, and this was our first research project together, studying the meaning of work in the lives of nine to eleven victims. Which was beautiful how you write about it in your book really beautiful. I will just quickly say that to piggyback off both of your stories. A part of my reason for getting a PhD, which we will get into later, was it was probably my best reaction to my early onset midlife crisis. And I also studied meaning and work and identity actually earlier on, which is what kind of got me to this camp. So three of us have some very interesting overlaps here. Now, what did in factor in for me really per se into my journey except that I was on the West coast for it was nine to eleven. So what I love to do next, I really appreciate what you've done in your book is you've situated how both nine to eleven and the COVID nineteen pandemic really situated or changed a lot of things in relation to how we think about our lives, well, from our lives and from our work. So if you could talk about each of those as separate incidences and how they did impact us, especially from in the realm

6:38 of work. Yeah, So the nine to eleven attacks were, among other things, a workplace tragedy. The vast majority of those who died in the attacks died at work, either at the Twin Towers or as first responders sort of coming in to the Twin Towers, many of whom, by the way, were off duty but just couldn't couldn't not help. So in the wake of those attacks, people have a mortality salience, as we say in psychology, where suddenly they become aware of the fact that they will die and that it may not happen on the timetable that they might expect.

7:24 So suddenly it becomes this existential question of how am I spending my time? You know, how I spend my days is how I spend my weeks, months, years, and then ultimately my life. And the saying is no one on their deathbed ever wishes they spend more time at the office. But the fact is we all spend a lot of time at work. For some of us, it's the majority of our waking hours are spent at work. So to not contemplate what role work plays, you know, it's it's just a big way to make a change your life, to make life potentially more meaningful or maybe less meaning less, is the way to say it. And so something then very similar happened in COVID, where we saw, for example, the Great Resignation, where people said, again, life is too short to do a job where I don't see an impact or I'm not getting at the very least what i want from the work that i'm doing.

8:29 And so even though these were very different types of events, the impact was sort of similar. And Christopher and I sometimes say we wrote the book so that absent a gigantic global crisis, people would ask these deep existential questions. It shouldn't have to take a crisis to make us ask these deep existential questions about what we're doing for work and why. So appreciate that. What a beautiful explanation. So then I want to go on and situate really why as you situate why you wrote the book, So you say, this book is not going to tell you what to do with your work, but it is going to tell you to do the work that is worth it, whatever that may be. It is about the priority of work worth doing in a life worth living that is like just for me, where it's at.

9:21 Well, you know, Jen was talking about post nine to eleven, and people who are alive back then might remember that we were exhorted to go back to work on September twelfth. Don't let the terrorists win. They wanted to shut down our economy, they wanted to shut down our organizations, and so the best thing that we could do was to show up. And to this day, nine to eleven, despite it being a day of mourning, is not a holiday, because it's a day on which we show up to work. But then after the pandemic, or during the pandemic, I think there were at least two classes of people who were thinking in different ways about work. There were the office workers or sort of privileged professors like us, who could still do their work from the comfort of their homes, and in some sense, we're thinking, this is kind of a nice gig, you know. I get to wear my pajama bottoms while I'm working and take a break in the middle of the day, and my dogs are nearby, my family's nearby. But then they were the people who had to show up on the front lines, and oftentimes their work was worth the least in terms of the economic value that it was assigned, but arguably worth the most with regard to how urgent it was. Maybe there's

10:55 a third group of employees that I didn't think about, which was people who were involunteer fairly out of work. So it just led everybody to sort of reassess what is work worth doing in a life worth living? And those questions, as Jen said, are salient after a terrorist attack, during a pandemic, or any time. I think it's worth noting that you have a whole chapter devoted to the answering the question what is work? So would you help us understand how you describe what is work? Yeah? I like to joke here that philosophers can spend we could spend literally the rest of this podcast with philosophers debating what is work? So Christopher, and so that's why I'm taking this question and also why we tried to be really specific in the book about what do we mean when we say work. The very simplest definition that sort of applies is what we tend to think of as paid employment. I mean, what comes to someone's mind when we say work is probably what we mean.

12:07 But we get a little bit more specific than that. We say work is that which is effortful, purposeful. And this is the key recognized by society generally as work, and a key distinction here is something like housework, raising children, doing the chores around the house. When we do it for ourselves, it is not societally recognized as work, even though we know it is very effortful and very purposeful. Right, But when someone we pay someone to do it for us, then it becomes work, and so certainly one can. And you know, people have quibbled with such definitions about what counts as work, and I'm not sure our societal definitions always get it right. But for our purposes, we're trying to take it as you know, what we would generally consider to be paid employment generally fits with what we mean when we are talking about work in the.

13:08 Book, even though we recognize the ridiculousness of letting tax policy makers decide what work is. Yeah, I know, I remember you have some examples in your book, like, for example, you know, if somebody were to come into your house and clean it for you, that is payable work. But if you do it yourself, it's not considered work, right, which is fascinating. So I've just really had to have you distinguish this idea of what is work. Let's go on to then why do we work? Boy? There is a multitude of reasons why we work, and I also coded for that too when I did my research Why do we work?

13:49 Jim, I'm going to let you answer this one because this is the based on the research of your dissertation advisor. Yeah, absolutely so. I mean we work for reasons that are b beyond this typology that I'm about to say that was developed by my dissertation advisor. But Amy Resneski, who I was lucky to work with when I was getting my PhD. I know of her, Yes, I review her pop and you know, she's like as wonderful a person and a mentor as a scholar, I can attest to that. But she popularized an idea that was first written about actually within sociology, about you know, how do we engage in civic society, And part of it was about what is why do people work? And there were three different categories a job, a career, and a calling and a job and obviously these all have you know, meanings, these words have meanings outside of this typology, but for the purposes of why we work. A job is when we work primarily for external rewards and typically money, So we're sort of in it for the money, and it maybe fuels a meaningful life outside of work, But the work itself is not. You know, we're kind of not working.

15:03 We're working as a means to an end, not a meaningful end unto itself. The second is a career, and so when we view our work as a career, we're in it for again externover wards, but this time it's more about ascending within either an organizational hierarchy, climbing a career ladder, if you will, or gaining centrality within an occupational or industrial community. So think about open source coders who really could care less about status within their organization but want respect and maybe to be cited or built upon within the coding community. And then the last one is, and this is where a lot of my research has been around, is viewing work as a calling concept which originally had religious origins. It was a calling from God or a higher power. The Protestants used it, of course, though explicitly as God, but which we use in and is used in the research in a secular context to mean.

16:02 Here is where work is a meaningful end in and of itself. So work is a source of deep passion, it's meaningful. It often but not always, does good in the world. It makes the world a better place and helps others. But again, there are reasons to work, you know what, in terms of why we work that go beyond that. So we work to have something to you know, to way to pass the time. Some of us work because of a deep relationship with our coworkers. We love the camaraderie of the workplace. Some people are more about the craftsmanship that comes with their work or gaining you know, excellence or expertise in something for its own sake. So again, this typology is not meant to be all inclusive, and it's obviously not, but it's what scholars have drawn upon to get at some really fundamental differences in we tend to work broad categories and how those tend to matter for individual and organizational outcomes beautifully explained.

17:08 I will comment on that, but let's take our first break. I'm your host, doctor Lee's Cortez. I've been on the air with doctor Christopher Wong Michaelson, a philosopher with twenty five years of experience advising business leaders, pursuing meaning and providing work with a purpose, and doctor Jennifer Tostikatis, who teaches researchers and coaches others about what it means to craft a med equal career and appreciate the risks and boards of work as a calling. We've been talking a bit about some of the interesting parts of the first part of our book, including why we work and what is work. After the break, we're going to get into discussing when and how much should we work. We'll be right back.

17:58 Doctor Elise Cortez is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise Alise at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

18:50 Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host doctor release Cortes, as I too, am dedicated to helping create a world where people realize our potential. At work are led by inspiration leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness, and we do business at Betters the World. I continue to research and write my own books. So one of my latest books came out in March of twenty twenty three. It's called The Great Revitalization, play on their Resignation. How activating meaning and purpose can radically enliven your business. And I've worked to help leaders understand that, discerning needs and wants of today's workforce, and then provide twenty two best practice practices to build into your culture to provide that. You can find my books on Amazon or check them out on my personal website at least Quartes dot com if you are just now joining us. My guest is first Christopher Wong Michaelson, and also Jennifer Toastikarus. They are the authors of Is Your Work Worth It? How to Think about Meaningful Work, which is what we've been talking about today.

19:43 So speaking about those three orientations, and I remember doctor Amy's work. I came across it some time ago, that meaning at Work research that I did. I looked at how people what did they find meaningful about their work, and how did they did they relate to their work? Those two things, the relationship to work and also the kind of meaning I've found fifteen modes of engagement, and I would say the first couple relate to the calling. The ones in the middle or more career. The bottom middle segment is definitely job. And then there's the negative segment, which is when it's actually negatively experienced but very interesting. I was thinking about that as I was preparing that there's some really interesting feed to that. Okay, so now the great question so many people. One of the things I like to think about is how the younger generations have taught us that we really don't have to work eighty to ninety hours a week. I really appreciate that about you, Jen Y and gen Z. So when and how much should we work is the next topic.

20:42 So I was recently speaking about the book at a conference in the French Alps, and we took a van from the airport to the conference site, and the other people in the van, some of them were going to the conference, and a couple of them were dressed like hikers with giant backpacks, and everybody who was going to the conference was name dropping and talking about all the important things that they'd done, and these two other people were just sort of keeping to themselves. My wife and I were the last ones in the van with them, and then we started talking with them, and they'd been listening to the entire conversation. And they were two people who used to work for one of the big four professional services firms and decided that work the way that it is usually done was not for them anymore. And they were going to work for a year and then take a year off, and work for a year and take a year off. And they were in the midst of one of their years off, and they were going hiking in the French Alps while everybody else was going to network and work really hard. And it was hard not to think that they were the right ones in the van, and all these other quote important people were the wrong ones. We talk in the book about several stages of life, and I'm not going to go through all of them here, but I'll just say, in an oversimplified way, our lives are divided into pre working years,

22:14 when we go to school preparing to work and then our working years all in service to our post working years. And one thing that we tragically discovered in our research on nine to eleven in the pandemic is that all too many people don't make it to those post working years. So why are we trading present happiness for a future happiness that might never come. Secondly, there's been research done through the ages that suggest that most people, especially in affluent markets, their happiness bottoms out when they're earning power is highest. So it seems like we are wasting some of the best years of our lives by working too much or working at the wrong things. And that's why we have to ask when should we work, meaning when in our lives, but also how much should we work and when in the day should we work, given the fact that work often separates us from the people who matter most.

23:26 You know, that was there's so much who said in that that we could go further into. And at the same time, because I want to get as much out of you as we possibly can, I would love for you to also talk about what you wrote about in your book, The Schedules that Work Act. There are two examples in there that really took my breath away and one was the Duncan Donants example. The other one was the Amazon example. Could you just share with our listeners and viewers what we mean by those two examples, what was going on? Sure, these were both examples of people who died. Well, one died at work. This is the Amazon example, and unfortunately there are several such examples of Amazon employees essentially working in the warehouses, essentially dropping dead on the job, likely from over work and these unreasonable schedules, no bathroom breaks, all these things that are now sort of famous about Amazon warehouse working conditions and justifications for at least some of them to have successfully unionized. But employees were told keep working, basically like ignore the corpse and keep working like nothing stops the clock. Really kind of this very under dark underside of modern day capitalism. The other example was a woman who was working multiple jobs, one of them was at a Dunkin Donuts. She was napping in her car in between the shift and died. And you know, just this notion that we have to work, you know,

25:00 many people have to work multiple jobs with unpredictable schedules at all hours of the day and night, you know, not prioritizing even basic needs in service of simply making ends meet. And this ended up being a foundation for this Schedules That Work Act, which says in part that employers have to give sufficient notice before changing an employee schedule so that at least employees can know what are the work hours, making sure they're regulated, and you know, being able to plan their work in life accordingly. I'll note just this Amazon example. You know, I teach a class at Babson that partly uses film films about work to better understand the nature and culture of the workplace.

25:52 And one of the films that we show is Normal Ray, which is a famous movie about from the nineteen seventies about a very unhealthy factory or factory workplace that ends up successfully unionizing in this union push, and you know, the management opposition to it. And I mean that was decades ago. And just to think that we are here, we are, you know, in the twenty twenties, and conditions for many people remain the same as in those days, and the fight for labor protections continues. Yeah, and that's definitely news that I don't normally get my nose into. So I just thought that was really important and really quite sobering. For me to really know that this is still out there, happening in the twenty twenties.

26:40 I want to move on to the idea of should we work for love or money? And sometimes I recognize that I have a very strong bias here, and I've made some choices in my life, some very definitive choices, and so when I'm working with people, I try to remember that I have a value set and a bias set, but your perspective on should we work for love or money? So it's funny that Jen just shared an example from modern film, because we often joke that she's the pop culture officionado and I'm the snob. So I'm going to share an example from modernist painting. The artist Paul Googan.

27:22 We tell a version of his story in the book, and this is a story that's sort of become more of a legend than necessarily truth, because it's been studied by philosophers, it's been fictionalized by novelists and filmmakers, But essentially, as the legend goes, Paulgogan was a workaday stock trader supporting a middle class family in nineteenth century Paris, and was bored with his work. Had always wanted to be in the art world, and so in order to sort of of address some of his longings to be in that world, he started trading paintings. But then there was a stock market crash, he lost his job. He had trouble finding another job and supporting his family, and so eventually he just left them with relatives and left them.

28:16 He first set sail for the Caribbean. Things didn't work out. He spent some time with his buddy, Vincent van go who is also a little bit you know, quzy, let's say, and eventually he abandoned his family permanently and set sail for the South Seas, where he painted many of the canvases that now hang pricelessly in museums. And one of the questions that we're trying to raise by telling the story of Paul goo Gan is, you know, if you become a great artist, then isn't it okay to be kind of a morally bankrupt human being? If he loved his work that much and hated his work that much as a stockbroker, is there something admirable about his choice?

29:11 I personally think that he sounds like an awful human being, but I am grateful that he lived his life so that we could tell his story in a way that raises the kinds of questions that we have to think about as we trade off happiness for sustenance and sometimes forsake our passions. On the other hand, maybe he should have thought more of the work that he was doing to support a family that was certainly worthy of his love, even though he didn't extend his. Love to it. There is so much in that question, and that's why I had you talk about it, because I know that there are listeners and viewers that can relate to both sides of that equation. Gogan who wanted to pursue his passion in the family who left behind it maybe struggle quite a bit. So there's just so much in that and I will all the more reason that I really appreciate what you put forward and forward in your book. You said, instead of instead of choosing the work, we need to support the lifestyle we want, what if we looked looked at it the other way around?

30:21 That is, by choosing the lifestyle we can afford within the limits imposed by the work we aspire to do. That sounds pretty good to me and kind of what I've done, what comments on that. Yeah, well, I mean we, you know, are students. So Christopher and I both teach in colleges, and so we teach students who are wondering, you know, for example, my first job out of college, should I go for love or money. We teach at business schools, and this idea of I have to be an investment banker or I have to be a consultant, because I know I'm going to work really hard, but I want to make just a ton of money. A lot of our students think they're going to work unbelievably long hours in their twenties and be set for life and then live a life of leisure or doing whatever it is that they want to do. And so, you know, just we understand that at some time it makes sense, especially and I mean back to these examples of these workers trying to make ends meet. It is expensive to buy a home in the cities in which you know, we both live. Students are graduating with debt. There are lots of reasons why they might prioritize money over meaning in their especially their first job out of college. But the idea that you know, we're on this treadmill, so to speak of earning where we feel like if we just made a little bit more then it would be enough, and it's never enough.

31:51 You know, this is sort of a well documented phenomenon that there's some you know, percentage of what our salary is that we wish we made that much more are and that you know, the quote that you mentioned speaks to the possibility that that day will never come when we actually feel like that's it, I've made it, I've achieved the desired lifestyle, and now I can stop. And so it's a little bit of how do we and it is there can be a trade off, and in many, many industries there is a trade off where the work that pays the most comes with strings attached, and the work that is the most meaningful is not the one that is going to afford second homes and early retirements and all these kinds of things that we might that we might want. But how do we make peace with you know, what we can justify trading off that allows us to feel like we're making enough to live, but maybe not trying to match some there societal expectation or cultural expectation that is not actually valuable or meaningful to us.

33:06 A billion dollar question never mind the million dollar question. A billion dollar question? All right, well, let's let our listeners to viewers do on that while we take our next break. I'm your host, doctor Eleas Cortez. We've went on the air with doctor Christopher Wong Michaelson, a philosopher of twenty five years with experience advising business leaders pursuing meaning and providing work experience, excuse me, twenty five years experience advising business leaders pursuing meaning and providing work with a purpose. And also Jennifer Tostakaris, who teaches, researches and coaches others about what it means to craft a meaningful career and appreciate the risks and rewards of work as a calling. After the break, we're going to get into further that notion of calling, both the risks as well as the rewards. We'll be right back.

34:04 Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite Elise to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise Alise at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

34:55 Thanks for Jane with us, and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor release Cortes. I mentioned in the last break that my latest book came out in twenty twenty three, The Great Vitalization. What I did for you is I created a simple three page organizational assessment to help you ascertain the extent to it your current culture meets the standards of today's discerning workforce. You can find it on my website Gusto dash Now dot com. If you are just now joining us. My guest is doctor Christopher wrong Michaelson and doctor Jennifer Tosticatis, the authors of Is Your Work Worth It? How to think about Meaning for Work? So this next question is definitely near and dear in my heart. It does speak to the first of the perils if you want the risks of pursuing a calling. And I appreciated so much that you talk about this notion that we are in this calling culture.

35:42 And when I'm out speaking to audiences and the topic of purpose comes up, people are literally, you know, there's this palpable feeling of but I don't know, and it feels so bad that I don't know what my purpose is and that there's a shoulding and something that goes along with that. So I want to hear your perspective. I don't know if that's you, and because I know it's a lot of your research that will speak to first the risks of pursuing a calling. Yeah, I mean, just as you said, Elise, we are in a moment where we tell people, and it's well intentioned advice, but we tell them things like these are actual book titles. Do what you love and the money will follow. Find your calling, Love your Life. Steve Jobs and his famous you know two thousand and five Stanford University commencement address told people in the audience that the only way to do great work is to do what you love, and if you haven't found it yet, keep looking, don't settle. So these are very unsubtle cues that we should be doing work. We love finding our calling early on, as early as possible, that this is a key ingredient for a successful and happy life. And we see again from our students and others who we come into contact with in our own consulting and coaching, a real angst about if I don't know what that is? Am I doing it wrong? Have I already failed? I mean, so you know nineteen twenty year old students in college who feel like they've already failed because they have failed to identify their calling. So part of what I, you know,

37:13 want this book to do is demystify that not everybody finds their callings early and journeys toward it. Many people figure it out as they go, and often the best thing that we can do is go out and have experiences good, bad or otherwise to learn from, you know, rapidly, learn, iterate, pivot. It's very similar to how we describe design thinking or entrepreneurial mindset. Do things, learn from it, and you'll get closer. And you know, there are people who feel their work is a calling despite they weren't the little kids imagining. Do you know this is my destiny and I'm going to do a certain line of work one day. So I just want to dispel that notion of there's sort of one path or one desired path to a calling, and it happens early of people find their callings you know, later in life. Totally fine. The other thing is, maybe myth to dispel is that a calling is in fact a shore fire path to a great life. So there are many risks and perils to work as a calling.

38:17 So part of what makes callings so powerful is that they are almost can borderline on the obsessive. So when we feel a strong calling toward our work, will often seek to perform that work at all costs. Those costs could be cost to us in terms of taking the breaks from work we need, you know, putting in too many hours, especially without compensation that justifies those hours. So from an organization's perspective, these are the great employees who will go above and beyond, and you know, I always know I can call on them because they're so dedicated. But at what point does this become a potential for employee exploitation. So the very thing that makes me love my work potentially sets me up to do too much of it, and you know, potentially to my own ultimately, my own detriment. You know, I do worry about calling, you know, strongly calling oriented employees, giving too much of themselves from work, not being able to disengage in a healthy way from work, having strained relationships with others at work.

39:21 These are all, you know, documented outcomes of feeling a strong calling toward work, being critical of an employer because well, that's not how I think it should be done, and that's not you know, in line with my calling. It can be a tough path, and it can be a path that puts my doing of the work, you know, my way or at all costs, before other considerations about what might make my life actually good. That's quite a spectrum to navigate there. Before we get into a little bit more of thinking about work having a higher purpose. I do want to talk about this notion of this is fascinating what you wrote about in your book, and I do remember this being discussed during the pandemic is what work can't society do without? I think they might be able to do without my work, I'm not so sure. But other work I'm not so sure about.

40:21 Well, you know, as we talk about this I keep thinking people might be wondering. Is talking about meaningful work? Is dreaming of work you love? Is that a privilege only available to a few people? What about those people who don't have the skills, the education to pursue work that they love and make a living. There is a famous framework, often referred to as ekey guy. It's a Japanese term that roughly translates to reason for being that suggests that your purpose is to be found at the intersection of four questions. One question is what are you good at? Another is what do you love? Another is what can you be paid for? And the fourth is escaping me as I speak?

41:16 What does the world need? What can society thank you? Well? The very question that we're talking about right now. Yeah, and that's a really nice set of questions to think about when you think about the possibility of pursuing your purpose. But most people won't find work that actually answers all four of those questions at one time. Many might not even find work that answers all of those questions over the course of a career. But that's certainly something that might be worth aiming for to think about, Well, right now, I need work that I can be paid for for that I have the skills to actually perform, and maybe at this point in my life I need to get my financial feet under me so that at some future point I can pursue work that I love or give to the world in the form of work that the world needs. So I think it's really important for us to think about the kinds of privilege that allow us to ask these questions. But I think it's also important to recognize that even those who may not have the privilege to answer these questions might still be wondering about these questions. You know, the title of the book is is your work Worth it? And everybody, at some point

42:48 on the verge of exhaustion wonders if it's worth it, even if they don't have the wherewithal to make a change. And I think one thing that that does is it sort of it's a burden on the people who do have the ability to make a change to think about not just the meaning of their own work, but also the value of the work that they are providing. I have to interject to this point. If you don't know b Bookolandro and her work, She's a colleague of mine in the purpose community. She wrote a book I forget what it's called now, but essentially what she's putting forth is the notion of no matter what our job is, whether we think it's the cream of the crop and it curls our toes and it's purposeful or whatever is, and we can always sneak in this thing called job purposing or social purposing. And that is the idea that whatever we're doing during the course of the day, we can always find some way to lift and help somebody else in a way. It gives us that sense of purpose that we are doing something above and beyond and we are helping other people. Really quick example of that is she talks about a man who does he parks cars for a living. He's a parking attendant in a garage, and while the people are away, after they've given him the keys to their cars, he goes on and measures the trend on o their tires and he reports back to the owners when they come back if they're low.

44:10 And he has of course saved many people from blowing a tire on a freeway. And that's his way of just sneaking a little bit of purpose for him. So what I love about that is no matter what we're doing, we can always find a way to seek in a little bit of that good purpose stuff. I love that story. And you know, we've been talking about thinking about loving our work, and one thing that we often say is a takeaway from this book is that we should be thinking more not just about what makes us love our work, but what is worth loving about our work. And that's an example of what makes maybe modest work lovable.

44:55 M I had a whole question for that, actually, if you wanted to take that a little bit further, what would make your life worth living in a world without work? And so I don't know which one do you want to take that, but but I mean, for me, let me back up and say that I was raised by farmers and restaurant tours, and work was a way of life. It was an expression of being alive. It was a noble thing. So to me, you know, every work is is worth it. But let me let you. Comment, well, I think that we don't give enough respect to just the fundamental dignity of doing work that is useful, and farming is a great example of that. You know, we started, as I mentioned before, our research examining the role of work in the lives of nine to eleven victims.

45:54 And when Jen talks about this typology job career calling, one thing that we did was draw on that typology in order to understand the stories of the victims that we were reading about, and we discovered not only was that framework useful for understanding the role of work in their lives, but we also, in the course of examining it, wanted to challenge that very framework that we were using. So when I think of work, that's a job. We were looking at victims often who were among the wealthiest people on Wall Street. A job could be seeking to be the biggest, baddest trader on Wall Street. But we also read stories about people who were restaurant workers who were delivering food to those traders and doing so so that they could support a family. And in that sense, we discovered that not all jobs, even though they are all means to material ends, are created equal, and we should appreciate more that sense of dignity and love that's involved in the simple work of supporting a family, which might be the most fundamental of all reasons why people work.

47:23 You know, there's so much more we could talk about. Your book is so thorough and robust, and I saw that you have another book coming out twenty five, so we'll just have to have you back on and talk more anyway, But let me give each of you a chance to close the conversation. It shows listenered by people around the world who are interested in becoming better leaders themselves, who are looking to help create cultures where people actually want to come to work and do their best. We give you each a chance to close with something, say about twenty seconds each. Yeah, well, I really would love your listeners to think about not only why they personally work, but why each of your employees come to work. What is their why?

48:05 And is the organization meeting their why? And I'd like to encourage your listeners to think about how they would explain their work to a seven year old, because if you have trouble explaining the value of your work to a seven year old, then it might be time to sort of rethink why is it worth doing. Wow, what a powerful way to finish. Jan and Christopher. I'm so happy to know both of you. I've learned a lot from you. I do look forward to having you back on the show. If you'll come back, listeners, that's a good that's what she's saying. Yes, so lid, she would love it. We're honored at last. Thank you all the witnesses here. Maybe okay, so listeners and viewers who were going to want to learn more about both of these beautiful humans and the work that they're doing, and the best way to do that is really to go to Christopher Wongmichaelson dot com. I will spell that out for you, so it's Christopher standard spelling Wong WNG Michaelson, E M I C H A E L s O N Christopher Wangmichaelson dot com. Go check them out. You can find more about the book and some of their work as well. You can also find the ways to be able to connect with them that way too. Last week, you've missed the Life Show, you can always catch it be a recorded podcast or where you get your podcasts. We're on with Matt Schenker, the founder of Matter More. We talked about his creation of the Empowered Wellbeing Theory, a transdisciplinary bio psychosocial spiritual model for understanding human wellbeing and their work they are doing to harness the best of AI and behavior science to

49:35 empower the future of work. And what they call work four point zero. Next week will be on with Shock D. Dudley and Alan Prusham talking about their joint venture championing inspirational and spiritual leadership among executives. See you there and for another inspiring and educational conversation on working on purpose and remember work is one of the best adventures and means of realizing our potential and making the impact we crave. So let's work on Purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on W four CY. Together we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously, leadership inspires and passion performance, and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's Work on Purpose.