RWL #291

Meaning = Competence x Contribution x Connection

Sep 04, 2022

Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! We are back at it, “teaching the people”, as one of my colleagues used to say. The beginning of the semester always feels like the starting gun has just gone off at a marathon. You just start putting one foot in front of the other because the end seems impossibly far away - though I know, come December, it always feels like things are moving at a sprint.

So last week I mentioned I wanted to talk about what it takes to live a life with meaning. I came up with a cute little equation (I am trained as an economist, after all):

Meaning = Competence x Contribution x Connection

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this idea - how does one live a life that has meaning, especially in a sometimes meaningless world? We only go around in this life once, so it’s an important question. And this equation is an initial effort at a distillation of that thinking - at least an effort at it. I could go a lot farther into the weeds, with quotes and citations, and maybe I will eventually, but for this initial shot, I’m going to try to be (relatively) concise.

So let me walk you through this equation in general first. To start, I chose to use multiplication instead of addition because addition would allow any one of the C’s to go to zero - or even two of the three - and still get a high score for meaning if the remaining C had a high value. But if you think of the relationship as interacting, then if one of the values goes to zero (or below, an admittedly unlikely thing), overall meaning is experienced as zero. In other words, you can’t have a deep sense of meaning without having some of all three of these C’s in your life.

I am using the idea of a meaningful life (“meaning”) to describe the sense of reflective satisfaction with one’s life, but I think you could reflect over a shorter or longer time frame or slice of your life. At the get go, I want to say that what constitutes each of these three C’s is going to look different in each person’s life to some degree, and therefore what ultimately constitutes meaning will look different as well. But the subjective sense of worthiness should be there.

So where do the three C’s come from? I tend to think about them in a work context, but one of the great things about working in a college with many departments is getting to talk with colleagues from other disciplines. In my college we have the Department of Recreation Management and Policy where the primary focus of my colleagues is discussions of leisure and what we do with our leisure time. I’ve had many great conversations that have helped me reshape my focus away from work as the overriding source of meaning. Specifically I learned from them about compensatory theories of leisure where the kind of leisure one needs most is usually to fulfill the needs not met in one’s work experience. So the C’s can come from work or leisure - if you are lucky, both.

OK - let’s talk about the variables.

Competence

As I was writing this, I realized there were two types of competence that fit into this equation, both of which are important. I think of them as generalized competence and specialized competence.

Generalized competence you could think of as adulting. It’s a set of skills, behaviors, understandings, and self-discipline that allow you to move through life without blowing up. At its core is a recognition that you are responsible for your own outcomes. It is living within your means and preparing for the future, it is managing relationships and setting boundaries which also prepare for the future, it is taking care of your health - it is actually having something of a future orientation. The opposite of adulting is acting like a teenager giving in to every whim, which is essentially a bias for the present. Generalized competence isn’t particularly fun, which is why adulting gets such a bad rap. It’s an expression of conservatism, protecting your future self from the whims of your present self. It’s stuff like understanding how your health insurance works, how your retirement plan works, setting a reasonable sleep schedule, not eating cookies for breakfast (at least not every day), showing up at work on time and sober, etc.

Specialized competence is more interesting. For me, this competence is being good at something. Being good at something gives us a sense of pride, especially when others recognize our competence. It may be that whatever this thing is that you are especially competent at is the thing you do to earn a living, but it does not have to be. Specialized competence is about more than just earning a living, it is about doing something that engages your mind and/or body in such a way as to bring you into touch with something greater than self. When we find the thing we are meant to do, engaging in that activity helps us move toward something transcendent (see the video on flow state in Watch below).

People can be sufficiently competent in a generalized fashion such that they are valuable workers. Some jobs basically just need a person to show up on time and sober - but the work itself does not give a person a sense of satisfaction. This could be because the job is so mind-numbing that it does not engage the person, or it could be that it is not the right set of tasks to push their need for specialized competence. Finding the right fit is important (see 16 personalities in Read).

Sometimes people, for a variety of path-dependent reasons, don’t have the ability to choose a job that will allow them to develop meaningful specialized competence. This is where leisure can fill in. Someone who works in a mind-numbing factory job, for example, might find specialized competence by having a hobby that requires a high degree of skill (repairing old cars, being a musician, crafting, etc.).

Specialized competence, when we are exercising it, also gives us a sense of control. It may be a bit of an illusion, but when you are immersed in your specialized competence, the chaos of the world melts away and you have a little corner of meaning all your own.

Contribution

I once interviewed an oncologist (a doctor who specializes in cancer care) about his choice to become a physician, and specifically to specialize in oncology. He grew up in a southern European country, and English was his second language, so he spoke fluently, but with an accent. He also carried with him some of the values that I recognized from my own Italian ancestry - a certain directness and lack of patience with the frivolous. When I asked him why a physician, and why oncology, his response was, “It’s important to do something important.” He went on to disparage several other professions, and then several other physician specialties as not being important. But specifically why oncology, then? Because oncology is serious, he told me. Cancer is frightening and dangerous and the stakes are life and death. What he does matters in a deep way to his patients and their families. This gives him a deep sense of making a contribution. I believe a meaningful life needs a sense of contribution. When we reflect back on our lives, we want to be able to think about the impact we have had, usually on other people, and believe that impact was for the good.

Many of you who read this newsletter are involved in healthcare, though I would say most of you are not providers laying hands on patients. Many physicians look at people who work in the administration of healthcare organizations as frivolous, unnecessary, or even getting in the way of providing good care. There are obviously bad administrators, just like there are bad physicians, but most people who work in administration are doing their best to contribute to the provision of care. I have talked with many physicians who have made the jump from provider to administrator and they usually have a moment of clarity when they realize the management of a system is much more complicated than it looked like from their exam room. They also often have to reframe how they understand their sense of making a contribution. They miss the immediate satisfaction that comes from the gratitude of a patient or a patient’s family because it is easy to gauge your contribution when it is expressed emotionally in your presence. When they come over to administration (to the Dark Side, as it were), they have to find that sense of contribution in a more abstract sense. Very few people ever make their way up to the Chief Medical Officer’s (CMO) office and say, “Hey doc, I just wanted to thank you for making sure that the quality of care in this institution was top notch.” Almost no patients know who the CMO of the organization is where they get care. They very much know who their own doctor is, who the nurses are, etc. But the CMO is a faceless entity whose role they most likely don’t understand.

Those of us who work in the administration of healthcare have to come to an understanding that, although patients will most likely never know who we are, we still make a contribution. When I was a chief financial officer of two different hospitals, I would walk through the halls on the way to one meeting from another and pass by patients who had no idea who I was (nor did they care), and yet I was contributing to their care. I was contributing to the care of every patient. I was also contributing to the well-being of all of the employees.

One doesn’t have to be an executive to have a sense of contribution. It is usually a matter of framing in your mind. The housekeeper who changes the linens in a hospital room is contributing to care, as is the security guard, the dishwasher in the cafeteria, or the information system tech. The doctor, as we used to say in the Army, is the pointy tip of the spear, but there is a long line of people making a contribution behind her/him to make her/his work possible.

Contribution x specialized competence is especially meaningful. If you are a great doctor, you know you are making a contribution. It provides a deep sense of personal meaning. But you can also find your Zen by engineering a spreadsheet or organizing patient flow. If you have a job that is a good fit for you, where you can exercise your specialized competence in service of something worthy, you will bring these two components of meaning together.

Finally, contribution doesn’t have to come from the workplace. Family is an important source of contribution for some people. Providing a safe and nurturing environment for children is an important source of meaning for some people. Or being part of a community organization or club. And that brings me to the third variable, connection.

Connection

Human beings are, relative to other animals, weak, slow, have poor vision, poor hearing, poor sense of smell, and have neither effective tooth nor claw to survive alone. And yet we are the apex predators of the world. We bend nature to our will daily. We do this because we have power in packs. Our big brains are designed to help us work in groups to coordinate and learn. We are nothing without our groups. We deteriorate rapidly when put into isolation, even falling into psychosis, unable to tell reality from fantasy. We need connection not only to survive physically, but emotionally. We need to belong. One only needs to look at the political polarization of the last six years to see how potent the need for connection is.

I’m framing this as negative, but I believe we get much of our sense of a meaningful life from our connections to other people. We have a deep need to belong to other people, and to have other people belong to us. This sense of connection is most important to be found outside of the workplace - in family and friends and community.

Belonging to an organization is transitory. When I was in the Army, I heard it said many times something to the effect of “Everyone gets on the bus, and everyone eventually gets off the bus, but the Army keeps rolling along.” Organizations do not have feelings. The Army wasn’t sad when I retired. It’s not capable of being sad. UNH wasn’t happy when I joined the faculty because UNH doesn’t have feelings. There were people who were sad when I retired, and I was sad to leave. Many of them I am still in touch with - some of them are reading this letter. I think good leaders create connections, and nurture connections, but we have to have some care in where our sense of connection latches on to. An organization will never love you back because it is incapable of love. Only people (and some animals) are capable of love. Work is a great source for meaningful connection, and I think the best work places offer connection with intention.

A life without love, the ultimate connection, is not a meaningful life.

Putting it together

Apologies for the length - I said I would try to keep this short and I failed. If you made it this far, thanks for bearing with me as I work this out.

I believe a life that has each of these three elements in some positive measure will be a meaningful life. I will go so far as to say, I don’t believe you can have a meaningful life without each of these elements in some positive measure, because, as I said at the beginning, if one of these goes to zero, the whole thing falls apart. I do think as we go through life these variables rise and fall. I have heard that as we age, connection comes to dominate. I think perhaps, but I also think even elderly people need competence and to feel a sense of contribution.

I’d like to hear what you think of my model. It’s a work in progress, so please be nice, but also honest.

Flourishing in the World

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