the experience of meaningful work

Meaningful Work, Part 1

I’ve been digging into the “meaningful work” literature this past week as a side project. I had been thinking I wanted to start pushing my research agenda in this direction and based on what I am seeing, I think it is a good fit. 

The literature on meaningful work looks at the topic from two directions: first, meaningful work as an experienced psychological state; and second, the causes of the psychological state. To keep this post shorter, I’ll just focus on the experience of meaningful work this week, and come back to the sources next week. 

So here’s a quick quiz for you, it’s called the work and meaning inventory (WAMI) (developed by Steger, Dik, & Duffy, 2012 - you can download the article here.) It measures the degree to which you are experiencing meaningful work as a psychological state. Here’s the quiz:

For each question, score yourself 1-5, with 1 being “strongly disagree” and 5 being “strongly agree”.

1. I have found a meaningful career.

2. I view my work as contributing to my personal growth

3. My work really makes no difference to the world.

4. I understand how my work contributes to my life’s Meaning.

5. I have a good sense of what makes my job meaningful.

6. I know my work makes a positive difference in the world. 

7. My work helps me better understand myself.

8. I have discovered work that has a satisfying purpose.

9. My work helps me make sense of the world around me.

10. The work I do serves a greater purpose. 

I’ll leave some space blank here while you do the quiz.

Here’s a random picture of my daughter’s cat.

Ready for the answers? Except for question 3, it should be obvious that a bigger score means you feel like you are experiencing more meaning at work. Question 3 is reverse scored, so I would put a negative sign in front of your answer - if you answered “4” (let’s hope not), you should subtract four from your total. 

But this inventory actually has three subscales, so you want to look not only at your overall score, but also the three subscales. 

Subscales

Positive meaning (PM) - my work is meaningful to me. 

1. I have found a meaningful career.

4. I understand how my work contributes to my life’s meaning.

5. I have a good sense of what makes my job meaningful.

8. I have discovered work that has a satisfying purpose.

Meaning making through work (MM) - my work is transformative and provides unity to my life. 

2. I view my work as contributing to my personal growth

7. My work helps me better understand myself.

9. My work helps me make sense of the world around me.

Greater good motivations (GM) - my work has meaning beyond myself. 

3. My work really makes no difference to the world. (reverse - make this score negative) 

6. I know my work makes a positive difference in the world. 

10. The work I do serves a greater purpose. 

All three of these subscales are correlated, but there is some difference. For PM, the experience is primarily about your experience at work. Work that is gratifying, fun, and you lose yourself in, should score high on PM. For MM, you become someone better through your work. You have a sense that your work is transforming you and informing you. Finally, GM is about the impact you feel you are having in the world. Do you feel like the world will be a better place for you having been in it? 

When I was a young lieutenant first in the Army, I had a pretty strong sense of GM - I was serving my country. But honestly, I wasn’t very good at the first couple of jobs I had - they just weren’t a good fit for me at that point in my life. My PM was quite low. I was making plans to get out at the end of my first tour and I only stayed in because my wife was pregnant and it would pay the bills. My MM was probably middling - but mostly what I was learning was I wasn’t a good fit for the things the Army was asking me to do, so that was depressing. Things trended upward, happily, and I wound up spending 23 years on active duty, and I had pretty high scores across all three subscales. 

Chances are, if you have a little gray in your hair, you can reflect on different parts of your career and identify periods when the scales would have been low and when they would have been higher. It’s worth reflecting on what causes those experienced feelings so you can pursue them. I’ll talk more about that next week. 

Reference:

Steger, M. F., Dik, B. J., & Duffy, R. D. (2012). Measuring meaningful work: The work and meaning inventory (WAMI). Journal of career Assessment, 20(3), 322-337. Download here.