Exercises — Chapter 28: Finding Meaning and Purpose in Work

These exercises are designed to generate insight rather than comfort. Approach them with honest inquiry. The most useful answers are not the ones that sound good — they are the ones that feel true.

Part 1: Assessing Your Current Orientation

Exercise 28.1 — Job, Career, or Calling?

Wrzesniewski's three orientations — job, career, and calling — are not rankings. Each is a genuine relationship to work. The goal here is accurate identification, not aspiration.

(a) Read each of the following statements and rate how accurately it describes your current relationship to your primary work (1 = not at all accurate, 5 = very accurate):

Job orientation statements: - The most important things in my life happen outside work - I work primarily to earn the money that enables the life I actually want - I don't particularly think about my work when I'm not at work - Work is fine, but it's not where I find my deepest satisfactions

Career orientation statements: - I am motivated by advancement, achievement, and recognition in my field - I care about how I compare with others at a similar stage - My professional trajectory is a significant part of how I understand myself - I feel genuine satisfaction when I reach a new milestone or level

Calling orientation statements: - I find my work deeply connected to who I am - I would continue doing this work (in some form) even if compensation were significantly lower - The meaning I find in my work is not primarily about achievement or income - It is difficult to imagine a fully satisfying life that didn't include this kind of work

(b) Identify your primary orientation. Does it match what you expected?

(c) Is your current orientation the one you want? The right orientation is not always "calling" — but it should be the genuine one for this stage of your life.

(d) Has your orientation changed over time? What has driven the shifts?

Exercise 28.2 — The Gap Analysis

The gap between what your role formally requires and what you find meaningful is a key predictor of engagement.

(a) List the five to eight things you actually spend the most time on in your current work.

(b) For each item, rate its meaningfulness to you (1 = this feels like wasted time, 5 = this feels genuinely important).

(c) Identify the gap: which items take the most time with the least meaning? Which provide the most meaning with the least time?

(d) Is the gap narrow or wide? Based on what the chapter describes, what does the size of this gap predict for your engagement and wellbeing?

(e) Which meaningful items could you expand? Which low-meaning items could you reduce, delegate, or transform?

Part 2: Job Crafting

Exercise 28.3 — The Job Crafting Map

Create a visual representation of your current work and its potential for crafting.

Step 1: On a large sheet of paper, write your role title in the center. Around it, write all the tasks you regularly perform — each on a small circle. Size the circles roughly proportionally to the time each takes.

Step 2: Color-code: shade each task by how energizing and meaningful it feels (dark = very meaningful, light = draining or meaningless).

Step 3: Look at your map. What is the ratio of meaningful to draining work? Where is your time going?

Step 4: Consider: what tasks could you expand, add, modify, or reduce through legitimate initiative within your role? Are there tasks currently outside your role that would add meaning if incorporated?

Step 5: Draw the "crafted" version of your role map — where would you redirect time and energy?

(a) What is the gap between your current map and the crafted map?

(b) Which crafting changes are within your control? Which require organizational permission or negotiation?

Exercise 28.4 — Relational Crafting

Relationships are a primary source of meaning at work. This exercise maps your current work relationships and identifies crafting opportunities.

(a) List the people you interact with regularly at work (colleagues, managers, direct reports, clients, customers, partners).

(b) For each, rate: how much does this relationship contribute to your sense of meaning and engagement? (1 = actively draining, 5 = significantly adds meaning)

(c) Which relationships are you underinvesting in? What would it look like to deepen or strengthen the highest-meaning relationships?

(d) The chapter notes that proximity to the people your work affects is a predictor of meaning. Are you sufficiently close to the people whose lives your work touches? How might you increase this visibility?

(e) Design one relational crafting experiment: a way to change or deepen one work relationship that could increase your sense of meaningful connection.

Exercise 28.5 — Cognitive Crafting

Cognitive crafting involves reconceiving the purpose or significance of your work — zooming out to see the larger real picture.

(a) Write a one-sentence description of your job from the "job description" perspective (what you formally do).

(b) Now write a one-sentence description of your job from the perspective of its ultimate impact — who benefits, and how?

(c) Does the second description feel genuine, or does it feel like marketing? If it feels genuine, this is effective cognitive crafting. If it feels hollow, the crafting hasn't found the real connection yet.

(d) Identify someone whose life your work has meaningfully affected. Write a paragraph describing how your work reached that person.

(e) If you find cognitive crafting difficult — if the "larger purpose" doesn't feel real — this may indicate a gap between your work and your values, or a visibility problem (your work affects people but you can't see how). Which is it?

Part 3: Exploring Purpose

Exercise 28.6 — The Five Whys for Work

This exercise drills down from surface-level work descriptions to underlying purpose.

Start with: "I work in [your field/role]."

Ask five times: Why does that matter?

After each answer, ask "Why does that matter?" again, until you've pushed as deep as you can go.

(a) What emerged at the bottom of the five-why chain? Does it surprise you?

(b) Is the answer in the final layer connected to something beyond yourself — to other people, to values, to a kind of world you want to inhabit?

(c) The chapter notes that purpose with a purely self-focused horizon (personal success, achievement, pleasure) tends to provide weaker motivational sustenance than purpose that involves contribution to others. What does your five-why analysis reveal about the orientation of your purpose?

Exercise 28.7 — The Contribution Question

Damon's research on purpose identifies clarity about contribution direction as more motivationally powerful than general aspiration.

(a) In the next five years, what is the most important thing your work could contribute? Be specific: to whom, in what form, with what consequence?

(b) What evidence will you have, in five years, that you made the contribution? What will be different in the world, or in specific people's lives?

(d) What would you need to change about your current work life — role, orientation, crafting, conditions — to make this contribution more likely?

Exercise 28.8 — The Legacy Letter

Write a letter from your future self (twenty years from now) to your current self. In the letter, your future self describes:

The work you did that mattered most
The people whose lives were affected by your work
What you would do again and what you would do differently
What surprised you about where meaning was actually found

(a) Read the letter back. What appears in the letter that is not in your current work life? What is present in your current work life that doesn't appear in the letter?

(b) Are there specific changes implied by the letter? Are any of them actionable now?

(c) The chapter draws on Carstensen's socioemotional selectivity theory — that awareness of finitude shifts priorities toward what is genuinely significant. Did writing from a future perspective change what felt important?

Part 4: Flow and Craft

Exercise 28.9 — Your Flow Map

(a) Over the next two weeks, keep a brief daily log of when you experience flow at work — moments of complete absorption where time distorted, self-consciousness receded, and the activity was intrinsically rewarding.

(b) For each flow experience, note: the task, its challenge level relative to your skill, the conditions (alone/with others, environment, time of day), and how long it lasted.

(c) After two weeks, review the log: What types of tasks produce flow for you? What conditions support it? What is the ratio of flow time to total work time?

(d) Flow requires a challenge-skill balance — the task should be at or slightly beyond the edge of current skill. Which of your current tasks are too easy (producing boredom) and which are too hard (producing anxiety)? Are there ways to adjust the challenge level?

(e) Design one change to your work to increase your time in the flow channel.

Exercise 28.10 — The Craft Dimension

Crawford's argument is that meaning is accessed through genuine skill development — through getting it right against a standard the work itself provides.

(a) In your current work, what is the craft you are developing? What does "getting it right" look like in your domain?

(b) Who in your field or role exemplifies the craft at its highest level? What specifically do they do that you cannot yet do?

(c) What would a deliberate practice target look like for your craft (as defined in Chapter 26)? What specific gap would you address, and how?

(d) When was the last time you felt genuine craft satisfaction — the specific pleasure of doing something at the edge of your skill and doing it well? What was the task?

Part 5: The Dark Side

Exercise 28.11 — The Overidentification Check

(a) If you lost your current job or role tomorrow: what would remain of your sense of self? What would be threatened?

(b) Complete this sentence: "I am a _____." How quickly does your occupational identity appear in your answer?

(c) The chapter notes that people whose sense of self is most narrowly defined by professional role show the steepest wellbeing decline when roles change or end. On a scale of 1–10, how overidentified are you with your work role?

(d) What are the other sources of identity and meaning in your life — relationships, creative pursuits, community roles, physical practice, spiritual life? Are these developed enough to support you through a professional disruption?

(e) If the answer is no: what would you need to invest in — outside work — to create a more diversified meaning portfolio?

Exercise 28.12 — The Sustainable Pace Assessment

(a) What is your current ratio of giving to receiving at work — how much are you expending relative to recovering?

(b) Describe your current work pace: is it sustainable for ten years? Twenty?

(c) The chapter warns of the "martyrdom" pattern — over-sacrifice in the service of meaningful work that accelerates burnout. Do you recognize any elements of this in your current work life?

(d) What would a sustainable pace look like? What would you need to protect, reduce, or change to achieve it?

(e) The chapter notes that the sustainable relationship with meaningful work is a long one — decades, not sprints. What does the "long arc" version of your working life require that you invest in now?

Part 6: Meaning Under Adverse Conditions

Exercise 28.13 — Finding Meaning Where It Is

For people in difficult work conditions — not every reader has the luxury of job crafting or orientation choice — this exercise asks the more fundamental question.

(a) Without changing anything about your current work conditions: what is the most genuine meaning you can find in what you currently do?

(b) Who specifically is affected — even slightly — by the work you do? Can you make that effect more visible to yourself?

(d) Frankl's "attitudinal values" — the meaning found in how we face unavoidable suffering — apply here. If the conditions cannot be changed: what stance toward them is most aligned with who you want to be?

(e) The chapter distinguishes between "I can craft my way to meaning here" and "this work cannot provide the meaning I need." Which is closer to your honest assessment?

Exercise 28.14 — Meaning Inside and Outside Work

Many people's most significant meaning comes not from work but from relationships, community, creative life, or spiritual practice. This exercise takes that seriously.

(a) Where, overall, do you find the most reliable and significant meaning in your life? List your top five sources — these may or may not include work.

(b) For each source, rate its current health: is it being adequately tended, neglected, or thriving?

(c) Is work among your top five? If not: is your current relationship to work (job orientation, primarily) aligned with that reality? Or are you treating work as a primary meaning source when it isn't?

(d) The chapter notes that a job orientation is not deficient — it is a rational response to work that isn't a primary meaning source, when the rest of life is developed enough to hold the meaning. Is the rest of your life developed enough?

Part 7: Designing Forward

Exercise 28.15 — The Horizon of Significance

Taylor's "horizon of significance" is the framework of what matters within which choices have weight. This exercise attempts to articulate yours.

(a) In one paragraph: what matters to you most, at this stage of your life? Not what should matter — what actually does.

(b) Is your current work life located within this horizon, or outside it? Does the work contribute to what matters, or is it adjacent to it, or contrary to it?

(c) What would it look like for your work to be more fully within the horizon of what matters to you? Is this a crafting question (change what you do within the role), an orientation question (change how you relate to the role), or a structural question (change the role or situation itself)?

(d) Write a one-sentence statement of the horizon you are working within: the framework of what matters that gives your choices weight. Return to this statement in six months and see whether it has changed.