Meaningful Productivity: How Purpose Supercharges Your Output (Without Burning You Out)

Pointless productivity

You know that feeling when you’ve completed the tasks you were supposed to do but then ended up feeling… unfulfilled? Hollow, even?

It’s basically completing a side quest while forgetting about the main quest in an RPG. I mean sure, side quests are great (weapons, armour, spells, advanced class options) – but they don’t drive the mainline quest story forward.

It does feel good to have that checklist on your quest journal though, and even on your own personal work checklist.

But feeling good doesn’t mean that you have a feeling of direction. And that’s the problem here. It’s like running on a treadmill vs running in the wild. When you run on a treadmill, you’re technically going nowhere – although it feels good. When you run in the wild, you’re actually going somewhere (even if that somewhere is back home) (also my trainer told me this “Take it easy and enjoy the views” for my first intentional run).

In positive psychology, meaning and purpose are one of the elements of wellbeing (PERMA) – and meaningful work (and a meaningful life) are tied to work engagement, job performance, and lower burnout.

Meaning is connection

The whole point of meaning is that it defines something – by connecting two things that are physically separate (Baumeister & Vohs, 2002). Because those things are physically separate, the meaning and connection can only be appreciated in the human mind, rather than physically.

And hence, meaning is a nonphysical reality (Baumeister & Vohs, 2002). The biggest example is that of money – how does a $2 note equate to a pair of $1 coins? Physically, they are absolutely not equal to each other. But because we ascribe value and meaning to paper bills and coins, that purple $2 paper and those golden $1 metal discs are, in fact, equivalent.

The four needs of meaning

But meaning in life doesn’t just come from a direction to head to (although that is one of the components of meaning). Finding meaning in life consists of fulfilling four needs (Baumeister, 1991).

Purpose: This consists of two things – goals (something objective that is desired but not yet real) and fulfillments (a more subjective direction, like being in love or going to heaven).

Values: The principles that lead to a sense that the things you do are correct or beneficial to your life, and therefore provide the rationale for what you do.

Efficacy: Believing that you can make a difference in what you do, mostly through control over the self or the environment.

Self-worth: Reasons for believing that you are human-being that is deserving.

The key thing is that people don’t derive meaning from one source (it’s hard to find a source that fulfills all four needs!) but from multiple sources. (Emmons, 1997).

A happy life is not a meaningful life

You can be happy but not feel like there is meaning (like many of us do sometimes)

You can have a meaningful life but not be happy (like a freedom fighter) (pick any of the Star Wars freedom fighters, really).

You can have a happy and meaningful life, but achieving one aspect is not the same as achieving the other.

The thing is this – happiness is hedonic. It’s about pleasure. But meaning is eudaimonic – about leading a life that has coherence and significance. Meaning is more lasting, although happiness is a desirable thing as well.

Benefits of meaning making

There are ways to making meaning in your life (we’ll come to that in a bit!) but there are physical and mental benefits to it. For instance, writing a life story can create, transform, solidify, or highlight important aspects of your life (McAdams, 1996) – thus making it obvious to you what your own canon events are.

When writing about traumatic events and making meaning of it, it can lead to physical benefits such as a healthier immune system, fewer illnesses and trips to the doctor, and better liver functioning (Pennebaker et al, 1988).

Even more saliently, this can lead to improved academic performance as well (Pennebaker et al., 1990).

You can do more and do better in life alone, when you find meaning.

Applying the four needs at in life

How can you use the four needs of to enhance a sense of meaning in your life? Here’s how those needs can be translated into action.

Purpose: Having a clear purpose acts as a filter to defer/reduce the pointless tasks, and reduce your decision fatigue.

Values: Knowing your values enables you to make faster decisions, and reduce the overthinking that you might have.

Efficacy: Believing that what you do matters enables you to start earlier, last longer, and finish stronger.

Self-worth: This acts as a resilience, helping you see failures as data for iterating and improving.

Meaning upgrades you can do in less than 10 minutes

With that, here are several tips that you can use to inject meaning into your life.

1. Create a 1-sentence daily purpose prompt

Every day, write down your purpose like this: “Today I am working towards [purpose] through [action 1] and [action 2].” This helps you to clarify the meaning in your life.

2. Values intention check

Before committing to something, do a mini-intention setting. Will this move you towards your values? If it doesn’t, try to avoid or minimise the commitment.

3. Tiny wins

At the end of every day, jot down 3 things that you did that moved something important (rather than just for survival). Celebrate those achievements.

4. What went wrong?

When something goes wrong (you missed the bus, for example) – ask yourself these three questions. What happened? What value was I serving? What will I do differently next time?

This helps to ensure that you learn from the failure, or that you disregard it as a failure (because it’s not linked to self-worth).

5. Meaning audit

Look at your main tasks (it’s easier to start this with the previous week) for the week. For each one, ask yourself which of the four meaning needs – purpose, values. efficacy, or self-worth – it fulfilled. Colour code them (I like to colour code mine).

If it doesn’t fulfill a meaning need, act to reduce or delegate it for future weeks.

6. Meaning journalling

At the end of each day, ask yourself “where did I feel the most meaning today?”

Writing it down helps to show you what activities build such meaning, and after a week, you’ll be able to start seeing patterns.

How will you build your meaningful productivity system?

Finding meaning helps you to do more in a better, healthier way – and it also makes you better, and healthier.

Meaning isn’t just about purpose. Purpose is but just one facet when it comes to leading a meaningful life.

Think about a purpose, use values to set boundaries, get going using your own efficacy, and manage challenges through your self-worth.

And if you want to build your own meaningful productivity system, you know who to look for (if it’s not obvious, it’s me haha).

References

Allan, Blake & Batz-Barbarich, Cassondra & Sterling, Haley & Tay, Louis. (2018). Outcomes of Meaningful Work: A Meta‐Analysis. Journal of Management Studies. 56. 500-528. 10.1111/joms.12406. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12406

Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of life. New York: Guilford.

Baumeister, R.F., & Vohs, K.D. (2002). The pursuit of meaningfulness in life. Handbook of positive psychology, 608-618.

Emmons, R. A. (1997). Motives and goals. In R. Hogan, & J. A. Johnson (Eds.), Handbook of personality psychology (p. 485–512). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

McAdams, D. P. (1996). Personality, modernity, and the storied self: A contemporary framework for studying persons. Psychological Inquiry, 7, 295–321.

Pennebaker, J. W., Colder, M., & Sharp, L. K. (1990). Accelerating the coping process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 528– 537.

Pennebaker, J. W., Kiecolt-Glaser, J., & Glaser, R. (1988). Disclosure of traumas and immune func- tion: Health implications for psychotherapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 56, 239–245.