Meaning vs. achievement
A conversation about values and expectations
From time to time at Design Dept., we get together to discuss topics we’ve been thinking about or struggling with. Often, these are issues that have come up in our own lives that we’re also hearing others bring up in workshops or coaching sessions.
Recently, we talked about the way we’re conditioned to chase after achievement as if that’s supposed to equal success and fulfillment. But the truth is that chasing after meaning is much more rewarding and fulfilling. So how do we distinguish between those two? And is it possible to have them both in our careers: meaning and achievement?
Here’s what our leadership coaches Margaret Lee, Melanie Araujo-Valdes Olmos, and Hillary Carey had to say about it:
Margaret: I’ve been thinking a lot about how we distinguish between finding meaning in our work versus going for achievement.
My experience working in tech for many years was that people are obsessed about promotion. They’re obsessed about their levels, about what it means to be an L this number versus an L that number. And honestly, I felt it wasn’t healthy.
When I got into coaching, I swung the pendulum in the other direction of really looking for meaning in my work. I realize these two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. If we’re lucky, we can achieve and have meaning in our work. Usually it’s a balance — not an either/or — and sometimes you have one more than the other.
This topic comes up a lot in coaching. If I sense that the person is just really being driven by the need to get a promotion, then I do try to see if they can strike a balance with finding meaning as well. Sometimes people think that the achievement is the thing they’re supposed to go after, but I don’t think that’s true.
Melanie: I think about it like this: Is the doing influencing the being or is the being influencing the doing? Am I a human doing or a human being?
When I first did a values clarification exercise in 2019 — I was at Facebook at the time — I felt like my Being was being directed and questioned. I was pushed toward two paths, management and the principal path, but the question of who I actually am was never taken into consideration.
It was a combination of my managers and myself, and the way that I’ve been socialized, which is that linear progression leads to success. If you go out on your own and choose for yourself, there’s a higher degree of failure and risk.
It’s so easy to just do. To default to do, and never really question or think about your actions or choices.. And I find that when we just do unconsciously, we grow without purpose. And when we grow without purpose, we move further and further away from who we are at our core.
For me, I find meaning and purpose in cultivating and holding safe and brave spaces for creative leaders to sit with themselves and ask these questions:
- Who have you been?
- Who are you right now?
- Who do you want to be?
- How do those answers influence your work life?
It’s the act of generating awareness and then intentionally choosing and creating from that place that leads to a pivotal or transformational change. In other words, to find purpose and meaning in one’s work.
Hillary: It’s so important to think about how you want to spend your time.
Coaching has shown me that this is an amazing way to spend my day: holding space for people, connecting with people. Gosh, that is a great way to spend an hour! Let me fill my day with more hours like that!
I’m reading two books right now that are accidentally connected. One is The Fire Starter Sessions by Danielle LaPorte, which talks about how you can only be amazing if you’re doing what you absolutely love. The other is Persuasion: Convincing Others When Facts Don’t Seem to Matter by Lee Hartley Carter. It sounds like it’s about disinformation, but actually it talks about how if you want to persuade people that what you offer is valuable, you need to know what you really want. I’ve been going through this exercise myself, trying to figure out what I really want.
And thinking about times in my life where I have had a realization that has been helpful. First there was the realization: “Oh, I actually don’t want to be an executive!” I was riding that career train; letting the momentum carry me without making an intentional decision. I just thought, “Of course I want to be a design research executive. That’s the top of my field, so that’s what I want to be.”
I was just doing what I thought was expected of me. And then I had that moment of recognizing that’s not what I actually wanted. I felt a weight coming off, like, “Oh, my gosh, what a relief! I don’t want to do this; now there are all these other things I can do!”
That moment also feels connected to my choice to not have kids. When I was in my 30s and realized I didn’t want to have children, it was like, “What are all the other things I can do with my life if I don’t have to follow this path?” That felt like such a train of all these things that you have to do if you have kids — you have to prioritize your own kids, move to the right school district, save for college, and focus only on your kids — and it made me feel like I didn’t have any freedom.
Both of those choices meant that I really had to figure out what else I could do if I wasn’t going to do those things. Around the time that I realized I didn’t want to be an executive, I joined this social justice church where people were connected to spirituality and also connected to doing good in the world. I saw that they spent their time not earning much money but they were really satisfied in their days, and that became more and more appealing to me. Being exposed to that made me want to move toward that feeling where every day is filled with doing good work instead of trying to keep up with my friends who are on that executive track.
And Margaret, you’ve done both! You’ve had kids; you’ve done cool things. I’m not saying that if you have kids you can’t do cool things.
Margaret: I think we can always get off of that train at any stop. We don’t have to do things in a certain order or earn a certain title just because that’s what’s expected of us.
Hillary: Yeah. You can have kids creatively. You can be an executive creatively. You can take any of those life paths and make them what you want them to be.
Melanie: This is reminding me of Brené Brown’s book, Braving the Wilderness. To go out on your own, brave the wilderness and to choose your authentic self is a hard and courageous thing to do.
We encounter saboteurs and inner critics along the way. But we also tell stories to ourselves that keep us stuck. So we choose safety: emotional, psychological, financial, mental safety instead of choosing ourselves.
Margaret: Exactly. The rules that society gives us are made up. They are all external validation. And we don’t have to follow those rules — we can follow our values, instead.
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