My quest for meaning at work
By: Ondrej Janku
Tags: Friendship, Adventure, Meaning, Careers, Life Lessons

I left my full-time work a year ago to find one with a higher purpose. I haven’t managed yet. But maybe it’s not such a bad thing.

During the work transition interview in April Pavla mentioned that I sound like I wanna build a career around the lifestyle I care for which is similar to her and some others. Whereas six years ago I was very excited about future endeavors and also very specific about building a sustainable tourism company. “Do we stop dreaming at some point in our lives about what we would do?” went her question.

I dreamt not so long ago. There is still a quote of Aaron Schwarz marked with a date, August 2018, next to my bed.

What is the most important thing you can be working on right now and if you are not working on that, why aren’t you? Aaron Schwarz 1986 — 2013.

Yes, I admire people who are trying to work on the more just world. It came out as my personal yearning from School of Life’s career day too: What I hear is you wanna fight social injustice through politics and art.

The whole journey of change started around work. A lot of thoughts went in that direction. School of Life weekly seminar in London, books, articles, exercises, courses, meetings. I wanted to redefine what I do.

The first idea was to move from communication to product or service as I was getting bored to communicate rather than design and create. I care about human experience and I enjoy deep conversations with people as well as researching, coming up with ideas, sketching. Big questions interest me and figuring out new ways to do things is a joy. Why not look into the future of cities or educational systems?

Then there was my experience from Ghana which included a visit to the Agbogbloshie e-waste dump. Brexit, Trump and our very own Babiš and Zeman. Some friends around me were setting up NGOs and social businesses. I know journalists, activists, political campaigners, politicians. How was I active apart from sending money to charities and talking? I should dedicate myself fully to a big cause before it’s too late!

And then there is art. I know writers, film or theatre directors. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to share a big message with the audience like them? And standing ovations aren’t bad either. I could work on my writing and maybe I can get there too.

So in my head, it was going to be a big change. I would be writing a great deal, learning new skills, signing up for causes, coming up with projects, spending many if not 10 000 hours on it and becoming a new professional. To a small extent, I did, but definitely not on the scope I had imagined. Above all, I unwound and it felt very good. I significantly lowered my workload and enjoyed hobbies and people that matter to me. Physical work on a reconstruction of a flat started pissing me off after a couple of months but it was splendid for clearing my head. I joined creative writing, typography and acting classes. I also volunteered on a political campaign, provided feedback on projects and business ideas of friends, helped with communication of mental health theme, led a workshop on content marketing in tourism, consulted marketing strategies while being in Latin America where I learned a new language and finally did nothing at all, traveled and eventually started a relationship.

Now I don’t feel anymore that Ondra Janků = 100 % his work. OK, I didn’t think that before either but I was not that far from it.

Once I finished university work gave me a great deal of purpose, I learned a lot and it helped define who I am. I wasn’t a footballer, neither a snowboarder anymore. I had my career in my media, marketing, and tourism, it described me the most at least in my mind and I liked it. But then after some time, I felt I wanna reflect on it all and take a break from the daily routine and check on myself.

In the process of wondering, I came upon this long read by Tim Urban. And it was easily one of the best pieces on a career I have ever read. He describes many things but what I took out of it was this creature with five tentacles which represents various yearnings we have for work. They are quite different and often contradictory. So one has to accept that it’s quite impossible to have them all satisfied at the same time. There will always be some that are more disappointed with what are you doing right now. Purpose and meaning are pieces of the puzzle. Not the only objective. It doesn’t sound that revelatory but I felt relieved.

Then I looked into the division of work and life. Firstly into the boundaries of work (mostly mental activity in my case) and free time. That got me on my road to doing nothing and involving more activities where my brain can switch off, my mind wanders and sometimes my eyes close.

But there’s another twist to this division. It’s about people who go to work to simply do the work. They don’t look for any higher meaning and purpose in it. They receive it from something they do outside of their working hours. I know many people don’t have another choice than to struggle in numerous jobs to provide for themselves and families. But there are also high ranking professionals who get the work done. They might not necessarily enjoy what they do, it’s not a part of their cosmic journey or however you want to put it. It’s work. I had many conversations with those people. It’s still not easy for me to accept their view because my exploration started to some extent because of exceptional professionals doing a brilliant job for people with low morals. But that’s not the case of every one. For many people work is work. And it’s fine. I think I understand it more now. The whole work as an identity is a concept born in the last decades as Ezra Klein discussed in his podcast with Anne Helen Petersen and Derek Thompson. And it’s definitely not for everybody.

If everyone’s trying to receive meaning from work that’s a recipe for misery. (Derek Thompson in the Atlantic)

I had to slow down and got a different perspective to resonate with the following quote.

Your work makes an impact on the world, but so do the large and small ways you’ve touched other people’s lives. (…) Work and relationships are important, but both those elements of your life are ever-changing. And neither one completely defines who you are. There’s a you that goes way beyond your job, your professional skills, your family, and your friends. It’s made up of your own unique view of the world, what you’re good at, what you’re bad at, what you do to engage with the community around you, what you do for fun, what you believe in, and what and who you love, whether or not they love you back. (Inc.com, Minda Zeitlin)

I took the time to contemplate. An outing that started as a career transition ended up being much broader. I didn’t know what I wanted to get out of my Latin American trip but I felt I needed it. And it turned out to be a lot about my emotions. And about the people I met there on a way who revealed elements of myself but also about people who have already been present in my life. I took a moment to appreciate them and all the good memories we share as well as the stage I got to on my life journey and new experiences that are yet to come. I cried quite a bit out of gratitude and happiness and I left some emotional baggage in Peru too.

It was my dream to hit the road once again on my own and experience something new. And I’m glad I did it. In the end, that’s what people regret the most. Not taking some actions as Lila MacLellan’s article points out.

If most of us are more likely to reach our dying days still haunted by images of an ideal self that never fully materialized, it would appear that we all should go after our dream job, our dream life, right now. Write that screenplay. Open an animal sanctuary. But the authors caution that’s too simplistic a strategy, writing, “A tendency to seize the moment can bring both benefits and misfortune.”

See? There’s usually a catch. When I was wondering whether to leave my full-time job or stay, one of the questions I was posed was if I found out that I had six months left to live… Would I have stayed? My answer was no. And the response: Then quit tomorrow. Decision wise I’m a rather hesitant person which could be a downfall. It took me about a year and a half since the first doubts planted in my head to the last day in the office. But I don’t think I overstayed my welcome neither that it was a good question in the first place. Picasso would not stop painting if he was diagnosed with cancer. However, I’m quite positive that the majority of people would say they were gonna leave their job. But that doesn’t mean they have to quit tomorrow. Another quote from MacLellan’s piece helps.

“Now that you know what most people regret, it’s time for you, as an individual, to look inside and say, ‘What type of person am I?’” says Davidai. “Am I the type of person who has big dreams, or believes that dreams are important, and has aspirations but for some reason am not pursuing them? Or am I the kind of person who thinks that the most important thing is the responsibility for other people or my duties as a citizen or a family member?” Maybe you would actually more deeply regret destroying your family’s financial security to start your own business than you would never be striking out on your own. Like every other negotiation in life, it’s about choosing the imperfect solution you can live with.

Lately, I told my friend how I wished I played guitar. My father plays it really well and I got one as a Christmas present from him when I was 13. I never even started.

“Hmm but I don’t see your 13-year old self sitting in a room and practicing” was my friend’s response. And she was right as I was all about football, skateboarding, and snowboarding and hanging out with my friends and I wouldn’t have changed that. In the last years, I learned how to type with all ten fingers and got to the conversational level of Spanish and I’m glad I managed but it all cost time which could have been spent on something else. The same goes for guitar or any skill or objectives on the path towards one’s dream job if you are lucky enough to know what it is.

So once again I think I would have regretted not going on my solo travel while having that chance. But at this stage when I am back I prefer to spend more time with people who are important to me rather than having the discipline to write two pages every day outside of my day job. I’m not ready to work nights to develop a skill, neither to spend weekends working on launching a business.

The work doesn’t have to be 100 % me. It doesn’t have to represent every single piece of my personality while making the world a better place. I wasn’t that off in my previous occupation. I was not going against the stream. I was not stuck in a bullshit job. My transition is not over yet even if I am back in the full-time work project since quite recently. I needed some structure in my life and I got it. I accepted that sometimes there are other yearnings of Tim Urban’s octopus than meaning at stake. That I can try to work for the sake of work for some time and see how I feel about it. But in the long run, I would still aim for being able to say to myself that what I was doing was for something more than security. That I could defend time spent on work as more than a way to receive money to live.

All work apart, I can still think about an impact and even dream. Another strong food for thought was a debate of Tim Ferris and Greg McKeown’s about his book Essentialism. He posed a question of what do people know about their great-grandparents. Eight people that influenced who we are and yet we can barely speak out their names.

How did they shape you in ways you would want to pass on to others? What are their decisions that impacted us positively and negatively? What am I grateful for? What are the patterns I want to stop?

Out of the eight people I recalled great-grandparents from my mother’s side right away. Josef and Milada. I was lucky enough to meet my great-grandma but unfortunately never had the chance to see my great-grand pa in person. Almost though. He was having talks with my mum who was pregnant at the time. He died a month before I was born. I’ve heard so much about him since.

How he was respected, smart and kept on living in an enlightened way even if they took almost all the material things from him and in that situation is not that uncommon for one to become bitter.

He was a farmer who was expelled from his property during Communist collectivization in the 1950s. When I watch movies or pieces of theatre from that period like All My Compatriots I imagine the main character to be him. My great-grandmother was the kindest person I encounter, finest cook and she always wrote us long letters with 50 crown notes hidden in them for us. Through her, I pictured how my great grandpa must have been. How he stood on the side of truth and justice. And how his grandkids loved visiting him for holidays as he always had some adventurous program for them. It might be a little idealized but that’s how I feel. And a piece of him keeps living in me.

I don’t continue in a farming tradition and honestly, I would probably do quite lousy job but what stayed in me is rather linked to his behavior, attitudes, and values. And also loving the time spent in nature with friends and family.

My great-grandparents

So what I wanna pass on to generations to come? One day when walking through Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris and being faced with the finality of life rather directly, I took out my sketchbook and let my 31-year-old self wrote down what it thought is here for. What it wants to do further in life…

I want to redefine what is considered normal

by connecting people by entertaining imagination of mine and others by sharing positive energy

And that could be manifested in my work and all the others’ walks of life. Everyone could have their own way on a different scale. Sometimes it’s work, sometimes hobby, sometimes the way the person is. And that’s fine. What matter is that their mind is open enough.

However, the practicalities of work are still here. “Where do you see yourself in ten years in terms of your career? Would you like to run a company with 150 employees or be a director of a department?” I was asked recently out of the blue and I was so not ready to answer it. Left apart that neither of the prospects sounded attractive to me. So my answer was nothing more than I don’t know.

But it wasn’t I don’t know because I never gave a fly. It was I don’t know because I am not there yet. Step by step. Little by little.

For now I can let others describe some fragments of thinking that I resonate with. Like this quote of Quinn Norton from her essay Against Productivity.

“Some thoughts are long, they can take years to think, or a lifetime. Some thoughts take many lifetimes, and we hand them off to the next generation like the batons in a relay race. Some of these are the best of thoughts, even if they can be the least productive. Lifetimes along, they shift the whole world, like a secret lever built and placed by the loving imaginations of thousands of unproductive stargazers.”

Or the drawing of Diego Flisfisch that got my attention in GAM Cultural Centre in Santiago de Chile.

Yes, there are noble causes I would like to help with. But there’s a catch to it too. Since in the big picture, I wanna do abnormal things but in a smaller one, I wanna do very normal things too.

I guess I am not going to impress many recruiters with my vagueness so I’m probably destined to keep looking for my path. Or simply do the work. It’s just that there is a thin line between being grown-up, responsible, professional and conform and boring.