What To Do When Everything Sucks
It can be hard to feel like your work matters when the world is on fire.
It can be hard to feel like your work matters when the world is on fire.
Software especially sucks for this. Even if you make it right in the first place, which is nearly impossible, it lasts two or three years at best. Then it becomes obsolete, gets redesigned, or abandoned by the users.
Here are some suggestions on how I have tried to avoid feeling totally useless:
First, I try to find opportunities make products that have an impact on people. Obvious ways to do that are by working on products like learning, health care, personal finance, people resources, and so on. Helping people level up creatively or in their business has always made me feel great.
A less obvious idea is to try to make everything you do matter a little bit more. Some people have told me that they feel it’s a little hard for them to feel satisfied about the work they do in their field.
But it matters if you make it matter. If you’re really putting your back into helping your wealth management company make progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion — that work can have an impact on people, and it matters.
If you’re building a real time bidding system for advertising, and you’re figuring out how to make it work for entrepreneurs and small businesses and not just giant corporations, that can matter to a lot of people.
If you are doing literally anything and you are a people manager, that matters. People management is a great way to magnify and multiply the meaning and impact of your work in any field. You are entrusted with and practicing a duty of care for other human beings. You will have an impact on their lives that they will probably never forget. That matters!
Every company has an impact on the world around it, small and large alike. If you’re helping your company consider and minimize that impact and grow in a thoughtful way, you are having a meaningful impact on the survival of our planet. That’s important work.
Finally, if you are doing literally anything, and you are making a lot of money… yes, I am looking at YOU. If you are making a lot of money, did you know that you can give some of that money to people who need it more than you do? Do you see where I am going with this?
You can make your work matter right now! Click the link, then get back to work!
Thank you Andrea Corey.