Why do you do your job? (in 6 words)
“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
This extremely short story has often been attributed to Ernest Hemingway, though that is apparently unsubstantiated.
But what is clear is the way it exemplifies powerful storytelling, at its very core. In only six words, this story conveys information, meaning and emotion - in a way that makes you pause and think.
This “six word memoir” model has been adapted recently by the New York Times to describe the pandemic, (“Every day’s a bad hair day”) and, back in 2011, by the Financial Times for a staff contest to describe the reasons we all have for getting up and going to work (“because it is easy and hard”).
As someone who lives in the world of branding, which at its core is about the strategic and creative use of language and visuals to convey a message powerfully, I love exercises like these.
So, try it. Answer the question – in a 6-word story. Why do you do what you do (for work)?
Here’s mine: To engage the mind and heart.
There are a lot of reasons that I love what I do, but most fundamentally, I like how it challenges me both intellectually and emotionally. That’s why I stick with it. Branding is about bringing together strategy with a voice or expression that can make it resonate with both the head and the heart – and I love what that means both for me, and for others that it might reach.
When we talk about purpose in our lives and our work, we are typically looking for that higher-order benefit – lifting our eye up to focus on our ultimate impact. That’s about our lives.
But this exercise is more fundamentally about our jobs. Our personal relationship with our work.
In my work, there are some common threads I hear in response to this question:
The Satisfaction. When we’ve been doing something for a long time, it feels pretty great to be good at it. That reflex-like ability to get our job done, and know how much work over the years we’ve put into being excellent at it.
The challenge. Further along the spectrum from satisfaction is where the work gets harder: the growth aspect, the challenge. Many of us seek out work that offers new stimulation and learning, which makes for a satisfying experience.
The kinship. Of course, there are the relationships. 2020 has been a real test for many in this regard, but some have said that today’s incredible challenges have made teams and colleagues feel even closer. We do what we do because of who we get to do it with, and the singular form that friendships can take in a work setting (remote or not).
The impact. In some careers we can see the direct line of our impact, either through service to others or through a long-awaited and hard-sought outcome. These are the jobs where success can be most fundamentally measured by how we help others.
The pay. And yes, there is remuneration. It’s ok to seek out work that pays well – not only because it is a mark (for many of us) that we’re appreciated and successful. But also because of the lives and opportunities that pay can afford us.
The reality is, these things rarely live separately. I personally have been motivated by each of these reasons over the past couple of decades.
But the reason I love this, that I go back to this question from time to time for myself and for my clients, is because of what it can tell us in the moment. And when we are forced to choose, and to be brief about it – we learn something in the way we prioritize our answer.
Mark Twain supposedly said: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”
It’s hard to be concise. But in the process of trying, we can learn a lot about what drives us.