Purposeful and purposive

Twenty months of working from home is a serious matter to consider. We have lost friends and loved ones, and the constant feed of global news on mass protests, killings, virus cases rising, wars and rumors of wars put people in a state of perpetual anxiety and, when prolonged, leads to lethargy.

For those who are fortunate enough to have kept their jobs, they had to stay home, do endless Zoom meetings with their bosses and their clients, while at the same time sharing the house chores and tutoring the kids.

All are competing for internet bandwidth, and it is a wonder how we managed to survive 2020 and 2021.

The more profound question is, will we still have the capacity to handle another year doing the same? For many, the thought of “grinding through the day just to survive all these” has been the dominant mindset. And we should not blame them if work for them has become mindless and meaningless, a purposeless mechanism for survival.

A friend of mine from Australia says, “Francis, you would not believe me if I told you that just while our economy here is opening up, many companies are experiencing ‘mass resignations’ from their employees. They gave up their jobs because they wanted to seek more profound meaning and purpose in life than just working for survival. I wonder if this is the trend, as western media continuously report on mass attrition and talent shortages, even as businesses reopen.

Jax is a friend who continues to help me by providing me with articles, materials, comments, and opinions on business, finance, the economy, and even politics.

I appreciate his efforts. Recently he sent me a Bloomberg article entitled: “Beach Serves as Backdrop for Philippine Rate Decision, Signaling Worst Over for Nation.”

I am glad that we are slowly witnessing a sense of normalcy. Daily cases are lower than last year, and we all hope and pray that the resurgence of the spike in cases in Europe, and that  the new variant will not happen here.

I am convinced that leaders must prepare the people for a possible comeback. Not only can we recover the losses incurred in the past months, but more importantly to understand that meaningful work is essential to our existence.

James Suzman, Nicholas Guy Smith, and company came up with a book entitled: “Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots.” The book says that all living organisms work. Grow. Reproduce. They capture energy to do work, and energy fuels work. Living organisms are also the only things that decay and die when unable to capture energy. But the difference between organisms and humans is that for humans, work is PURPOSEFUL; for organisms, work is PURPOSIVE. And they explain the difference through an illustration.

A person builds a house, and he is doing work purposefully. He or she may also harbor other ambitions apart from just building the house. Perhaps the person wants to become a master house builder. Maybe the person loves to work outdoors. Maybe the person wants to build the house, sell the house, earn enough money to finance his other dreams.

To act purposefully, therefore, according to the authors, covers the following elements:

Grasp of causality

Ability to imagine

Self-awareness

Purposive behavior, however, does not even understand why it is doing something. It is a behavior that an external observer may attribute purpose to, but the agent of that behavior neither understands nor can be describe. Training and skills development is the key to achieving purposeful work.

Think of what you are good at. Music? Solving mathematical equations? Speaking? Writing? Why did we work to develop the skill? We develop skills to achieve other ambitions. We are developing public speaking skills for a career in politics or practicing long-distance running in preparation for a race.

Living organisms acquire skills too, but how they use them differs from how humans use them. Humans can adapt skills and apply them to another, but living organisms generally do not adapt the skills they acquire or creatively apply them in a new context.

Humans, therefore, crave the joy and satisfaction of performing mastered skills, and when deprived of a chance to do so, we grow bored, listless, and demoralized.

We need to prepare our people. To inspire them and encourage them to let go of the lethargy caused by the prolonged lockdown and gear up, fire up, and render meaningful work once more. This is not merely ideal; it is essential to our existence and well-being.

(Francis Kong’s podcast “Inspiring Excellence” is now available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or other podcast streaming platforms.)