• by Julian Kalmar

Don't like your job? Transform it using the magic of purpose.

The results of a remarkable experiment demonstrate the power you hold to completely transform your job. The experiment is believed to have taken place during the Great Depression when many were unemployed, destitute, and purposeless. [Please forgive me if some of the details are wrong. I couldn't find the source of this story.]

As I understand the experiment, the U.S. Army employed two groups of previously unemployed men. The first group was taken out into the desert to dig holes. They worked very hard all day in the scorching sun, and every day was the same: Go to a new location in the desert, dig holes, and return exhausted.

Amazingly, and in spite of the back-breaking work in the desert heat, the more they dug, the happier they got. They had a purpose even though they didn't know why they were digging the holes.

The second group of men had a different job. Every day they would go to a different location in the desert to fill holes. They didn't know about the first group of men. All they knew about their job was that they were being paid to fill holes. Like the first group, they labored all day in the hot desert. This went on day after day. At the end of each day they were exhausted but satisfied. Lo and behold, they became happier too.

This hole digging and hole filling went on for some time and both groups of men had become significantly happier than before they started their work: They were productive and had found a purpose. Now watch carefully what happened next, because the experiment wasn't over...

One day the foreman of each group went to the men to tell them about the other group of men and what they did. When the men realized there was no real purpose to the jobs they were doing, they were devastated. Their purpose was destroyed. None-the-less, the experiment continued. For every single man without exception, the hole digging and hole filling was sheer misery. Both groups of men were extremely unhappy. Even though the pay and the work was exactly the same as it was before, they were miserable. Nothing had changed, except their sense of purpose was absent.

This experiment reveals a great insight. If we can find genuine purpose we can gain tremendous job satisfaction. But any type of purpose won't do. You have to know how to create the right kind of purpose. Let's see how...

Purpose is determined in two ways. Sometimes a purpose is seemingly delivered to us by others, like our bosses. As employees we typically adopt the purpose our company needs. Those who are self-employed adopt the purpose of their clients. The second way purpose is determined is that you look beyond the immediate task to see its higher, more noble meaning. So rather than simply accepting your assigned tasks and adopting the task as your purpose, introduce an extra step of finding the higher purpose in your task. You'll still do the same task in the same way physically, but now you'll add the magic of a higher purpose.

Here are some examples. Say you're a locksmith and your task is to install a lock on someone's front door. If you only adopt the purpose of installing a lock successfully, you might be happy or miserable