What if you didn’t show up to work tomorrow? Would anyone notice? Would it matter?
Brutal question, I know. But if your answer is a hesitant shrug, let me tell you: that’s not just burnout. That’s disconnection.
You see, it’s not that your work doesn’t matter. It’s that you can’t see how it matters. The sightlines are fuzzy, and in the chaos of answering every email, making every meeting, checking every box—you’ve lost the plot. You’re moving, sure. But are you making an impact?
Let me tell you about my friend Adam.
Adam Foss went to law school to make money, period. He had no interest in being a public servant, had no interest in criminal law, and definitely never thought that he would be a prosecutor. But then everything changed.
At the end of his first year of law school, Adam got an internship in a local municipal court in a neighborhood plagued by gun violence and drug crime. His perspective was radically reframed on the very first day. Over and over again, he saw judges, defense attorneys, and prosecutors making life-altering decisions about defendants without much—if any—of their own input. His calling went from making money for himself to ensuring justice for all. Committed to doing better, he became a public prosecutor and connected his daily work on behalf of his clients with that end goal. He thought he had consonance.
Then he met Christopher, an 18-year-old African American high school senior with sights set on college but precious little income to pay his way. He made a poor decision to steal 30 laptops and sell them on the internet. When it came time for Christopher’s arraignment, Adam realized that it was prosecutors who made the recommendations—not judges, not politicians, not sheriffs, but prosecutors who are the lynchpin in deciding the fate of most of those arrested in the United States. He (like every other untrained, unfettered, unaware prosecutor) was going to make a decision that would forever affect Christopher: bring the case to trial and send him to jail, or leverage him into a plea deal, allowing Christopher to have a chance at a normal life. Spoiler alert: he did the latter. They recovered 75% of the computers, gave them back to Best Buy, and set up a plan for financial repayment and community service. Christopher applied to college, got financial aid, graduated from a four-year school, and is now a manager at a local bank.
Here’s why Connection matters.
We get stuck in the Tyranny of Urgency. We mistake busy for important. We mistake busy for impact.
So I’m asking you: what goal would never have been reached but for you? Not your team. Not your company. You.
If that question makes you squirm, good. It means you’re awake. And it means this week is for you because this week is about connection, real, raw, meaningful connection between what you do every damn day and the calling that lives in your gut.
Because here’s what I know to be true this week: if you can’t see a connection between the work you do every day and the calling that you want to serve, you’ll never be happy at work.
Don’t worry, though. You aren’t alone. In a survey we’ve been running for the past six years, one with more than 10,000 responses from 113 countries, from every possible industry and every possibly demographic, we found that:
- less than half of all workers can connect the dots between their daily tasks and the long term goals of their company
- less than half of all workers have a clue what those long term goals are
- and less than half of all workers know what they themselves need to do to even achieve their own goals
Connected workers are the most engaged and the most successful.
They are keen, they are energized, they take their work seriously because they understand the impact that their work has on their colleagues and their quarter. Disconnected workers are just as easy to spot: they show up to work and complete their tasks, but they are the malcontent, the ones who have lost steam along the way. They might think they’re kicking ass—but they’re just building beautiful systems that end up operating in silos. They feel underappreciated, undervalued, underpaid.
Not all of us have that satisfying sense that the tasks we perform daily connect to the cause we want to serve, the problem we want to solve, the company we want to build. It’s why we don’t feel guilty about calling in sick or punching out a little early to beat traffic. It is no shock to learn American workers are less engaged in their jobs every year. Yet each of us, in each job we fill, is part of something larger: a box on an organizational chart that has local, regional, and perhaps even national and global goals. So the work you do might very well matter; perhaps you just don’t have the sightlines that allow you to visualize the connection.
So, here are the roughest questions of the day:
- What goals would never have been accomplished but for the fact that you—specifically you—were in your job?
- Can you draw a clear, distinct line from your daily work to your monthly, quarterly, or yearly goals?
- And how does that work impact the calling you wish to serve?
If you can’t answer these questions, you probably don’t have—or at least don’t feel as though you have—connection. And without understanding how your work connects to that calling you hold dear, you will be frustrated. Becoming limitless demands connection.
But here’s the good news: you can change that. You can build real connection between the work you do and the life you actually want.
This month, I launched each of my four Limitless mini courses—Calling, Connection, Contribution, and Control. So, if Connection is the C you know you need more of right now, start here. Reconnect your work to your why. Rebuild your sightlines. Rediscover what matters.
This is your chance to get off the hamster wheel and get back on track with the work (and life) that actually fits you.
