“The meaning you give work determines its difficulty.
A coder working on a passion project works 12 hours straight and calls it energizing. That same programmer, doing maintenance on legacy code they consider meaningless, feels exhausted after 2 hours.
Your relationship with the work shapes its weight more than the work itself.”
–Shane Parrish1
In both of the cases above, the coder was working for money. But in the first case, they were also working for meaning. They felt they were doing work that matters, and this made all of the difference.
On Sundays, I tutor kids for 11.5 hours straight. If I were simply doing this for the money, it would be exhausting. But that’s not how I see it. I’m helping kids learn. I’m mentoring them. I’m showing them how to have a better relationship with school, hard work, and themselves. So the work is energizing and joyful.
Aligning the Prize and the Process
“Keep your eyes on the prize” is one of the worst pieces of advice out there. You’ll be far more successful keeping your eyes on the process: focusing on the work itself, not the results you’re aiming for. Nobody sinks a three pointer while staring at the scoreboard.
But what if you can do both? What if you can align the prize and the process, so that the process is the prize?
In my tutoring work, the prize is helping kids, but it’s also the process. Getting paid is just a secondary prize.
In sports, the goal should be to play a good game and experience flow, which is also the process. Winning is sometimes a byproduct of playing well, but it’s not the primary prize.
I play a lot of tabletop games like Terraforming Mars and Wingspan, and my goal is always to play well – to find clever combos and use innovative strategies. Winning is often a byproduct of playing well, but it isn’t really my goal.
When the process and the prize are one and the same, it’s easy to point all of your attention in the right direction.
Focus on the Meaning
We all have to do things we don’t love to do. The tedious aspects of our jobs. Cleaning the house. Running errands. Paying bills.
And if we just focus on the cost of these activities – the time, effort, money, and stress – then we’ll be exhausted and unhappy.
But these things could be understood as meaningful: They’re important parts of how we support our families, participate in our communities, and contribute to the world.
In that light, the tiresome and annoying things we have to do transform into privileges. And the work we do – all of it – can be a source of energy and joy.
1Parrish, Shane. “Underestimating What Works.” Farnam Street. No. 616. February 16, 2025.