Jennifer Tosti-Kharas & Christopher Wong Michaelson on the Work Worth Doing | EP 652

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Coming up next on Passion Struck.

When we feel our work is deeply meaningful, we are less sensitive to maximizing our rewards that we get from it.

For example, if I'm paid, if I'm doing a task that's deeply meaningful and I know that I have, I'm being paid on a per task basis, like a piece rate kind of compensation scheme, I will do more work, the more meaningful my work.

I'm not totally insensitive to money.

I'm not totally clueless about money.

If it stands to be more money made, I'll expend more effort.

The interesting thing that we were able to disentangle in our study, though, is the same relationship held when workers were salaried, meaning I can do more work, but I'm not necessarily additionally compensated for it.

Welcome to Passion Struck.

Hi, I'm your host, John R.

Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.

Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.

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Now, let's go out there and become passion struck.

Hey friends, welcome back to episode 652.

I'm your host, John Miles, and this is the show, where we explore the mindset, science, and strategies that help you live with intention, work with purpose, and unlock your fullest potential.

Whether you're brand new here or have been part of this community from the beginning, thank you.

Your presence truly matters.

Together, we're building a global movement of high performers, deep thinkers, and everyday heroes committed to making a difference.

I do have a special announcement.

This past week, Passion Struck received two Gold Stevie Awards at the International Business Awards.

One for the best independent podcast and one for the best business book.

That follows the same honors at the American Business Awards earlier this year.

And while this recognition is surreal, what matters most is what it represents.

That people all over the world are hungry to live more intentionally, to grow from the inside out, to reclaim their energy, agency, and sense of matter.

That's what this podcast was built for, and it wouldn't exist without you.

So thank you for listening, reading, sharing, and staying committed to your growth.

Before we dive in, here's what you might have missed last week.

On Tuesday, I sat down with Wolfgang Linden, one of the world's leading experts on anxiety and resilience.

for a deep conversation on emotional integration and mental fitness.

We discuss how to stay grounded and self-led even in the midst of chaos.

And then on Thursday, neurosurgeon Dr.

Kevin Tracy joined me to explore the mysterious and transformative power of the vagus nerve and how a hidden network of 200,000 nerve fibers could hold the key to calming inflammation and revolutionizing modern medicine.

If you missed either of those, I highly recommend going back.

They're the perfect companions to today's episode.

Because today, we're diving into a question that sits at the very heart of our lives.

Is your work worth it?

My guests today, Christopher Wong Nicholson and Jennifer Toasty Karas, are here to help us reimagine a relationship with work and more importantly with meaning.

They're the authors of the profound and timely book, Is Your Work Worth It?

which blends decades of research, philosophical insight, and practical application to explore what it truly means to make work meaningful.

Chris is a philosopher turned business ethicist.

Jen is an organizational psychologist.

Together, they offer a deep, unique, grounded perspective on purpose-driven work and how to navigate burnout, misalignment, and the constant pressure to achieve without losing yourself in the process.

In our conversation, we'll unpack how to align your career with your core values, what success really means, and how to define it for yourself, along with practical ways to make work serve your life instead of consume it.

If you've ever found yourself wondering why the work you do truly matters, or if it's time to make a change, this episode is for you before we dive in a couple of quick updates my sub stack the ignited life is live and gaining momentum it's where i go beyond the podcast to share tools frameworks workbooks and behind-the-scenes stories you won't hear anywhere else you can find it at theignitedlife.net or you can go to it through passionstruck.com and don't forget our youtube channel is also thriving we post full video episodes behind the scenes clips and exclusive bonus content content every week.

Just search for Passion Struck with John Miles on YouTube and hit subscribe so you never miss an episode.

So let's get into it.

Here's my conversation with Christopher Wong Mickelson and Jennifer Toasty Karis.

Thank you for choosing Passionstruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.

Now, let that journey begin.

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I am so excited today to welcome Christopher Wong Mickelson and Jennifer Toste-Karras.

Welcome to Passion Struck.

Thank you so much for having us, John.

Thank you, John.

So it's always so interesting for me when I have multiple authors on the show of how you came to know each other and why this topic.

So I thought to start out with, I'd ask you if you could tell us a little bit about your individual backgrounds and how each of you came to explore the purpose of work.

John, I'll start.

I'm a philosopher.

And when I decided I wanted to go to graduate school in philosophy, I of course wanted to ask the ultimate philosophical question, what's the meaning of life?

And unfortunately, I found that most graduate students in philosophy are asking much smaller questions than that, because of course it's a huge question.

I just thought five years of grad school, I'd figure it out.

And it turned out that I was wrong.

And I decided during that period that that I wanted to keep asking the big questions.

I wanted to make a real difference in the world with big questions like that.

And that probably wasn't going to happen as a philosophy professor.

And so naturally, as other philosophers do, I went into management consulting.

So I'm half joking, but I went into management consulting in order to

help try and make the world a better place through more ethical business practice.

My area of specialty in philosophy was ethics.

And so I really did work in a global management consulting firm based in New York City.

And that's what I was doing on 9-11, 2001.

I was living and working in New York, but that day I was actually traveling in Washington, D.C.

And of course, 9-11 was a seminal moment in history for our country, for our world, but of course, for anybody who was affected by the tragedy that day.

And a lot of people reconsidered, what is the meaning of my work after 9-11?

And that's when I started transitioning toward an academic career, away from a consulting career, and really thinking about

that is a potential research question.

What is the meaning of work?

Which is pretty closely related to the question of what is the meaning of life.

And so my path was eerily similar actually to Christopher's.

So I was also living and working as a management consultant, different firm, different specialty area.

But when 9-11 happened, I was fresh out of college, first job out of college, living in New York City for about a year.

and 9-11 happened.

And that really, to me, also made me consider, what am I doing for a living and why?

And we saw this really echo in the wake wake of 9-11 and also in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

We called it the great resignation because so many people decided they were unhappy with their jobs and ended up leaving.

So that's what I did.

I ended up asking myself that big question, realizing that I wanted to completely change careers and go to graduate school to get my PhD to be a management professor one day, which I am now.

And it's a question, right?

Would I have come to that realization eventually anyway?

So interesting to think about all these like sliding sliding door moments and what could have been.

But that's where I met Christopher.

So I was a PhD student.

at NYU working with one of the big figures in the field of meaningful work and the meaning of work, Amy Rezneski.

She's now at Wharton, but she organizes a small conference for researchers who study the meaning of work.

And that's where I met Christopher.

So he was also at NYU.

He still is on the faculty there for business ethics, in addition to his full-time gig in Minneapolis.

But we met at this conference for researchers on meaningful work.

We realized we were both at NYU at the time, and we subsequently started a research partnership where, among other things, we studied the portraits of grief that were written post 9-11 as remembrances of the victims.

And we started to ask this question of what was the meaning of their work, not through their own eyes, but through the eyes of those who knew them best within the scope of their tragically completed lives.

How did people account for all that time that their loved ones spent away from them at work?

What did that mean?

And the portraits are such a brilliant, that was, I can say they're a brilliant lens in because it was Christopher's idea, but I recognized a brilliant idea when I saw it.

And we published several papers on that and also write about that study in the book.

No, it's great.

And I'm not sure if you know my background, but when I got out of the military, I also started at a management consulting firm, Booz Allen.

Oh, he's PWC, you're Booz Allen, he's PWC, and I'm Accenture.

We've got it covered.

Well, I left Booz Allen to go to Accenture, so I've got that covered as well.

Awesome.

One thing that you can relate to then is that there's a lot of meaningful work done in firms like that.

There's a lot of important work done in firms like that.

But people work really hard and they sacrifice a lot to do that work.

And sometimes

it

all-consuming and we brought that perspective of

was that what we wanted to do for the rest of our working lives was making partner and getting that corner office really the end all and be all for us for anyone and that kind of helped to inform our perspective on our work together Well, I've got another scenario for you because I was with Arthur Anderson Business Consulting,

and I had just been told I was going through the partner process.

I'm literally in it for 90 days.

I'm based in Houston and Enron hit.

So all of a sudden, all this stuff that I had worked so many years for all disappeared before my eyes.

And I, like many of the people, I could have gone to Protivity or KPMG, but I, at that point, was just so disillusioned with everything that had happened and how it could be taken away in such a short period of time, that I really lost that meaning for me of what made management consulting the path to follow.

And I went a completely different direction.

So around the same time, of course, there were headlines being made by the Enron failure and by the demise of Arthur Anderson.

And that was right at the time when I started teaching in a visiting professorship at Wharton in 2002.

So a year after 9-11, I'd gone from full-time consulting to full-time academia and part-time consulting.

And I was literally teaching the Enron case out of the headlines.

And my students who

maybe at one point when they entered business school hadn't really been thinking about ethics as the thing they needed to learn most were suddenly slapped in the face with this idea that, wow, ethics can really make a difference in, first of all, the viability of a firm, but also the desirability of a firm to work in.

Well, it absolutely can.

And coming from PwC,

the one difference that Arthur Anderson had compared to the other major accounting firms was that in all the other firms, the quality control partner would always overrule the engagement partner.

Arthur Anderson gave that responsibility to the engagement partner, and that's where

everything came to a complete, epic, disastrous crumbling because the quality control partner, I knew both partners, but the quality control partner was like screaming, we need to be doing things differently.

We need to change directions, and he got overruled and the rest is history.

But I want to talk about another type of career.

direction change in the form of Christopher, your grandfather, because

this is interesting.

For me, I had a change from being in the military, like your grandfather was, to going into the civilian world, thinking I'm going to have this career as a management consultant for the rest of my career, and that disappears and I have to start over again.

But your grandfather rose to be a general and then

with communist China taking over, basically lost his identity and had to start over again.

And I was hoping you can share that story because I think it really does tie into the book we're going to talk about today, Is Your Work Worth It?

Which I'm going to hold up right here.

Congratulations.

Next big idea club, Must Read, came out May of 2024.

But I'd love to hear that story.

Thank you for bringing up my grandfather and for plugging our book, John.

I said a moment ago that 9-11 was one of the forces that led me to think about the meaning of work.

But if I think back further, I credit my grandfather with making his entire family, all of his descendants, think about the meaning of our work.

As you said, he had a rise in his career and then he had a precipitous fall.

And whereas I got to choose after 9-11 whether I wanted to change my career, he didn't really get to choose.

It was a choice that was forced upon him.

So he was born a peasant and was a self-made

person in the sense that he found a school to go to as a child that had been forced to leave his own home because of lack of money, found a school, excelled there, and then found the military as a way to move up the social hierarchy as somebody who didn't come from status.

And he excelled there as well.

If you know anything about Chinese history in the 20th century, it was tumultuous.

So first of all, he was part of the first democratic government of a country that had long been imperial, but they were invaded by the Japanese army, and that sort of morphed into World War II, which then morphed into the Communist Revolution.

And it was the Communist Revolution that defeated the army that my grandfather rose to promise in, the nationalist army.

And so he lost his first wife, his first two children.

He lost a war, his home, his wealth, his sense of self-worth, and of course his country, and moved to Brazil to raise his surviving eight children with his second wife.

And starting over in a new country where he didn't speak the language and he had no prospects for a military career, he went into business.

And

he always taught us that in Confucian teaching, there's a hierarchy of professions.

Those that are highest on the hierarchy are those that help other people.

So he was proud of his government service in China.

He exhorted his sons to become doctors and his daughters to become teachers.

So in that way, maybe he was a little bit sexist, but in another way, he was exhorting his daughters in a patriarchal world also to make a contribution through their work.

And in fact, my mom became a teacher.

And so I credit my mom in many ways with inspiring me to help make the world a better place through teaching.

But unfortunately, my grandfather never succeeded in business.

He tried and failed many times and ultimately was supported for the rest of his life by his children.

But in some ways, I think that might have been his most successful work to

bring a family from one country to another

for them to find a way and for them ultimately to pay back their father with their support.

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I remember when I was growing up, my maternal grandmother, I went to the University of Michigan and was going to go to medical school.

And then I got pregnant with my mom and ended up becoming a stay-at-home mother and she

i remember her telling me how disappointed she was in my mom for not making a career out of her life like my mom's sister did when she became an attorney but it's interesting because

that was the fundamental decision that we had in the family when our kids were born would

my ex-wife work or would she stay at home with the kids?

And we decided to, because we could afford to have her stay at home with the kids.

And I think it made such a profound difference on their upbringing to have that continual support around them.

But as we look at society, we don't really treat which used to be a common job, the homemaker.

I think it's becoming less common as really a meaningful job because it's not a paid job in the way that we see them.

Oh, absolutely, John.

In the book, we define work.

We tackle this head on because we start with a very philosophical question.

So I'm not the philosophical half of our co-author duo, but I have sat in on panels at, for example, the Society of Business Ethics, where in a two-hour long panel, if you let the philosophers run the show, we couldn't even talk about meaningful work because they'd spend two hours.

defining what do we mean when we say work.

So we wanted to nip that in the bud in the book early on.

So we define work as that which has a purpose.

There's some point to it.

It's effortful.

It requires effort.

And here's the key one to differentiate housework.

It is recognized as work by society.

So of course, in our certainly our American society, we define work as typically overlapping with paid employment.

It's not something that we do for free or necessarily for fun.

And that's where I think domestic work really does get left out.

It's extremely purposeful.

It's extremely effortful.

And as anyone who has taken care of a house, especially with little kids in it, knows, but also if you've taken care of maybe an aging parent or a relative or something like that, uncompensated domestic work is a heck of a lot of work.

But we don't.

treat it as such.

We don't recognize it as such in society.

And the gendered, the differences in that, was it undervalued precisely because it is women's work and because status was afforded to those who were allowed to work outside the home?

And historically that was men.

You know, that I think that's part of it, certainly.

But we note in the book that when you clean someone else's house or take care of someone else's kids, that's work because you get paid to do it.

Same exact task, you do them for yourself.

And so many

working couples do have to negotiate who stays home with the kids when they're sick.

Is anyone going to stay home full-time?

This is something that I think any working couple with kids can relate to.

This question of whose career is going to take the front seat or the back seat, even if you don't have kids.

We're two people with careers and we're in a couple and someone gets a job offer that's going to require a move.

Who compromises?

Whose career takes the front seat and the back seat, I think, is relatable and just as much of an issue today as it ever has been.

Christopher, I wanted to turn this over to you.

One of the fundamental ideas you have in the book is we only have one life to live, so what are we doing with it?

And the book opens up with that powerful question, what makes work worthwhile?

And I really thought it was interesting that you profiled a very famous person at the beginning of the book and their work habits.

And this person is really interesting.

because I had another guest on this show.

I can't remember if it was Terry Cole or Susan Kane, but one of them lived in the same condominium complex with this individual and talked about, and I'll let you tell the story here in a second, but they would

talk about this very famous person and how introspective and reserved they were, but how they would go out of their way for them to help them carry groceries up to their house or other packages or other things.

And they just said.

that they saw a different part of them that we typically saw but this person lived and breathed through the work that he did.

So I was hoping that you could share that story.

Well, the person of whom you speak is none other than David Bowie.

And Jen and I are both fans of his, as well as our editor, Colleen Lowry, is a big fan of his.

So we decided to open the book with his story.

And of course, David Bowie had a long and illustrious career, but it was written with youthful mistakes.

So it sounds like by the time your friend knew him that he was the mature David Bowie that we remember.

And one thing that was so poignant

about David Bowie's life was that he was working until the very end of it.

So he died tragically at age 69.

He knew that he had terminal cancer.

And when he knew that, he was actually recording his last album, Blackstar.

And

to choose to spend your last months actually working says something about the relationship to your work, that it actually

might be one of the most important contributions of your life.

And

according to documentaries that have been written about him, of course, he didn't work as hard in those final years.

He knew he was sick.

He knew he wanted to spend time with his family.

And of course, he had to give time to his medical care.

But he chose to spend some of that time working and making what some people consider to be his greatest album.

And then he released the album on his 69th birthday, two or three days before he died.

And so it stands as one of his legacies, this work of art that, of course, outlives a human being.

One other thing that we say about David Bowie is that he was famous for having said when he was a little bit younger, I'd like to be remembered for having had great haircuts.

And that just shows how tremendously funny he was.

But what he might not have actually recognized at that point when he said it was that actually a lot of people

owe their sense of belonging in this world to David Bowie's crazy gender-bending haircuts.

A lot of people saw his strangeness as making their own feeling of otherness

to belong in a society that was accepting of all this difference.

So an amazing legacy from his work.

And when I think of actors and actresses, I always think of shapeshifters.

And to me, David Bowie is the iconic shapeshifter of music.

Man, he changed his identity so many different times.

It was uncanny.

Yeah, including that last album, which was his first full-length album, Jazz Collaboration, was still innovating until the very end.

Well, that's one thing I love about Elton John's latest album is that he is still trying to push his comfort zone as well, like David Bowie was with this new album.

So it's interesting and great to see famous artists like those step out of their comfort zone, especially as they reach later stages of life.

Jen, I'm going to direct this one to you.

One of the key things that you you guys talk about is the connection between happiness, work, and earning power.

And I felt this personally.

I had reached the point where I was a senior executive at Dell.

I was running all their technology.

Earning power was at that point the highest I had ever had to that point.

And I was the most miserable I had ever been.

in my life.

In fact, I was prioritizing work so much because I had this global role.

I was traveling a couple of weeks per month, catching up when I got home that everything else in my life got completely out of balance.

And I think that this is a common thing that we see happen to many people, not just myself.

Why do you think it happens?

And how can we navigate this paradox in our own life?

So not only are we often, they say money can't buy happiness.

So up to a certain point, happiness and income covary.

But the general thinking is that above a certain threshold, more money does not necessarily equal more happiness.

Obviously, if you are not earning a lot and below the poverty line, that's unlikely to correspond with happiness.

But we also know that we often ask people to take pay cuts to do work that is the most meaningful in society.

We don't tend to pay, for example, our teachers, our social workers, our non-profit workers who are working to advance good causes, our government workers, certainly.

We ask them to basically accept less pay because the meaningfulness of the work is supposed to compensate.

It's supposed to be its own compensation.

And I've done a little research into this actually myself.

So I can know the state of the literature and also what I found in my own study.

And it is true that to a certain extent, when we feel our work is deeply meaningful, we are less sensitive to maximizing our rewards that we get from it.

For example, if I'm paid, if I'm doing a task that's deeply meaningful and I know that I'm being paid on a per-task basis, like a piece rate kind of compensation scheme, I will do more work.

the more meaningful my work is.

I'm not totally insensitive to money.

I'm not totally clueless about money.

If it stands to be more money made, I'll expend more effort.

The interesting thing that we were able to disentangle in our study, though, is the same relationship held when workers were salaried, meaning I can do more work, but I'm not necessarily additionally compensated for it.

These were mundane, low-level tasks, but they were framed as being meaningful to people.

I will still, if my work is deeply meaningful to me, work harder, even though I stand to make no additional compensation for it as a result.

compared to someone who does not feel the work is as meaningful.

So what that opens up, I mean, I could sense some listeners maybe saying, okay, so the ones who feel their work is deeply meaningful or maybe a calling is sometimes the language we use.

So they work harder.

They go above and beyond.

What's wrong with that?

They sound like great employees.

That's true, right?

But the question, the issue comes up when are you making bigger and bigger sacrifices or doing more and more for the work, prioritizing the work, maybe other over other parts of your life?

That could pose its own problems.

And also, at what point does the pay rate become unfair?

We talk about workers being potentially exploited because they love their work.

They're the ones who, I'm always going to ask John to go above and beyond because I know his work is really meaningful to him.

And at what point is that unfair to John, right?

Or maybe not allowing him to earn enough to live on or something like that.

And we see that a lot.

The stereotype is the starving artist, the starving musician.

In the book, we cover some real, okay.

David Bowie is not a good example of this, but we cover, for example, a working New York City musician who can't afford to pay rent.

He ultimately becomes homeless to pursue his music.

Like, at what point are we asking sort of unfair things of people?

I think the other side of this equation I want to talk about just briefly is there's another study, not my own, that shows that on the employer side, that people think it's fair to pay people less when they are passionate, specifically that word passionate about their work, because the passion should substitute for the money.

And so again, right, like you can play this out and say,

are we, there's other evidence to show that we really love it in the workplace as a manager when people are passionate about their work.

We'll give them better performance reviews.

We'll want to promote them faster, all this kind of stuff.

But then we have this sort of counterbalancing force that we're like yeah but maybe we actually they're okay on the pay side it's interesting to think how that plays out and how that can relate to putting these people at risk for burnout so just what you're describing in your own experience about either you're making a lot of money and you hate it or you love it but you're getting burned out because you're always being asked to work, do more work, and you're not additionally compensated.

How long can you keep that up?

By the way, I'll just mention, John, you're not alone in that experience of feeling least happy when your earning power is at its highest.

That's actually a global trend in affluent markets that people often are the least happiest when their earning power peaks.

I always say that when I started this podcast, I got this calling to help the lonely, beaten, bored, broken, battered.

helpless of the world.

And I was wondering who were those people I was called to solve, not not realizing until it hit me that I was one of them.

And I really felt, although everything on paper looked fantastic, invisible in my own life, because all the connections that mattered started to break down as well did my mental health, my emotional well-being, my physical health.

And that's why I really talk about it's so important to be intentional about the choices that we make.

And so I'm guessing, Jen, you wrote this, but I'm going to read it because this spoke to me.

It is obvious that we can't predict our actual futures.

And I love the work of Hal Hirschfeld on future self, but research shows we're equally bad at predicting how we're likely to feel in the future in light of the choices we make now.

And you go on to say, we make choices we believe will serve our emotional ends, not realizing that in essence, what they are is short-term.

decisions to calm a feeling that we have now when we're not looking at the future self.

And it reminds me of the work of like self-discrepancy theory where we end up, we have the life that we're living.

So many of us end up living the life we feel we should have instead of pursuing our ideal self, which is really the gap I think that you're describing here.

So you two introduced three orientations to work, job, career, and calling.

How do those different orientations affect how we perceive the worth of our work and how do we find balance between them?

Because to me, that's what those choices really come down to so this is not our own original research but this is based on my advisor at nyu amy rezoneski who i mentioned earlier was really one of the pioneers of bringing this job career calling typology into the mainstream through organizational psychology and then now there's hopefully our book helps to further the impact that this can have out in among real working people but in short we can talk about a job orientation toward work, a career orientation, or a calling orientation.

A job orientation is when the primary reward from the work is extrinsic and usually financial rewards.

So I'm in it for the money.

And interestingly, that can be a path toward finding meaning in life.

that has nothing to do with work.

Going back to, if we think about the portraits of grief and the 9-11 victims, we heard about a lot of people who basically worked to live, not lived to work, meaning

they were musicians, they had deep engagement with their families, they loved to travel, they had things in their life that gave their life meaning, and the work was the means to the end, not the end in and of itself.

Career orientation is similar in that it's a means to an end and the primary reward is extrinsic to the work.

But here it's less about just making money and more about advancement and recognition within a career track.

So in a typical organization context, this would be you're trying to climb the career ladder, you're trying to get that next promotion and ascend within the corporate hierarchy.

More recently, that looks a little different within occupational communities.

So I think about like programmers and coders and the typical like tech worker.

They're not necessarily very research has found, hierarchical or organizationally inclined, but it's more about gaining respect within a peer group, doing work one's proud of.

A lot of artists talk in the same way.

I just want to do work I can stand behind and that other people think is good rather than I'm trying to climb for that next promotion.

But again, the work is a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself.

And then where work becomes a meaningful end in and of itself is with a calling orientation.

So calling traditionally had religious connotations, so a calling from God or a higher power.

But here we mean it in a secular context, but it's in the same way in that this is my life's purpose, the work that I do.

It's meaningful to me.

It's a passion.

I spend a lot of time on it.

It's central to my identity.

And

often, not always, but often, and this is a little bit contested within the literature, it makes the world a better place.

It helps others and it does good in society.

Again, I think

the typical way we tend to talk about these orientations, job, career, and calling, John, your question was about balance.

The typical thought is you fit in one bucket or the other.

And we have observed that we tend to prioritize or glorify, I guess I would say, romanticize work as a calling.

And we say, oh, it's just a job.

right or it's bad to be overly careerist but a calling that really sounds noble and we tell people all the time find your calling.

And there are books with titles, find your calling, love your life, do what you love, the money will follow.

We already debunked that one, but we tend to prioritize.

But I think what our research on the portraits of grief really illustrated nicely is that point I made when I was talking about the job orientation, which is you can have a meaningful life.

without meaningful work.

Sometimes the work is the means to the end and that meaning is found outside of the workplace.

And there's no sort of hierarchy that it's better to find your meaning.

We don't want anyone to have meaningless jobs, of course, or feel like their work is just totally boring and drudgery.

But then it's also okay.

And the lives of 9-11 victims were remembered as being really meaningful and noble when they served the end of helping a family or they served the end of giving that person, fueling that person's passion with their loved ones outside of work.

So I think we, in the book, we wanted to demystify that there are lots of routes to a meaningful life.

Work can serve a number of functions within that.

And just that whatever, so I think the key is whatever one you most identify with at a given time, just to make sure that am I actually getting then what I want?

out of that job.

If it's a job orientation to me, am I getting paid fairly?

If it's a career orientation, am I getting recognized for my work?

Am I getting the performance reviews I think are accurate, the opportunities to stretch and grow that I want?

And then if it's a calling, am I really feeling that meaningfulness?

No job is meaningful every day, but am I feeling it to some extent more often than not?

Thank you so much, Jen.

You two explore the concept of legacy and how work contributes to it.

And I know for me, I didn't really start thinking about legacy until I was in my 40s, 40s, but I think it's something that's important that we think about at any age.

But I know a lot of people get stuck that they think they're not in a high status profession and that therefore it's going to be difficult for them to leave a legacy.

And the book challenges us to really think beyond

these typical characteristics and recognize how the work we do regardless of what we do can really impact others.

And I was hoping you guys might be able to share a story where an individual you observed or interview found great value in their work, even if it wasn't, let's say, a high status type of position.

Absolutely.

So our book is written for working people of any age, from graduating college students to people in the middle of their careers.

to retirees who are looking back on their working lives.

And that last group is more likely to be thinking about legacy.

But our point in writing about legacy at the very end of our book is to prompt anybody to think about what legacy might my work leave?

Because as you said earlier, John, we only have one life to live.

And chances are for most adults, we're going to spend a huge share of our waking adult hours working.

So we might as well experience that as meaningful time while we're doing it for a purpose worth doing, and maybe even leave a legacy behind.

So, I'm not going to tell an individual story as much as I'm going to tell a story about a type of worker that we all became familiar with during the COVID-19 pandemic, the essential worker.

And

that term, essential work, which is so familiar to us now, actually had been out of fashion for about 75 years when we started using it again in 2020, because the last time that it had been used was in World War II.

And we all know that the military effort was full of people who did work that was essential to advancing a noble cause.

Meanwhile, a lot of women entered the workforce during World War II because so many men were overseas at war and did the essential work of manufacturing.

And

in COVID-19, of course, essential workers tended to be those workers who were on the front lines.

For example, medical workers in healthcare helping to care for patients who were gravely ill, cashiers at retail stores where people still had to buy their groceries, delivery people.

All these people were risking their own personal safety in order to do work that society couldn't do without.

And that's a really important legacy.

And unfortunately, as Jen alluded to earlier,

those essential jobs are often not necessarily the most well-paid.

In fact, nurses and delivery workers and retail workers were among the least well paid.

Meanwhile, those people who were the most protected from the disease, those people who were executives who could work from their home home offices online were often the most well paid.

So that's a conundrum that we as a society have to come to terms with.

Why is the most important work often paid the least?

And that's not to say that the other work wasn't important, but

we don't have the rewards quite right when it comes to work.

And that's why leaving a legacy, that's not something that you can necessarily put a dollar figure on.

In fact, I would say some of the most important goods in life can't be monetized.

And one of those things is the legacy of essential work.

So with the time we have left, I just wanted to go through a quick, short lightning round with the two of you, and I'll ask each of you some questions with the request that you give a short response.

Jen, what's the single most important factor in deciding if work is worth it?

I think you want to think about what you get from your work compared to what you give

to your work.

And again, what you get from your work can be financial, it can be status, it can be deep meaning.

But is what I get worth what I give is really what the question is asking.

And Christopher, given the name of this podcast is Passion Struck, what's more more important in your work, passion or purpose?

I'm going to answer that question like a philosopher.

I'm going to say, does it have to be one or the other?

I think in many ways, passion can deliver purpose.

It can give you a sense of purpose.

That's not necessarily, though, to say that all purposeful work is something you have to be passionate about.

So I think that's something important to remember that even if you don't love your work every day,

there might be something worth loving about it that is purposeful that you should remind yourself of.

And Jen, what's one common myth about finding a fulfilling job?

I think probably the classic myth about finding a fulfilling job is that it will take care of everything else.

And so I hope find what you love and the money will follow.

You'll have a wonderful life.

And actually, research would suggest there are trade-offs.

So the more we feel fulfilled by our work, the more likely we are to work hard at it, taking us away from maybe other things in our life,

the more likely we are to sacrifice pay to do that work, et cetera, et cetera.

So, I just think that it's this one-size-fits-all route to a perfect life is a huge myth.

Okay, and then Christopher, last question is for you.

Can a job you don't love still be worth it?

Absolutely.

I think that a lot of jobs that are worthy are unlovable.

Sanitation work, for example.

Somebody has to do that work.

And that's what I mean when I say look at your work and what's worth loving about it.

And even if it's not joyful necessarily to perform it.

Also, I think one thing that our

current college graduates are under a lot of pressure to do is to find it all in their first job out of college.

And we think that it's unrealistic to

find work that gives you both love and money in any job, much less your first job out of college.

So I would just generally say

be okay with sometimes doing work that's unlovable during your career, as long as it's leading you toward a path where you can have the work that you want and make the contribution you want to make.

I'm just tell a quick story.

I met a gentleman one time and he talked so passionately about his job and how much he loved it and how he had complete control.

He called himself the CEO and he was a sanitation worker and he drove his own truck.

But he said, during my day, I controlled my own destiny.

I picked what time I wanted to go to work.

I picked my route.

No one bothered me.

I got it done according to my schedule.

And he said he loved it.

Never had to get out of the truck, never got wet, just did the job and loved it.

And performed a useful service.

Oh, yeah.

Exactly.

Where's the best place listeners or viewers can go to find more about each of you?

They can go to my website, ChristopherWongMichelson.com, and they can find out about me and the book.

And by the way, me, because I don't have a personal website, so Christopher logs all of our stuff there.

But I encourage listeners to follow me on LinkedIn.

And if you Google my last name, Toasty Karis, the good thing about having such a quirky last name is there's only one of me.

It's me.

If you find hits, that's about me.

So that will work.

Jen and Christopher, it was such an honor to have both of you.

And congratulations on such a great book.

Thank you so much for coming.

John, thank you so much for having us.

It's been a pleasure.

Thank you, John.

This was fun.

And that's a wrap.

What a powerful.

and deeply reflective conversation with Chris and Jennifer.

Their work challenges us to pause and ask one of life's most important and often avoided questions.

Is my work worth it?

In a culture that prizes productivity over presence and ambition over alignment, their message is a reminder to return to ourselves, to examine our beliefs, question our boundaries, and reconnect with the deeper motivations behind the careers we choose.

As you reflect on today's episode, consider what does meaningful work look like for me?

Where have I allowed external expectations to override my internal values?

And what small shifts can I make today to realign my work with my purpose?

If this conversation resonated with you, I'd be so grateful if you left a five-star rating or review.

It's the best way to help us keep bringing intentional, life-changing conversations like this one to more people around the world.

And if you know someone stuck in the grind, burned out, or searching for clarity, send them this episode.

It could be the spark they need.

You'll find all the resources we discuss, plus Chris and Jen's new book, Is Your Work Worth It?, linked in the show notes at passionstruck.com.

And if you'd like to bring this kind of conversation to your team or organization, I'm now booking keynotes and workshops for 2025 and 2026.

Learn more at johnrmiles.com slash speaking.

Coming up next on Passion Struck, I'm joined by Teen Zhu, visionary founder of Zora and leading voice on the subscription economy.

Teen joins me to explore how businesses can thrive by shifting from transactions to relationships and what it means for the future of meaningful work.

What I've literally learned is you have to understand people for who they are.

You got to have to understand what motivates them.

And if you can create an environment that creates the right motivation, then people will put their heart and souls into the company.

And look, not everyone is going to be aligned to what you want to create, but how do you create an environment that allows people to bring their best selves?

How do you create a vision?

that inspires them to say, hey, this is something I want to work towards.

And then how do you give them the freedom to really bring them best sells to work, right?

Including understanding that a lot of that freedom is dependent on their coworkers.

Until then, ask the hard questions, align with what matters, and as always, live life cash strong.