#469 Do You Need To Have A Purpose At Work?

Squiggly Careers

The Squiggly Career

Management, Careers, Business

5 • 809 Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Finding your purpose can sometimes feel like a ‘should’—something we’re all expected to have figured out. The pressure to find a perfect purpose can leave us feeling stuck or unsure, especially when career paths are more squiggly than straightforward. But does having a purpose really matter? And if so, how do you stay connected to it?

In this episode, Helen and Sarah explore the difference between having a purpose and feeling purposeful at work. You’ll learn how to reflect on what truly motivates you, define your squiggly career sweet spot and connect with your core values—even if you’re still figuring things out.

(00:00) The problem with 'purpose'

(07:00) Why do we care about purposeful work?

(08:39) Finding your squiggly career sweet spot

(09:36) Defining your core values

(11:02) Defining your strengths

(13:10) Energy audits

(14:14) What do you want to make better?

(16:35) What do you care about that's bigger than your job?

(18:42) ChatGPT 1 sentence purpose statement

(21:05) Summary

📚 Resources Mentioned:

McKinsey Research Paper: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-search-for-purpose-at-work

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth: https://shorturl.at/b6oFv

Values Tools Kit: https://www.amazingif.com/toolkit/

16 Personalities: https://www.16personalities.com/

Principles you: https://principlesyou.com/

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SquigglyCareers

For questions about Squiggly Careers or to share feedback, please email [email protected]

More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers:

1. Download our free careers tools https://www.amazingif.com/toolkit/

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4. Read our books ‘The Squiggly Career’ and ‘You Coach You’ [www.amazingif.com/books/](http://www.amazingif.com/books/)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Helen and I'm Sarah and this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly show where we talk
0:07.8	about the ins and outs of work and give you a bit of support, help you with your skills so that you can
0:12.8	succeed in your squiggly career. And as well as the episode that we're going to talk through today,
0:16.8	we've got lots of extra resources to help you. So you can download our one-page Squiggly Careers Podsheet, which is a summary of the episode.
0:23.5	It's got all the ideas that we'll talk about and some coach yourself questions in.
0:27.0	And also, we would highly recommend that you sign up for Squiggly Careers in Action,
0:30.6	which is our new weekly email.
0:32.8	It has everything from this episode in, as well as lots of other things to help you learn too. So you get some Sarah's borrowed brilliance, you get a Helen how to where I talk through
0:40.7	a practical career tool and you get some secret behind the scene stuff in the world of squiggly
0:46.0	careers. We'll leave it to you about whether you like that stuff or not. But you could
0:49.6	always you could always let us know. Actually on that point, anything we share in today's episode, all the
0:54.7	emails that you can get, we love getting your feedback. So you can always email us,
0:58.3	Helen and Sarah at squeaklea careers.com. So today we're talking about what I suspect will be
1:02.4	quite a popular topic. Do you need to have a purpose at work? And so when we ask lots of you
1:08.1	for topic ideas or areas you just needed some support with,
1:11.6	we have people saying, like, how do I stay connected to my purpose?
1:16.2	So I get really lost in the day to day.
1:18.2	So that implies this person has a purpose, but maybe kind of loses it along the way.
1:23.0	Other people saying, how do I know my purpose?
1:26.2	Everything's so squiggly. What I really like about
1:28.9	this person's feedback is they were like, I like everything. I'm interested and I'm curious.
1:33.6	So it's really hard to kind of nail down my purpose. I was like, oh, that's a really good observation.
	...

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