From Leonard Mlodinow’s Feynman’s Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life, a memoir about his early career as a physicist and working in the same department as titans Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann:

People sometimes scoffed at academia because of the relatively low pay. But I had seen too many “adults” work too many hours at jobs they did not like in order to amass things they only thought they needed, and then, decades later, regret their “wasted” years. And I had seen my father work long, arduous hours just to make ends meet. I had vowed to have a better life than that. The most valuable asset I figured I could earn was the ability to spend my time doing something I liked.

When you select your medical school, your residency, your next job, or how you’re working in your current role—what are you optimizing for?

There is a flip side to the comforting knowledge that everyone is just stumbling through the fog, and that is that it is a pretty good bet that many of them are not stumbling in the right direction. Who is going down the blind alley and who is on the road to success? Whose work will be remembered and whose forgotten? What is worth doing, and how do you know? I didn’t have the answers, but I thought back on the pep talk the division chair had given me. Explore, he said. Check out what other people are doing. I decided to open myself to others.

In considering the explore-exploit tradeoff, we are often jealous of those who seem to have it all figured it out. It is a mistake, however, to assume they’ve always figured it out correctly or that their solutions can be taken on wholesale.

The creative mind has a vast attic. That homework problem you did in college, that intriguing but seemingly pointless paper you spent a week deciphering as a postdoc, that offhand remark of a colleague, all are stored in hope chests somewhere up in a creative person’s brain, often to be picked through and applied by the subconscious at the most unexpected moments. It is a part of the creative process that transcends physics. For instance, Tchaikovsky wrote, “The germ of a future composition comes suddenly and unexpectedly. If the soil is ready…” And Mary Shelley: “Invention does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.” And Stephen Spender: “There is nothing we imagine which we do not alread know. And our ability to imagine is our ability to remember what we have already once experienced and to apply it to some different situation.”

I love this description of creativity, derived from a full, vibrant life, broadly sourced and even full of randomness.

Hanging around a grown kid like Feynman made you question things. Like all the things we do in life because we have to do them—or at least we think we do. Sitting through boring meetings with colleagues or customers or clients when we’d rather be outside staring at a rainbow, or managing our careers along some path for which we have no passion merely because it is supposed to be the road to success. Like my young boys today, Feynman was startlingly honest with people, including himself, and you couldn’t make him do anything he didn’t want to do, at least not without grumbling. In contrast, there I was, still free to choose my own path, and I was compromising almost before I began. What, for me, was worth doing? What would give meaning to my life?

[…]

WHAT IS IMPORTANT IN LIFE? It is a question we should all give thought to. The answer is not taught in school, and it is not as easy as it may seem, for a superficial answer is not acceptable. To discover the real truth you have to know yourself. Then you have to be honest with yourself. Then you have to respect and accept yourself. For me, these were all tough tasks.

I had gone through college and into academia in a hurry, wanting to rush ahead with my work, to prove to the world that I had been alive, and that it had mattered. That was an external focus to life. That was Murray’s way. To accomplish and impress. To be an important person, and a leader. It was the classical path. The traditional one. It seemed to be an obvious and worthy goal. I had accepted it without second thought. But for me, it was like chasing a rainbow. Even worse, it was like chasing other people’s rainbows. Rainbows whose beauty I didn’t really see.

Feynman’s example caused me to rethink mine. He didn’t seek the leadership role. He didn’t gravitate to the sexy “unified” theories. For him satisfaction in discovery was there even if what you discover was already known by others. It was there even if all you are doing is re-deriving someone else’s result your own way. And it was there even if your creativity is in playing with your child. It was self-satisfaction. Feynman’s focus was internal, and his internal focus gave him freedom.

Different approaches to life—external validation vs internal motivation—as exemplified by two of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century.

There’s an exchange in the book I loved:

“Do you know who first explained the true origin of the rainbow?” I asked.
“It was Descartes,” he said. After a moment he looked me in the eye.
“And what do you think was the salient feature of the rainbow that inspired Descartes’ mathematical analysis?” he asked.
“Well, the rainbow is actually a section of a cone that appears as an arc of the colors of the spectrum when drops of water are illuminated by sunlight behind the observer.”
“And?”
“I suppose his inspiration was the realization that the problem could be analyzed by considering a single drop, and the geometry of the situation.”
“You’re overlooking a key feature of the phenomenon,” he said.
“Okay, I give up. What would you say inspired his theory?”
“I would say his inspiration was that he thought rainbows were beautiful.”
I looked at him sheepishly. He looked at me.
“How’s your work coming?” he asked.
I shrugged. “It’s not really coming.” I wished I was like Constantine. It all came so easily to him.
“Let me ask you something. Think back to when you were a kid. For you, that isn’t going too far back.
When you were a kid, did you love science? Was it your passion?”
I nodded. “As long as I can remember”
“Me, too,” he said. “Remember, it’s supposed to be fun.” And he walked on.

Remember, it’s supposed to be fun.

From Arthur C. Brooks’ The Meaning of Your Life:

My psychologist friend said something else that proved revolutionary for my thinking—and, in fact, my whole life: to give a great deal to one person is even more empowering than to give a little to a lot of people. In other words, making a big, tangible difference to one person’s life has a much greater meaning-creating self-transcendent effect than writing checks to a bunch of charities (as worthwhile as that is). This is an ancient idea; it is written in the Mishnah Sanhedrin section of the Jewish Talmud, for example, that “he who saves a single soul saves a whole world.”

Randomly writing on the internet aside, finding ways to be involved with individuals (family, community, education, and mentorship) are real paths to fulfilling variety.

The lowest level of work motivation is “necessary evil.” Finding meaning in work that you hate is difficult. In fact, if you hate your job, it can inhibit a sense of your life’s meaning. Above this is work as a duty, such as that which you do to be a productive citizen and to support those you love. Fulfilling a duty is, of course, meaningful. My family is meaningful to me, and thus, so is supporting them. However, ideally you can do better than just that, by seeing your work as a means to practice excellence and virtue—that is, honing your craft. Even higher in meaning is service to others, beyond just economic support.

Even when the job isn’t perfect or is just a temporary step on a longer journey, approaching it with the Craftsman’s Mentality makes it better. Striving and excellence have positive echoes.

Psychologists have studied this mysterious sense of calling in depth and often say that it requires having a “subjective career,” as opposed to an “objective career.” The difference between the two is how success is defined. Objective careers focus on money, power, and prestige. Subjective careers are more focused on earned success and service to others. Earned success is the opposite of an old idea in psychology called “learned helplessness,” which is what occurs when people feel like no matter what they do, their rewards or punishments aren’t affected. For example, you are paid and promoted the same as everyone else, regardless of how you perform. Alternatively, you are not rewarded or are treated poorly even when you excel in your work. This leads to feelings of resignation, futility and, often, depression about life in general.

I appreciate the conception of a “subjective career” and “earned success” over “learned helplessness.” When we think of bad places to work and bad cultures, it is where democracy or fairness have been subverted in favor of sameness, where A players and C players are equivalent (or, even worse, when the willing are coopted to do do do because their yes-nature is exploited until burnout and the sloths and dishonest are tolerated).

Earned success means being recognized and rewarded for merit and personal responsibility. I work a lot with companies seeking to bring more meaning and happiness to the workplace, and one of the things I stress the most is this idea of earned success through honest, clear, merit-based systems. This is hard for weak leaders, who don’t like holding people accountable or acknowledging that aptitude and work effort differ between people and some are more excellent than others. To avoid conflict, these leaders prefer tenure- or loyalty-based systems, which strip work of meaning and drive away good people.

Holding people accountable is actually extremely hard, which is why it’s so often just not done except for either egregious cases or petty reasons. Dr. Death practiced medicine for years.  Fairness does not equal sameness. The apathetic management style—low expectations and low support—may often be an understandable reaction to the real world, but it also further hollows out organizations and leads to a disengaged and unresilient workforce.

The point is that you can look for your calling without being a lifesaving paramedic or feeding the hungry. Simply being a great team member, a kind coworker, a considerate and caring manager, all count. Serving others doesn’t have to be heroic to achieve self-transcendence and the sense of meaning you crave. Even if your job is not extrinsically rewarding, you can start generating your own intrinsic rewards.

I still don’t like the idea of a calling. I think what Brooks refers to as a calling is really mostly a good attitude. But, a good attitude is also the greatest gift you can give yourself. It’s also one you can easily take away, and one that—for most of us—requires practice giving again and again.