I have learned something uncomfortable in my search for meaningful work. The more I crave titles and bonuses, the less meaning I feel. It is not a law, but it is a pattern. If I want a quick test of how alive my work feels, I check how badly I want the badge that comes with it.

When the work itself is rich, the doing is the reward. That sounds simple. It rarely is. It takes focus to notice what genuine intrinsic reward feels like, and discipline to resist the pull of prestige. Money is the obvious pull. Prestige is the subtle one. As Paul Graham argues, prestige can nudge you toward what you think you should want, not what you actually enjoy. Corporate life is built to exploit that nudge. Titles and ladders give us a direction when we have lost our own.

Physicist and entrepreneur Safi Bahcall once described a familiar arc in companies. In the early startup days, a handful of people run on purpose. Purpose is the currency. As the company grows, it needs structure. That structure is useful, yet it can blur purpose. Soon the system relies on titles, grades and compensation to keep people moving. The organisation outsources meaning to metrics.

I am not against money. Bills matter. A baseline of security matters. Beyond that, the motivational effect of more pay is not always what we hope. Research suggests very large incentives can harm performance on complex tasks, because attention shrinks to the prize rather than the craft. I have felt that shrinkage in myself. When I attach my worth to the next award or banding, I start optimising for the scoreboard. The work becomes a means rather than the end.

I am not trying to turn ambition into a villain. I like goals. They give shape to vague desire. Yet David Whyte’s line that ambition can become “desire frozen” rings true for me. The frozen bit matters. An ambitious target is easy to describe. The inner conversation it replaces is not. That conversation is messy. It asks who I am when no one is watching. It asks what kind of work I would still do if titles vanished. Ambition avoids that difficulty by offering a clean story.

Left to itself, ambition tends to become an empire-building exercise: more scope, more people, more control. Vocation asks for the opposite. It calls us beyond ourselves. It breaks our hearts by revealing what the work will cost, then it simplifies us by showing what we cannot ignore. I find that sequence frightening and clarifying. It is easier to print a new title on a slide than to answer a calling that may ask me to change my life.

I can feel the difference in my body. There is the feeling I learned as a child: perform to get the star. At school it was literal stars. In work it became promotions, applause, and job levels. That feeling is sharp and bright. It fades fast. Psychologists call the cycle the hedonic treadmill. You get the thing; the hit fades; you run for the next thing. It keeps you productive and keeps the machine humming. It does not keep you whole.

Then there is the quieter feeling. It shows up when I am absorbed. Reading a page that clicks. Solving a problem that opens a door. Writing a line that says exactly what I meant. Talking with a friend without trying to impress them. This feeling is easy to miss because it does not announce itself. It is steady, not spiky. It leaves a trace when the laptop shuts and the room goes silent.

The first feeling is manufactured to be legible to others. The second is intimate and hard to display. One makes you chase; the other lets you stay.

I grew up in Mumbai. Schooling there taught me to perform for praise or to avoid punishment (usually the corporal kind) Curiosity looked frivolous. Joy looked suspect. Later, at work, I kept chasing what could be measured and awarded. I was slow to notice that the very things I was taught to treat as frivolous i.e joy, deep interest, the quiet of attention, were the things that gave my work meaning.

There is nuance here. Titles have their place. Power can allow change. A president can sign a law; a founder or CEO can set a direction. For most of us, though, the work is closer to hand. It lives in the quality of attention we bring to the task, the craft we practise when no one is scoring us, and the honesty with which we choose what to pursue.

I now try a different test. If I stripped the role of its title and the job of its halo, would I still want to do the underlying work most days? Not every day..no one loves every day, but most days. If the answer is no, then the title is wearing me, not the other way round.

I also try to catch myself when I say “once I get X, then I will feel Y.” (as an engineer I love formulas) That script is ancient. It is also unreliable. The feeling you want from X often comes from how you work now, not from what you are called later.

Small moves matter more than grand declarations. Three to try this week:

Meaning is not against reward. It is against serving reward. The arts of attention, honesty and craft do not pay out like a jackpot. They pay out like a rhythm. If you can hear that rhythm even faintly, follow it. The title will either find its right size, or it will stop mattering.

References:

Consolations by David Whyte

The Way to Love by Anthony De Mello

This month on Finding Meaning in Work, Cam shares how a decade in banking gave way to a vocation he’d been circling since childhood: dog behaviour training.

Raised around a family boarding kennel, he never saw dogs as a career until corporate hierarchy and box-ticking became impossible to ignore. At forty, he sat down and wrote a list of what he genuinely liked. Dogs kept winning.

Cam signed up for a training accreditation, joined a mentor circle, learnt quickly inside a busy shelter, and launched Act of Dog with a simple website and a few Google ads. Today he specialises in fear, anxiety and aggression in dogs, starting not with commands but with safety and self-regulation.

You’ll hear the real turning points in Cam’s story: moving to London with no plan, the mentors who nudged him forward, and the partner who quietly believed in him.

What stands out isn’t the leap from banking to dog behaviour work but the way he did it, by following curiosity rather than certainty. His approach applies far beyond dogs: build trust first, then teach.

If you’ve ever thought about changing direction, or you lead people who feel stretched or stuck, this conversation is a reminder that progress doesn’t always come from pushing harder. Sometimes it starts by slowing down long enough to build trust with others.. and with yourself.

Listen now by searching for Finding Meaning in Work on your favourite podcast app, or click the button above

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