Routine tasks can balloon into prolonged, frustrating encounters with opaque systems, leaving workers feeling their time is wasted and their roles meaningless. Technology and growing bureaucratic complexity can make work feel detached from purpose. Some roles may contribute little social value, producing a thinning sense of meaning for those affected. A diminished sense of purpose encourages short-term coping — overeating, increased drinking, and sedentary distraction — which depletes energy, lowers mood, and further erodes meaning. Stronger purpose associates with sustained healthy behaviors, while work stress correlates with higher rates of smoking, inactivity, and risky drinking.
This week, I fought a draining battle with one of my employer's many online systems. A 10-minute task stretched into days of back-and-forth emails, error messages, and irritating dead ends. When it was finally resolved, the task felt trivial and hardly worth the effort. What lingered was frustration at how much of my life is consumed by pointless tasks, and the suspicion I might be stuck in a meaningless job.
Anthropologist David Graeber popularized the "bullshit jobs" hypothesis, arguing that growing swathes of people feel stuck in roles that add no real value to society, ultimately breeding quiet misery. More recent cross-national studies suggest the reality is less extreme (only a small minority say their job feels pointless), but that's little comfort to those who do feel cut off from the value of what they do.
A thinning sense of meaning, plus the grind of bureaucratic complexity, doesn't just sap motivation; it nudges unhealthy behaviors. Think of a loop: Meaning thins: you feel helpless and flat → You reach for short-term relief: overeat, drink more, and binge-watch TV → Unhealthy behaviors drain energy, dampen mood, and chip away at your sense of meaning, deepening the negative emotions you harbor toward your job →
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