Career Clarity
Purpose, Burnout, and Career Clarity with Jen Margolis
Podcast Audio Only:
When Meaningful Work No Longer Fits
People are often encouraged to find work they care about, especially in nonprofit organizations, education, social services, healthcare, and other mission-driven fields. Caring about the mission can make work more fulfilling, but it can also make career decisions more complicated because saying no, setting boundaries, or leaving an organization may feel different when the work addresses a problem you care deeply about.
You may also be willing to accept things you would question in another job because the work matters to you, which was one of the tensions I explored with Jen Margolis, founder of Amberwood Practice and an executive coach and consultant whose work focuses on purpose, impact, and meaningful work.
Your Organization’s Purpose Is Not Your Purpose
One of my favorite distinctions from Jen is that your organization’s purpose and your personal purpose are not the same thing.
You may care deeply about the mission and choose work that contributes to it, but Jen describes your purpose as your “core gift,” or what you uniquely contribute to the world around you. That contribution isn’t dependent on a specific employer or job title and can show up through your career, relationships, family, community, creative pursuits, or other parts of your life.
This distinction becomes especially important when an organization no longer works for you because attaching your purpose and identity completely to your employer can make leaving feel like you’re giving up an important part of yourself instead of changing jobs. Separating your purpose from the organization gives you more room to consider other ways you could use what you uniquely contribute.
A Mission Does Not Determine Whether the Job Fits You
“I want to help people” sounds like a clear career preference until you start asking how you want to help, what kind of work you want to do, what you’re naturally good at, and what type of environment allows you to do your best work.
A small community nonprofit may require you to take on a wide range of responsibilities with limited resources and structure, while a large university or healthcare system may offer more specialization and resources along with significantly more bureaucracy. You can care deeply about the work either organization is doing and still be miserable in the actual job.
The mission is only one part of career fit, so you also need to consider the work you’ll be doing, the environment you’ll be doing it in, and whether the compensation, expectations, opportunities, and demands of the job work for you.
Your Career Does Not Have to Provide Your Purpose
I’m a career coach, and I don’t think everyone needs to find their purpose through their career.
I have friends and have worked with clients who genuinely want to do work they’re good at, get paid well, and go home because they have full lives outside of work and don’t need their careers to provide deeper meaning or fulfillment.
This group often gets overlooked because we tend to assume career growth means continually wanting more responsibility, advancement, leadership, or professional achievement. Someone who performs their job well and doesn’t want any of those things doesn’t necessarily have a problem that needs to be fixed; they may have decided that other parts of their life matter more to them.
Career clarity includes figuring out how important you want your career to be in relation to everything else in your life.
Caring Deeply Can Make Burnout Harder to Recognize
Jen made an interesting point during our conversation about people who are emotionally invested in their work: they may be much further into burnout before they recognize it.
She experienced this herself as a social worker working with children and families facing incredibly difficult circumstances, where she cared deeply about the work while still having productivity expectations and billable hours to meet. After watching people burn out and leave, she started thinking about what an organization would look like if it were designed to protect people’s capacity to care.
I think that’s an important question because we put a lot of responsibility for burnout on the individual even though workload, staffing, autonomy, management, expectations, and the structure of the workplace also contribute to whether someone can sustain the work. Boundaries and recovery still matter, but they aren’t going to fix an environment that continually asks too much of people.
If you’re burned out, part of evaluating what to do next is figuring out whether the career itself is wrong for you or whether the way you’re currently being asked to do it is unsustainable.
Creating Separation From Work
Creating boundaries can be especially difficult when the work feels personal because a five o’clock stopping point feels different when you know someone needs help, an important project isn’t finished, or the problem you spend your days working on continues whether you’re on the clock or not.
Jen recommends looking for the places where you still have some control, which might include tightening your working hours, turning off email at a certain time, creating physical separation when you work remotely, or developing a routine that helps you transition out of work.
She also talked about movement, creativity, breathing, and connecting with other people as ways to recover and close the stress cycle. I shared that I used music during my commute to decompress when I worked in higher education, and now that I work from home, I still need some transition time before going straight from work into family mode.
These practices won’t fix an unreasonable workload or a bad work environment, but creating some separation from work can help you think more clearly about what needs to change.
What Does Meaningful Work Look Like for You Now?
When someone still cares about their work but knows their current career is no longer sustainable, Jen recommends going back to who they are now rather than immediately searching for a new job title.
Consider what matters to you at this point in your life, what you’re good at, what gives you energy, what you’re curious about, and what you may still be pursuing because you think you “should.” A career that worked well for you ten years ago may not fit your current priorities, interests, financial needs, or life, even if you still care about the work.
Jen also encourages people to explore without requiring every interest to become a career move. Reconnecting with something you enjoy, spending time with people outside your professional world, or following your curiosity can give you information about yourself that’s difficult to access when everything has to lead to a job.
You may ultimately decide to stay and make changes to how you work, or you may realize you need a different role, organization, or career. Leaving an organization doesn’t require you to stop caring about the mission because your career is one place where you can contribute what matters to you without needing to be the only one.
Learn more about Jen Margolis:
https://www.amberwoodpractice.com/
Jen's LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-margolis-0247803
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