{"id":5074,"date":"2025-05-13T18:15:03","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T18:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aomtodayprod.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=5074"},"modified":"2025-07-09T15:46:26","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T15:46:26","slug":"trade-tasks-with-coworkers-to-increase-meaningfulness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/trade-tasks-with-coworkers-to-increase-meaningfulness\/","title":{"rendered":"Trade Tasks with Coworkers to Increase Meaningfulness"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Many people want to be able to find meaning in their jobs, but fewer stop to take stock of their current roles and whether there\u2019s anything that can be done to make them more meaningful.<\/p>\r\n

Academy of Management Scholar Abbie Shipp<\/a> of Texas Christian University, who coauthored an Academy of Management Annals article on that topic<\/a><\/em> with Karen Jansen<\/a> of North Carolina State University, said that too many of us don\u2019t slow down enough to think about the meaning of time at work and how we spend it.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think people often stop and reflect about, \u2018Is what I\u2019m doing at work meaningful to me?\u2019\u2014not what\u2019s prioritized in my job or for somebody else, but rather, \u2018Is what I\u2019m doing in my work meaningful to me personally?\u2019\u201d Shipp said. \u201cParticularly if I have some choice\u2014\u2018I get to work on this project\u2019 or \u2018I get to do this volunteer opportunity\u2019\u2014those things are more or less meaningful to different people, so finding ways to increase those activities can shape how meaningful your job is and help you to move away from meaningless tasks.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cMaybe do reports at your low-energy time of day, but do the meaningful activities at the time when you\u2019re most productive and can most take them in. Then your work feels more fulfilling because you\u2019re really synchronizing those things,\u201d she said. \u201cYou also can offshoot or delegate things that you don\u2019t find meaningful\u2014quite frankly, I\u2019ve done this with colleagues\u2014you trade or swap tasks with somebody that you work with; maybe they do find those things meaningful, and so we can do a swap of job activities.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cMaybe I join a committee because it gives me a lot of meaning and I love it but that you think is not very meaningful, and vice versa.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n

A sample of Shipp\u2019s AOM research findings:<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n