Life's Great Question Quotes

“A growing body of evidence suggests that the single greatest driver of both achievement and well-being is understanding how your daily efforts enhance the life of others…the defining of a meaningful life are ‘connecting and contributing to something beyond the self'.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“You can begin by connecting your daily efforts to they way they contribute to specific people's lives — connecting what you do with who your work serves.
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My takeaway from all this research is that people experience a far greater sense of belonging and more sustainable well-being when they connect their efforts in the moment with a larger influence on others.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“There is no greater predictor of human well-being than the amount of social time we spend with one another.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“Even when money and your finances are an acute priority, it literally pays to focus on the value you're bringing to others. When researchers followed a longitudinal sample of 4660 people over nine years, they found that having a sense of purpose in the first year of the study (based on a standard assessment of purpose in life) was associated with higher levels of both income and net worth over time. What's more, even when they controlled for other variables like life satisfaction and socioeconomic status, people with a sense of purpose at at work also had significantly higher incomes at the end of those nine years.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“Don't get me wrong; devoting time outside of work to serving others is a great idea. Recent research suggests that people who do so — by volunteering in their communities, for example — have better health and wellbeing, and perform better at work. Having a clear purpose beyond paid work also has a buffering effect. If your entire identity is wound up in a job that could go away, your wellbeing is in constant jeopardy.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“Instead of the sterile language of resumes, we need a language for contributions that captures the humanity of what we do—that expresses how we draw on our human talents to make contributions to people, not just to companies.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“Great jobs are made, not found.”
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People often believe they have to make a dramatic change in their work in order to be more fulfilled, whether this means finding a new job or transitioning to a whole new career. Those may be the best options on occasion, but in most cases it's important to start by maximizing the contributions you're making within your current work.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“The time to be asking tough questions about whether you can make your current job into a sustainable worklife is as early as possible. Start with a very basic question: Who can, does, or will eventually benefit from my efforts? See if you can answer with the names of actual people, not abstract groups.
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A commonality I have observed, across professions, is that your contributions come into clearest view as you get closer to the beneficiaries of your work. The more you can learn about a person who directly benefits from your time and effort, the more motivation you will have to improve that person's life in the future.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“. Much as an organization is unlikely to invest millions of dollars in a product that has a small chance of serving many customers, you don’t want to devote thousands of hours of your learning and development time to an area for which there is little demand from your employer or community.
This is one of the critiques of the “follow your passion” advice — that it presumes you are at the center of the world, and pursuing your own joy (not service of others) is the objective. I have found that those who leave a lasting mark on the world, in contrast, are always asking what they can give.
Exploring specific actions to take, starting with this question, allows you to continually redirect your talents to what's needed most in the social circles close to you.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“...we must find ways to celebrate people's lives and contributions while while they are still alive. We need far more celebrations of life . . . even before people know they are dying.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“Once someone tells me their functional position, I, somewhat naïvely, probe a bit deeper. I ask, “So what does that mean a typical day looks like ... what do you spend the most time doing?” This is where I get into the far more interesting and revealing parts of each person’s story.
... asking someone to reconstruct yesterday is a better lens into their happiness than simply asking them if they are happy overall.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“Through this qualitative research, we learned that all teams need to do three very basic things: Create, Operate, and Relate. If a team is lacking in any one of these three major functions, it is almost impossible for the group to be effective, let alone thrive.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“Instead of following your passion find your greatest contribution.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“A few years ago, I started to read studies showing that people who expressed more extroversion had higher overall wellbeing. This did not surprise me, as all my research has shown that daily social interactions are the single best predictor of happiness.
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I’ve learned this lesson regarding my own work as I’ve researched this book, and I have become committed to pushing myself out of my [introverted] personality’s comfort zone.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“Whether you are an individual contributor, manager, or leader, fixing the broken social contract between people and work starts with you. When you are able to make your work more enjoyable and purposeful, that possibility will be greater for others.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World

“When you view your time as finite, you build more life into each day.”
― Tom Rath, Life's Great Question: Discover How You Contribute To The World