“beautiful bottle of wine”: Antonio Galloni, wine critic and founder of Vinous, in an interview with the author, July 24, 2015
“a million lightbulbs”: “Liv-Ex Interview with Antonio Galloni, Part One,” Liv-Ex Blog, December 13, 2013, www.blog.liv-ex.com/2013/12/liv-ex-interview-with-antonio-galloni-part-one.html.
“sense of purpose”: Galloni, interview.
purpose, pleasure, and age: These data are originally reported in Von Culin, Tsukayama, and Duckworth, “Unpacking Grit.”
well-being of others: Different scholars use the word purpose in slightly different ways. Often it is emphasized that a goal, to be purposeful, has to be meaningful to the self and, at the same time, beneficial to others. Here I emphasize the beyond-the-self aspect of purpose because we already covered the more self-oriented motivation of interest in the last chapter.
the eudaimonic life: Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. David Ross (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009), 5.
“pleasure principle”: Sigmund Freud, “Formulations Regarding the Two Principles in Mental Functioning,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 12, trans. James Strachey and Anna Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1958), 218–26.
evolved to seek meaning: See John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008). See also Roy F. Baumeister and Mark R. Leary, “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin 117 (1995): 497–529. Finally, see Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste, Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation (New York: Penguin, 1995). Note that recent primate studies show that longevity and reproductive success depend on the ability to form strong, enduring social bonds with others. The desire to connect is as basic a human—even mammalian—need as the need for pleasure. See Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney, “The Evolutionary Origins of Friendship,” Annual Review of Psychology 63 (2012): 153–77.
than we care about pleasure: Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, “On Happiness and Human Potential: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being,” Annual Review of Psychology 52 (2001): 141–66.
which of the three bricklayers: Amy Wrzesniewski, Clark McCauley, Paul Rozin, and Barry Schwartz, “Jobs, Careers, and Callings: People’s Relations to Their Work,” Journal of Research in Personality 31 (1997): 25.
their occupations a calling: We collected this data in 2015.
than those with a job: Wrzesniewski et al., “Jobs, Careers, and Callings,” 25.
survey of 982 zookeepers: J. Stuart Bunderson and Jeffery A. Thompson, “The Call of the Wild: Zookeepers, Callings, and the Double-Edged Sword of Deeply Meaningful Work,” Administrative Science Quarterly 54 (2009): 32–57.
“Monday through Friday sort of dying”: Studs Terkel, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), xi. Note that the names of the workers in Terkel’s book were pseudonyms.
“I don’t think I have a calling”: Ibid., 521–24.
“find a savor in their daily job”: Ibid., xi.
“It’s meaningful to society”: Ibid., 103–6.
when she studied secretaries: Wrzesniewski et al., “Jobs, Careers, and Callings.”
“waiting to be discovered”: Amy Wrzesniewski, professor of organizational behavior at Yale School of Management, in an interview with the author, January 27, 2015.
all the way to Chicago: Metropolitan Transit Authority, “Facts and Figures,” accessed March 10, 2015, http://web.mta.info/nyct/facts/ffsubway.htm.
“and I got hired”: Joe Leader, senior vice president at New York City Transit, in an interview with the author, February 26, 2015.
“experience I’ve ever had”: Michael Baime, clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Penn Program for Mindfulness, in an interview with the author, January 21, 2015.
having fun at the same time: The next year, we doubled in size and, to better support our students, developed an after-school enrichment program. The following year, the program won the Better Government Award for the state of Massachusetts. Around the same time, professors at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government wrote up the story of Summerbridge Cambridge as a case study in social entrepreneurship.
hundreds of students every year: For more information on Breakthrough Greater Boston, see www.breakthroughgreaterboston.org.
“you can have both”: Adam Grant, Class of 1965 Wharton Professor of Management, in an interview with the author, July 15, 2015.
prosocial interests in mind do better: Adam Grant, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success (New York: Penguin, 2014).
interest in the work itself: Adam Grant, “Does Intrinsic Motivation Fuel the Prosocial Fire? Motivational Synergy in Predicting Persistence, Performance, and Productivity,” Journal of Applied Psychology 93 (2008): 48–58.
raised more money: Ibid.
about a hundred adolescents: David S. Yeager and Matthew J. Bundick, “The Role of Purposeful Work Goals in Promoting Meaning in Life and in Schoolwork During Adolescence,” Journal of Adolescent Research 24 (2009): 423–52. Relatedly, it’s been shown that affirming values can boost performance for other reasons, particularly by maintaining a sense of personal adequacy. Geoffrey L. Cohen and David K. Sherman, “The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention,” Annual Review of Psychology 65 (2014): 333–71.
“didn’t give in to obstacles”: Aurora and Franco Fonte, wife and husband founders and directors of Assetlink, in an interview with the author, March 13, 2015.
“something you’re interested in”: Bill Damon, professor of psychology at Stanford Graduate School of Education, in an interview with the author, July 20, 2015.
personal loss or adversity: For example, detectives who have themselves been the victim of a crime are grittier and, in turn, more engaged in their work. See Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, Elizabeth P. Shulman, and Angela L. Duckworth, “Survivor Mission: Do Those Who Survive Have a Drive to Thrive at Work?” Journal of Positive Psychology 9 (2014): 209–18.
“became family to her”: Kat Cole, president of Cinnabon, in an interview with the author, February 1, 2015.
exceeded one billion dollars: Charlotte Alter, “How to Run a Billion Dollar Brand Before You’re 35,” Time, December 2, 2014.
“My passion is to help people”: Jo Barsh, in an interview with the author, July 31, 2015.
“like they are that person”: Kat Cole, “See What’s Possible, and Help Others Do the Same,” from Kat Cole’s blog, The Difference, August 7, 2013, http://www.katcole.net/2013/08/see-whats-possible-and-help-others-do.html.
“be a better place?”: David S. Yeager et al., “Boring but Important: A Self-Transcendent Purpose for Learning Fosters Academic Self-Regulation,” Attitudes and Social Cognition 107 (2014): 559–80.
calls this idea job crafting: Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane E. Dutton, “Crafting a Job: Revisioning Employees as Active Crafters of Their Work,” Academy of Management Review 26 (2001): 179–201. See also www.jobcrafting.org and Grant, Give and Take, 262–63. This section also reflects personal correspondence between the author and Amy Wrzesniewski, professor of organizational behavior at Yale School of Management, October 20, 2015.
“be a better person”: Interested readers can find a more complete list of questions that Bill Damon uses in his book, The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life (New York: Free Press, 2008), 183–86.
CHAPTER 9: HOPE