Can thinking like a freelancer make your day job feel more meaningful?

When it comes to work, compensation, benefits, and job security are essential factors to consider. However, a sense of meaning and purpose may be even more crucial, particularly as we spend one-third of our life at work. Feeling like our work has meaning and is aligned with our personal values leads to a sense of purpose and increased engagement.

Establishing a sense of purpose is a key driver for why some individuals choose to become freelancers. They feel they can wrestle back control over their lives and their agenda when they are independent contractors. But the good news is that this freelancer mindset can teach all workers, self-employed or otherwise, how to create meaning in and at work.

Meaning in our work comes from doing work that is aligned with our interests and values and empowers us with the autonomy and freedom to design how we do our work. When we have control and flexibility over how we generate outputs, we can find our own unique work “flows” and move toward our professional callings.

On the other hand, meaning at work comes from being part of a like-minded community of individuals with psychological safety, intimacy, shared identities, and visionary leadership.

Here are three traits from the freelancer mindset that we can all adopt to make our work feel more meaningful. 

Establish purpose and agency

Freelancers typically begin a project by aligning with their clients about exactly what they must deliver. They also establish boundaries so that they have freedom of choice to design how they accomplish these goals. In this kind of relationship, employers hire freelancers for their specific skills and experiences and thus trust them to make decisions about how to deliver the best results.

This kind of clear communication and trust is also possible for the rest of the workforce. Together, leaders and workers can adopt this approach of transparency and autonomy. Teams can agree on the purpose and goals they want to achieve for the organization, along with timescales and workflows that can be cascaded down through different levels within the business to the relevant teams and departments. Ultimately, everyone can work out how to reach their personal objectives and ensure they are aligned with the organization’s broader common purpose—and ask for guidance and help as they go.

This way of working ensures a united direction for the team, but gives individuals a sense of freedom and responsibility. It enables a sense of agency, allowing workers to decide our pace, methods, and timing to meet deadlines and budgets. It’s this ability to have freedom of choice on the specifics of how to do our work that, together with our operating in our area of specialism or mastery, brings meaning in our work.

Create shared identities

Many of us strongly identify with our work. In fact, according to a survey by McKinsey, 70% of employees say their personal sense of purpose is defined by their work.

If our work is aligned with our personal values, it is more likely to contribute to our identity and be meaningful to us. This becomes even more powerful if we work in organizations and with others who share our identities. 

Freelancers often deliberately seek out working relationships with firms with whom they have common, or similar, identities. An example of this would be a climate-conscious fractional CFO who would choose to work with an organization that has the social aim of eradicating single-use plastic in drinking bottles. This shared identity binds the freelancer to the business, others who work there, and their overriding purpose.

A shared identity, such as being climate conscious, can apply to full-time workers and their teams as well. The key is for individuals to initiate dialogue with their colleagues about their values, roles, skills, and outputs to understand how these align and contribute to the group’s objectives and, ultimately, to the overarching goal of the business. 

Teams can take a minute to ask: What is it that joins us as colleagues together? Defining, articulating, and sharing identities increases intimacy between team members, which can unblock misunderstandings and enable colleagues to see how their contributions impact their coworkers—which ultimately gives workers a greater sense of meaning. 

Build a sense of belonging 

When workers feel like they belong, they are more likely to understand how meaningful their contributions are. The more our work gives us these feelings of belonging, the more meaningful it will be.

Freelancers take time to deliberately identify the professional communities they want to be part of, and it should be no different for those with full-time jobs. Being part of an organization with teams and groups with common identities and interests contributes to our feelings of belonging. This helps workers feel supported when they have difficulties and to feel safe to speak up and challenge appropriately without fear of negative consequences—which leads to psychological safety. 

If connecting with our immediate team proves difficult, finding like-minded individuals in other areas of the organization can also be valuable. Hybrid working has made networking feel less organic for some, but intentionally seeking and investing in these relationships is more important than ever to avoid feelings of isolation and build your home.

Thinking like a freelancer can help us clearly establish what needs to be done and what our purpose is, give us greater agency, build collective identities, and develop a sense of belonging. Freelancers consciously prioritize meaning in and at work and design their work lives accordingly—but that doesn’t exclude the rest of us from doing so, too.