Bullsh*t Jobs, Burnout, and the Search for Soul Work

Let’s begin the week by admitting what far too many of us already know, but rarely say out loud.

Much of today’s employment consists of bullsh*t jobs and work that consumes our attention without nourishing anything human in return.

This is not simply a case of having a case of the Garfields or a personal aversion to alarm clocks after a relaxing weekend, although Mondays have repeatedly been shown to be the peak of the week for anxiety, lowered mood, and even acute health events (Chandola et al., 2025).

The late anthropologist David Graeber gave the phenomenon a name when he defined roles that even the people performing them believe should not exist as "bullsh*t jobs." In his research and public lectures, Graeber described a striking pattern where people would admit, when asked privately, that their work didn't contribute anything meaningful to society. What he discovered was that many of us feel that our labor is pointless if not actively obstructive.

What Graeber observed was not laziness or entitlement. Many of the workers who responded to his surveys were highly educated, conscientious, and well paid. Their distress came from a sense that their working hours were being traded for nothing real.

It has been years since Graeber’s original work, but there is little reason to believe the situation has improved. If anything, it has hardened to a chronic crisis of purpose.

Just look at how Gallup’s most recent global data shows that only 21 percent of employees feel engaged at work. These numbers have become so familiar that they barely register anymore, and the critique of post-industrial work has become so widespread that cynicism now feels easier than diagnosis.

But resignation does not help us understand what is actually ailing us, nor how to respond. For that, we need a clearer lens.

One useful place to start is a simple but demanding idea of "soul work" as an antidote to the Graeberian bullsh*t that surrounds us.

Mind the purpose gap

Work, as we organize it today, is a surprisingly recent invention.

Anthropologists such as James Suzman and historians such as Yuval Noah Harari have pointed out that formal professions, fixed job titles, and lifelong occupational identities appear only very late in human history. Most estimates place their emergence within the last 10 to 12 thousand years, following the rise of agrarian societies and food surplus, after which specialization became possible, once not everyone had to spend their days securing calories.

That is the standard story, but it is also incomplete.

When researchers have studied nomadic and small-scale societies that preserve elements of our evolutionary past, they have not found an absence of work. Among groups such as the Mbuti, documented by Colin Turnbull, individuals hunted, gathered tubers, built tools, cared for children, and maintained social rituals. People specialized, and skills and effort were recognized just like in the modern office. What did not exist was the sharp separation between labor and life.

Even long-distance trade, often assumed to be a feature of modern economies, has deep roots. Anthropological studies of Pacific Island shell exchange networks show complex systems of value, craftsmanship, and social signaling that predate formal markets by millennia (Malinowski, 1922).

Work, in other words, is not the problem. The way we've abstracted it is.

You see, the further our labor is abstracted from its effects, particularly its social effects, the harder it becomes to feel purpose.

Evolution did not prime us to be idle or indifferent. Humans have spent extraordinary effort on projects with no obvious survival payoff, from monumental architecture like Angkor Wat to elaborate rituals and art painted on the walls of dimly lit caves. What these activities shared was visibility, shared meaning, and social recognition to the point that our brains are exquisitely tuned to the knowledge that what we do matters to others.

This is where the modern purpose gap opens.

How to find your soul work

There is no sense in romanticizing a return to ancestral environments.

That world no longer exists, and few of us would truly want it back. The point is not to escape modernity but to understand ourselves within it.

What millennia of human history have drilled into us are not specific tasks, but enduring motivational systems. Research in psychology and neuroscience shows that social connection, perceived impact, and contribution to others activate reward pathways involving oxytocin, dopamine, and endogenous opioids, which together form the biochemical substrates of life satisfaction (Bhanji et al. 2014).

One hint at where to find soul work is to look at what kinds of work have persisted across cultures and centuries. Teaching is one. Caregiving is another. Artistic craft, stewardship, healing, and coordination within a community all appear repeatedly in the human record.

The further work is walled off from the human impact we've evolved to care about, the thinner it feels, no matter the pay.

The work that sustained our communities historically had little to do with status metrics and everything to do with transmitting knowledge, supporting others, and being visibly useful to people we care about. Soul work today is any work that restores even a portion of that loop.

Most of us cannot change our jobs overnight, and we don't need anything as drastic as quitting to add a sprinkling of soul to what we do.

If you manage others, make the impact of their work explicit by naming who benefits and how. If you are an individual contributor, seek out those connections yourself by volunteering your expertise, teaching someone, or making your contribution legible.

As Adam Grant has shown in his research on givers, helping others without immediate transactional return often benefits both the recipient and the giver. What you receive back may not be a bonus or promotion but something older and more durable: a sense of meaning that your nervous system recognizes immediately.

That is how you bring soul back into your work.