If doing meaningful work requires having a purpose—that is, the change or impact are we trying to make in somebody else's life, not just our own—, then the question we might ask ourselves is what else is there that, on a more practical level, can help us to do the work.

For Ryan Holiday, one of the biggest problems is when we try to do the work out of passion. Drawing on the Stoic philosophy, he argues that, more often than not, passion "masks a weakness."

When we're driven by passion we often hide behind telling the world all the details about the work we're going to do. We get attached to the very idea of us wanting to do the work—so much so that the actual work almost never gets done.

In his book, Ego Is The Enemy, Holiday writes that instead of passion we should be driven by reason. Reason gives us the direction where we want to go. It also calls for three things: clarity, deliberateness, methodological determination.

Without these, little meaningful work can be accomplished, if any.

Kindly,

Neva.