[mrandish]

Yeah, a typical advice trope is "Find things with meaning and do those" which isn't very useful once you understand we create meaning internally. Meaning is an individualized perception not an extrinsic property.

This gets tricky because our perceptions can be influenced by societal expectations of which things should be meaningful - as if it's an objective property. It's easy to think of activities to which many people would respond "Oh, that must be soooo meaningful" and yet it's entirely possible you may not personally experience a sense of meaning from doing them - yet feel like you're supposed to. It's important to realize there's nothing wrong with that (or with you). You may not experience the 'expected meaning' meaning while doing some "charitably noble activity" widely thought to be meaningful, yet discover something else few would associate with "meaningful" does evoke meaning for you.

[dpark]

> Yeah, a typical advice trope is "Find things with meaning and do those" which isn't very useful once you understand we create meaning internally. Meaning is an individualized perception not an extrinsic property.

Why does intrinsic meaning make this advice not useful? I have always understood this sort of advice to mean “do things that are meaningful to you”.

[curmudgeon22]

Sometimes, whats meaningful to an individual becomes cloudy (maybe not everyone gets this, but some do). Or they feel like they are interpreting it wrong or something because it isn't mapping to the cultural expectations and what we "should" find meaningful.

[smcin]

The obvious problem quadrant is if you work on something that has huge meaning to you personally, but no or negative use to most people. Meaning can have both intrinsic and extrinsic components.

Inevitably you have to compromise on what is the most meaningful thing to achieve some reasonably happy balance. How much compromise, how you internalize it to yourself, etc. you have to figure out.