Why Do you Do What you Do?

I had a boss who was a stickler for the 5 Whys. Just try defending why you feel like a burger for lunch 5 times.

Discovering and effectively using your Why has been a hot topic for the last few years. I figured it was time to jump on that bandwagon and share a few tips on how you can learn a bit more about yourself and your motivators. Plus you won’t have to read any more Simon Sinek books unless you really want to.

Why do you do what you do? It’s the type of question that sounds straightforward, but the majority of adults will struggle to completely answer. I’m not just thinking about your current job, but rather why you choose to keep doing your role, at your company, at this stage of your life. This is also the type of question that can keep you up at night, so don’t start wondering about your Why after 5:00 PM. Caffeine and existential questions are best avoided after mid-afternoon. I can wait.

Okay, now that you’ve had a good night’s sleep, we can get down to work. I’m going to give you three options/exercises to learn more about yourself. Feel free to do one or all of them as you see fit.

Let’s start with a seemingly easy question — Why do you keep going to work at your current job? One non-adequate (but still true) answer is “Duh, cause I need money”. Another answer might be “Because I like free polo shirts with company logos on them”. I want you to write down as many answers as you can think of, regardless of how ridiculous they may seem. And if you don’t have any ridiculous answers, then I would say you’re not digging deep enough into your psyche.

I came up with about 20 reasons when I went through this exercise. My most ridiculous reason was that my company’s color scheme brings out the color of my eyes. (I told you this was the time to dig deep). I know I’m fortunate that I do enjoy what I do for a living, so it’s okay if you can’t think of 20 reasons in your first sitting. The point is that you create a place to start your exploration. It’s also a good idea to group similar ideas together, like proximity of the office to your house, daycare, gym, favorite lunch spot or the feelings of pride when you do A, B, or C. Grouping isn’t essential, but it will speed up the next steps if they all share the same root causes.

You’ve got your list, so it’s time to ask yourself why you wrote down what you did. What, you thought you could get to your overarching Why without a lot of little Why’s first? Why would you think that? Stay high level — You simply take your first topic and ask yourself why it’s true. Then you ask Why to the answer to the first Why, and repeat 3 more times. I’ve heard this called the 5 Why’s (a.k.a. the 4 Why’s, a.k.a. the 7 Why’s, a.k.a. the “toddler after a basket of Easter candy” question method).

It will be trickier than it sounds to get to the fifth Why each time. It will also uncover a few things that may surprise you. Let’s walk through an example — if the reason you work was to get paid, then the next level down might be to get money to pay for things. One more level is money pays for your housing, which is becau

se your family lives there. And the fifth Why might be because you like your family and want to protect them. That’s a way more positive reason to go to work than “they pay me”. Another example might be you enjoy that your coworkers are nice to you, because you feel they respect your opinions, because you don’t feel as respected in your personal life, because your friends make fun of you for liking model trains,because model trains are cool, damn it. They aren’t all going to be peaches and cream reasons.

Remember to be honest with yourself about your motivation. If you’ve done an honest assessment, then you’ll start to see patterns in the fifth Why’s. My list showed me that I want to take care of my loved ones, challenge myself, and do something remarkable. That’s why I keep coming back to work. Your reasons may be similar, or possibly wildly different. The point is to keep narrowing down the reasons until you have a core, unassailable Why that you can build upon.

• Side note — The people who get paid to write motivational books will disagree with this, but I don’t believe that your work has to be fulfilling. As long as you can satisfy your Why with some facet of your life, then you’re in good shape. Your hobbies or volunteering can fill in any gaps that aren’t being met at work. Or, and I’m just throwing this out here, you could change what you do to make it more fulfilling. I’m pretty sure I’ve written a couple of articles about that very topic.

If you rolled your eyes at the listing reasons exercise above, then you’re in luck. I just happen to have a second option for uncovering your Why that you can use. It still requires some introspection, so get ready to open up and get a little vulnerable.

At my company we use the 4 box (planning tool) with our franchise owner candidates (because everything’s sexier when it’s presented in a diagram). There are some overlaps with the 5 Why’s exercise, but you don’t have to dig too deep. The idea is simple — draw 4 boxes on a piece of paper, and then answer the questions in each quadrant. The bottom left quadrant is geared towards owning a franchise, so feel free to replace the word Business with Life.

At the end of the last box you will see what’s most important to you and the reasons why you will want to make a change for the better in your life. The added benefit is the “what happens if I don’t change anything” quadrant. Basically, if nothing changed, who in my life would also feel the impacts? The 4 box isn’t quite as revealing as the Why deep dive, but any call to action is a good thing.

The third option to find your Why is to buy a few Simon Sinek books and try their recommended method:

1. You can find your WHY by going through events from your past that had a big impact on you.
2. Knowing HOW you work will allow you to live your WHY as best as possible.
3. After you’ve figured out your purpose in life, share it whenever you get a chance.

It’s not a bad option, I just don’t find it as compelling as the first two methods. Especially the idea of telling everyone about the results. Nobody wants to hear people pontificating about their purpose. That’s what weekly Medium articles are for.

These options aren’t just for individuals. These are also excellent exercises to do with your team or company as you are setting your mission and strategies. You just change your perspective slightly towards “Why do we do the things we do”. I sincerely hope there are compelling reasons for most of your current task list, and you don’t end up with a bunch of “because the last person in my job did this too”. Although, if that is where you end up, at least you’ll have a compelling argument to stop doing that task again. Tell your bosses that Philip said it was okay.

-Philip