A colleague and an inspiring leader, Puneet Maheshwari, recently wrote something about work and meaning that stopped me in my tracks. He talked about growing up around people who never had the luxury of romanticizing “meaning” in work. For them, work was survival and dignity. Nothing more, nothing less.
His insight? The question isn’t whether work is a means to an end, but which ends make the means worth it.
When Time Disappears
For me, meaningful work has always had a clear signal. Time becomes irrelevant. Three hours feel like ten minutes. The outside world fades.
But waiting for these magical moments is a trap. The real work happens when you show up consistently, especially on uninspired Tuesdays and exhausting Fridays. Meaning isn’t something you find. It’s something that emerges from practice.
The craft isn’t in the inspiration. It’s in the repetition.
The Distance Problem
Most of us work several layers removed from actual human impact. We push pixels that change metrics that supposedly improve someone’s day somewhere. But who? Where? How?
The most powerful example from Puneet’s post was a nurse calming a frightened family. She could see the impact immediately. Fear becomes relief. Anxiety becomes calm.
As product managers, we need to be translators. Every user story should have a human story behind it. Every sprint should serve someone specific. Not a persona. Not a segment. An actual person whose Tuesday gets a little easier because of our work.
When they become “users” instead of humans, we’ve already lost the thread.
How Organizations Kill Meaning
We all know purpose drives great work. Then we systematically bury it.
We celebrate outputs over outcomes. We ship features nobody requested. We maintain processes that would make Kafka weep. The modern workplace isn’t just inefficient. It actively fights against meaning. (Read: Outcomes over Outputs for Real)
The real emotional labor isn’t the work itself. It’s holding onto purpose when every system seems designed to strip it away. It’s maintaining enthusiasm during your 47th stakeholder meeting about a feature that solves no real problem.
The Courage of No
Every feature you reject protects the features that matter. Every meeting you decline creates space for real work. Every process you eliminate reduces the distance between effort and impact.
This isn’t about being difficult. It’s about being a guardian. You don’t need permission to protect what matters. You just need to decide that protecting meaning is part of your job.
Even when nobody’s watching. Especially then.
The Self-Deception Trap
The easiest person to fool is yourself.
Every product manager thinks their feature will change the world. Most barely change a dashboard. The challenge is maintaining healthy skepticism while keeping your team inspired.
Hold these two truths: This might not matter as much as we think, and we’re still going to craft it like it does. That tension is uncomfortable. It should be. Discomfort is your compass pointing toward actual impact.
The Monday Morning Test
Here’s the question I ask myself every Monday: Can I name the specific person whose life gets better because of this week’s work?
If the answer is a vague “our users” or “the business,” I’m not doing product management. I’m running a feature factory.
Work will always be partly transactional. We have bills, we need healthcare, and we have responsibilities. That’s reality.
But within those constraints, we get to choose which transactions matter. We can create pockets of meaning even in broken systems. We can refuse to let the process kill the purpose.
Starting Small
Pick one thing this week. Just one feature, one decision, one problem. Trace it all the way to a real human impact. Find the person whose day gets easier. Learn their name. Understand their frustration.
Share that story with your team.
Then do it again next week.
This is how meaning works, not as a grand revelation but as a practice. Not waiting for organizations to suddenly care, but creating small spaces where purpose survives.
My colleague ended his piece with refusing cynicism, calling it risk aversion masquerading as wisdom.
He’s right. The riskiest thing we can do is stop believing our work can matter. Even in small ways. Even when nobody notices. Even when the systems fight against it.
That’s the craft. That’s the belonging. That’s the service.
That’s the work worth setting an alarm for.