It doesn’t matter what you do for work, there are going to be parts of your day that feel a little… pointless. Or not aligned to your purpose and passion. Or just plain boring. Think endless meetings, replying to emails and submitting invoices. These might be necessary parts of your job, sure, but they’re not why you took this particular role, and they’re certainly not the tasks that fill you with joy and motivation. 

If your entire workday was filled with this stuff, you’d quickly become demotivated. But on the flip side, you can’t only do the creative, fun bits of your job – not just because your boss might get annoyed, but because you’d quickly get exhausted; sometimes we need to shut off our brains for a bit and do mindless admin. 

Cassie Holmes is a professor of marketing and behavioural decision-making at UCLA, and she’s done extensive research into time and happiness. In her new book, Happier Hour, she has a recommendation for navigating this balance: consciously categorising and segmenting each day into time for what she calls ‘work-y work’ and ‘happy work’.  

“Happy work is work that allows you to make progress on your higher-order goals,” Holmes tells Stylist. “It’s the work that helps you fulfil your purpose. Work-y work included all the tasks that feel like work—they are unenjoyable and it’s not clear why or that they really matter.”

Holmes believes that to be happier and feel more fulfilled at work, you first need to suss out what your happy work is – and that requires figuring out your purpose. She suggests using the ‘five whys exercise’ to do this: ask yourself why you do the work you do, then why that is important, then why do I care about that, and why that and, ultimately, what is my why? Big questions. 

When work tasks align with that purpose, they’re happy work. So, for example, say you’re a journalist (no personal reason for this example, don’t look into it). You might decide your purpose is to connect with people through your writing, to help people be happier and feel less alone. When you’re writing an article that does that, it’s definitely happy work. 

When work doesn’t have a clear why or needs a lot of stretching to get to that core purpose, it’s work-y work. So in that journalism example, that might look like clearing out your inbox – sure, doing that might help you get to the happy work, but it’s not exactly fulfilling. 

“It’s crucial to protect hours for the work that really matters – the happy work that allows you to make progress towards your goals,” Holmes tells us. “Without carving out this time, work weeks tend to get filled with tasks that might seem urgent, but don’t truly matter. With this you can’t make true progress, and eventually, this feels horribly dissatisfying, and we don’t feel fulfilled by our work. This sense of being busy but not impactful can lead to burnout.”

This personal mindset switch is helpful, but it’s vital to communicate this schedule… perhaps without explicitly saying that certain tasks don’t bring you joy. Could you mark up your work calendar with the hours dedicated to deep, creative work and the time slots for answering emails and having meetings? Perhaps you could add a Slack status or out-of-office message that notes that certain admin tasks are only looked at in the afternoons? 

How this looks exactly is up to you – and it’s worth thinking about the best timings for happy work and work-y work depending on your energy levels throughout the day (if you’re a night owl, for example, the morning might be the ideal time to slog through tasks that don’t require much deep thought). But ensure that whatever schedule you create, you stick to it. 

“Put it into your schedule to protect this time,” Holmes advises. “You might also communicate, and perhaps even coordinate, this time with your boss and coworkers. 

“At the end of the day, you being able to complete your important work will benefit not just your happiness, but it will benefit them and your workplace as well. And you will happily be available to them outside of these dedicated times.”

Happier Hour by Cassie Holmes is available now (Penguin Life, £14.99). 

Main image: Getty; Stylist.