This is a guest post by Paul Kirby.
Think back to the last time you did something purely for the joy of it. Time slipped away, and you were fully immersed in the experience, focused only on the act itself rather than the outcome or productivity. Maybe it was painting, writing, building something, or simply walking without a destination. That kind of deep, self-directed engagement has a name: autotelic. It’s a rare but powerful state of doing something for its own sake, not because of where it might lead or what it might earn you, but because of how it makes you feel in the moment.
Joy: The Missing Metric in How We Talk About Work
In 2023, the Pew Research Center released a study on how Americans view their jobs. The headline finding was concerning: only half of Americans reported being satisfied with their work. But what stood out to me even more wasn’t the data itself; it was the framework behind it. It raised a larger question: what is job satisfaction, really? Not one publicly shared survey question addressed how much joy people experience in their work, whether in daily tasks or in a broader sense of fulfillment. There were no questions about purpose or whether work ever brought participants into a state of flow. The closest they came was a vague inquiry about identity, which gestures toward meaning but doesn’t quite capture it.
This omission points to a deeper issue: how can we understand people’s relationship to work if we never ask whether they actually enjoy it? The study focused almost entirely on external factors like compensation, promotions, and feedback, while overlooking internal drivers such as motivation, joy, and fulfillment. But this narrow lens isn’t unique to Pew; it mirrors how we discuss work more broadly. Like those researchers, we often ask each other surface-level questions about roles or industries, rarely pausing to ask what truly energizes someone.
What if we started asking different questions, not just about what we do, but why we do it and what it awakens in us? That’s the question I kept returning to as I explored what it means to build a fulfilling life from the inside out. That exploration eventually led me to create The FUSE Pathway, a framework designed to be a roadmap for combining one’s passions and interests to create a life of fulfillment and purpose. While the framework applies to fulfillment in all areas, work is often the most powerful and accessible place to begin. That’s where we’ll focus in this piece.
What is Fulfillment? And Why It Often Eludes Us
Our obsession with productivity and external success isn’t new. It traces back to the Industrial Revolution, when a person’s value became closely tied to output, efficiency, and economic contribution. Over time, especially in Western culture, we began to see identity and worth as something to be earned through visible achievement. Education systems reinforced this by rewarding performance over curiosity. Corporate cultures grew around job titles and deliverables. Even now, entire industries exist to help us “optimize” our time, our work, and our lives, all in the name of doing more.
But somewhere along the way, many of us started doing more and feeling less. Less connected to our work. Less aligned with our values. Less fulfilled, despite having checked all the right boxes. The focus on productivity and prestige may have helped us advance, but it hasn’t necessarily helped us feel more alive.
You can see the cracks in this system not only among those who feel stuck or burned out, but also in the people who appear to be thriving on paper. Many are in stable, successful roles. They’re well compensated, respected, and even passionate about parts of what they do, yet they still feel a quiet longing for something more. Not necessarily a bigger title or a dramatic change, but something deeper: a sense of meaning, of alignment, of moving closer to a life that feels like theirs. It’s not always loud or urgent. Sometimes it’s just a soft question that won’t go away: Is this really it?
Whether you find yourself feeling completely out of alignment or simply wondering if there’s something more meant for you, the act of pausing to consider a different approach is a powerful first step. Creating space to explore what truly lights you up, without judgment or pressure, opens the door to a more fulfilling way of working and living. In Japanese culture, this intersection of passion, skill, and purpose is known as ikigai, which in simple terms can be defined as your reason for being. Sometimes, all it takes is a shift in perspective to begin building a vision that feels more aligned, more purposeful, and more you.
A Framework for Fulfillment in Work and Life
Whether you’re learning new skills, experimenting with an idea, or simply reconnecting with what lights you up, the journey itself can – and should – be energizing. In fact, many people find that the most meaningful moments happen when they are fully engaged along what I call their “Fusioneering” journey.
The FUSE Pathway offers a powerful framework. Whether you’re a young person just starting out, someone contemplating a change in career, or simply a successful person wondering if maybe there’s something more to life that they are missing.
Adapting the FUSE Phases for Your Professional Life:
- Find: Look beyond job titles and roles to the moments in your professional life, and even outside of it, that have energized you. This phase is about uncovering the core interests, talents, and experiences that light you up. Often, these passions exist in separate boxes, such as creative versus analytical or personal versus professional. Once identified, the goal is to creatively fuse them into a personal vision for yourself – one that you’re really excited about, and maybe even a bit scared of, since it’s so powerful and empowering. This personal fused vision becomes the foundation for everything that follows. And if it truly excites you, then rest assured it will generate the enthusiasm and energy you’ll draw upon all along your FUSE pathway.
- Upgrade: Once you’ve identified the components of your vision, the next step is preparation. This includes gaining the tools and knowledge needed to fulfill your vision. That might include upgrading existing skills and learning new ones.
- Start: This is where fusion begins to take a more solid shape. With clarity and preparation in place, you begin weaving your passions into your reality. That might mean evolving your current role, pitching a new idea, launching a side project, or stepping into a new career altogether. It’s about moving from concept and preparation to action.
- Evolve: As you grow, the way you see and engage with the world expands too. Your mindset shifts, and you become more open to opportunities that align with your vision in fresh and unexpected ways. You might take on new challenges, explore different mediums or approaches, or experiment with ideas that once felt out of reach. Through it all, your vision remains at the center. This phase, like the others, isn’t about reaching a finish line. It’s about continuing to follow what energizes you and allowing your path to unfold through an ever-growing sense of curiosity, creativity, and fulfillment.
The Path Forward Starts Within
We’ve been conditioned to chase validation through job titles, productivity, and external achievement, often at the expense of what truly excites us. But there’s real value in turning inward. Exploring your inner landscape opens the door to defining success and fulfillment on your own terms. Your passions are more than hobbies or fleeting interests; they’re signals. When followed with curiosity, they can lead to a deeply personal sense of purpose. This purpose is fluid, evolving, and shaped by lived experience.
It doesn’t matter what stage or age you’re at. Finding your purpose in life after 50 is just as meaningful a journey as discovering it at 25. Perhaps the most important point to remember is this: making a meaningful shift may simply start with reconnecting to what matters and letting that guide you.
A New Way Forward Starts With One Honest Question
So ask yourself: What lights you up? What really lights you up? Then ask yourself how might my life change if I followed along this new fused journey? There’s no single path to fulfillment, but there is value in creating one that’s truly your own. When you start from what matters most, you begin the quiet, creative work of fusioneering a life that feels aligned, one step at a time.
About the Guest Post Author:
Paul Kirby is an artist, engineer, and author of The FUSE Pathway: How to Find and Lead a Fulfilling Life. He is the visionary behind Dulcinea, a self-engineered robot that paints original works of art, and the creator of Fusioneering, a philosophy and framework that serves as a roadmap for combining one’s passions and interests to design a life of fulfillment and purpose