Three Skills to Make Work More Meaningful in 2026

The surprising ingredients that keep motivation alive after resolutions fade.

Every January, people set goals hoping the new year will feel better than the last. We want less overwhelm and more clarity, less friction and more flow. But if you look closely at the resolutions people make—get organized, be more productive, prioritize myself—they tend to point to a deeper desire: to feel better in our daily lives at work and at home. They want to feel more grounded, more energized, and more connected.

Psychologists call this surge of motivation at the beginning of the year the fresh start effect because temporal milestones give us permission to reset expectations and imagine a better version of ourselves. But most resolutions fade by February. That happens in part because we try to change outcomes without changing the daily experiences that shape our motivation in the first place.

Meaning Fuels Motivation

In our multi-year research at the University of Pennsylvania, we uncovered something crucial: the biggest driver of sustained motivation and well-being at work isn’t productivity, efficiency, or better time management. It’s meaning. And meaning, we found, is profoundly shaped by the environment around us. Across hundreds of interviews with employees and leaders, we discovered that meaning at work rests on three essential experiences, which we call the Three Cs:

• Community: feeling known, welcomed, and respected.
• Contribution: seeing the real impact of your work.
• Challenge: having opportunities to grow—and someone who believes you can.

If you want 2026 to feel different, you need habits that strengthen these three experiences in small, everyday ways.

Here are a few habits within each C that can help make this year more meaningful, more energizing, and more human.

Community: Make Connection a Daily Practice

Community often grows from small, sincere moments of feeling seen and heard. Some habits that create community include:

• Micro-welcomes: using someone’s name with warmth, making eye contact, or noticing something real about their day. These subtle gestures communicate, "You matter here."
• Everyday storytelling: sharing a short piece of your identity once a week—a tradition, a value, a weekend moment that shifted your perspective—and inviting others to do the same. These exchanges help people feel known beyond their roles and create the belonging that fuels meaning.

Contribution: Make Impact Visible

Contribution deepens when people can see the difference they make. Simple habits that bring impact into focus include:

• Offering one moment of genuine positive feedback each week. Not a vague “great job,” but something specific and true. Small moments of acknowledgment help people understand the real impact of their work and reconnect them to a sense of purpose. You might begin with:
• “I noticed how you…”
• “Because of your effort on…, we were able to…”
• “The way you handled… made a real difference.”
• Pausing once a week to ask yourself: What did I do that made someone else’s day a little better? Maybe you clarified something for a colleague, created calm in a tense moment, or prevented a small issue from becoming a big one. Naming these moments helps you notice the meaning hidden in everyday work.

Challenge: Stretch Into Who You Can Become

Challenge becomes meaningful when it is both supportive and stretching. You might try:

• A weekly tiny stretch: doing something just ten percent outside your comfort zone, like suggesting an idea in a meeting, trying a new approach, or volunteering for a slightly unfamiliar responsibility. These small expansions build confidence over time.
• Strengths-in-action: choosing one of your signature strengths each week and using it in a new or unexpected way. These moments create a sense of flow and reinforce competence.
• Potential-spotting: telling someone what you see in them that they may not yet see in themselves—a quality, a strength, or a possibility. When leaders reflect back potential, they spark a form of motivation no productivity system can match.

How to Use These Habits in 2026

You don’t need to adopt every habit to increase meaning at work. Try one or two to start and pay attention to how they shape your energy, your relationships, and your sense of purpose. Keep the habits that resonate. Let go of those that don’t. Meaning is built through frequency more than through intensity. In 2026, choose habits that help you feel more human, more fulfilled, and more alive in your work.

Written by:  Wes Adams and Tamara Myles, co-authors of Meaningful Work: How to Ignite Passion and Performance in Every Employee (PublicAffairs; April 2025), for Psychology Today.