So a few years ago, I met this party in San Francisco. And I meet a student who's just come back from a year at a Vietnamese monastery（修道院）. Super cool. And I'm curious（好奇的） about, you know, what is the most Zen thing he's learned? And he tells me this story about dirt. One day, all the apprentices（ 学徒） were tasked with moving a truckload from one field to another.
Except it turns out Zen masters（主人） are not that organized. The monk（僧侣） in charge isn't exactly sure where it's supposed to go. They move it twice after a four hour job turns into two days. But at the end, the head of the monastery shows up to appraise their work. And he looks around benignly and smiles wisely and says, "Nice work. You moved the wrong pile（堆）." Well, the student's ready to quit.
I mean, he's been doing all these pointless（无意义的） work details, and he's there to meditate. And this is a new low（低）, literally（照字面地） moving dirt in circles. But then he notices something. One of the other apprentices is actually smiling. So we ask her, "What's the secret?" And she tells him. And the answer changes his life.
And then it changed mine. And today, I hope to do something for you. Now, I'm a management consultant（顾问）. I work（使工作） with teams to help improve productivity（生产力）. And in recent years, I've become aware that our greatest, well maybe our greatest, productivity challenge is related to what that student felt that day. That sense that his work was meaningless（无意义的）.
That's a fear shared by not just many, but most around the world. It's a human tragedy（悲剧）, a huge waste of energy and potential（潜能）. But the good news is, there's something we can do about it. Something we can start doing today. And it has to do with that conversation between those two young people in that faraway field all those years ago. Now, not long after, I heard a Fortune（命运） 500 executive（执行者） give an interview to suggest that this shouldn't really be a problem, because we're living in the golden（金色的） age of purpose.
Now, it's not hard to see what she meant. Today's consumers, we expect brands to have social impact, like never before. Even smaller companies have missions（使命） and visions（视）. In the last 10 years, we've consumed books and talks about why in record numbers, pollsters say no generation has ever cared as much about the meaning of work as millennials and Gen Zs. That's not the whole picture. Recently, a consultancy（咨询公司） asks a thousand people if they live their purpose at work.
Among senior（年少的） executives（执行者）, the answer was overwhelming（压倒性的）, 85% yes. But among those representing the other 98% of the workforce（劳动力）, only 15% could agree. That floored me. That's less than one in six of virtually（实际上） all of us. This may be purpose's golden age, but millions, actually billions, are being left behind. Now, companies care about this for good reason.
It's a money pit（坑）. A 1% drop in engagement（婚约）, that's like one out of a hundred people just checking out at work, leads to a 5% drop in productivity. Companies have been throwing money at this for years trying to convince us that our work matters. So why are we still sitting at one in six? Is work really that bad? Or are we doing something wrong?
Now, one thing I noticed soon after was that teams trying to find their why are all basically（基本上） using the same approach（向…靠近）. A one day, why workshop（车间） based on a best selling book. But as I talked to my clients and called around, I couldn't find that many satisfied（感到满意的） customers. In fact, when I cracked（爆裂） the book, I found it's based on some pretty bold（大胆的） assumptions（假定）. First, that we each have one, and only one purpose, hardwired into the core（果实的心） of our brains. That this was largely（主要地） formed in our teens（少年男女） and stays with us unchanging throughout life.
That all we need to do to turn it into a guide to action is to get it into a sentence. My purpose is to do A so that B happens, and then share that with others. Well, there were no footnotes（注脚） for this. And when I researched it, I couldn't find a single psychologist（心理学家） who backed（支持） any of that up. For starters, there is no core to our brains. All its parts are interdependent（ 相互依赖的）.
There's no place we can find a home, a specific home, for one why.