On Friday, I gave a presentation about reigniting joy at work. Although the session was created for library workers, the conversation was really about something much bigger: What happens when work starts taking more from us than it gives back? And what, if anything, can we do about it?

Afterward, I realized there was something I wish I had done more explicitly during the presentation. I talked about the research behind many of these ideas, but I didn’t always give people the language for the science underneath them. Because there is science here. The things that help us protect our capacity at work aren’t simply about having a better attitude.

There is also a tension in this conversation that I think we need to get more comfortable holding.

I’ve written before that you cannot self-care your way out of a broken system, and I still believe that. Burnout is not simply an individual problem caused by someone failing to meditate enough, practice gratitude, establish better boundaries, or become more resilient. The World Health Organization defines burnout specifically as an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Workload, staffing, leadership, psychological safety, resources, expectations, autonomy, and organizational culture all matter. When the system is contributing to burnout, the system needs to change.

But acknowledging the systemic nature of burnout doesn’t mean we have no agency over our experience until someone fixes the system.

Both things can be true. Organizations have a responsibility to create healthier conditions for work, and we can also protect some of our own internal capacity while pushing for those conditions to change.

During Friday’s presentation, I described five sparks that can help us think about what gives something back to us: meaning, connection, agency, curiosity, and delight.

They aren’t solutions to burnout. They aren’t five more things to add to your already overwhelming to-do list. Instead, think of them as places to look for experiences that may help replenish rather than continually deplete us.

1. Meaning: Remembering the Why

Meaning is the sense that what we are doing matters, and research on workplace well-being consistently points toward its importance. The U.S. Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health and Well-Being, for example, identifies “Mattering at Work” as one of five essential components of a healthy workplace.

That doesn’t mean your job needs to be your calling. In fact, I think we sometimes ask far too much of work when we expect it to provide our identity, purpose, community, fulfillment, and paycheck all at once.

Meaning can be much smaller than that.

Maybe you helped someone solve a problem. You made something easier for the person who comes after you. You taught someone something they didn’t know. You completed a piece of work you’re proud of. You contributed to something larger even though your individual part was small.

When we’re overwhelmed, it becomes easy to see only the tasks: another email, another meeting, another deadline, another problem that needs solving. Reconnecting a task to the person, purpose, or outcome on the other side of it can help us see why the work mattered in the first place.

Not every task will feel meaningful. But some of them are. Notice those.

2. Connection: Our Brains Are Social

Humans are deeply social creatures. Social connection isn’t simply a pleasant bonus; it is associated with both psychological and physical well-being. The Surgeon General’s workplace framework identifies “Connection and Community” as another essential component of workplace well-being, including social support, belonging, and trusted relationships.

Yet we can spend an entire workday communicating with people without actually feeling connected to anyone.

Connection is different.

It can be the coworker who checks in after a difficult meeting. The person who sends you something because they know it will make you laugh. The conversation that wanders away from the agenda for a few minutes. The person you can ask, “Am I completely off base here?” and trust that they will tell you.

Psychological safety matters here, too. Amy Edmondson’s research describes psychologically safe environments as places where people believe they can take interpersonal risks—asking questions, admitting mistakes, raising concerns, or offering an idea without excessive fear of embarrassment or punishment. Connection isn’t only about being friendly. Trust changes what we are willing to do around other people.

We don’t necessarily need another elaborate team-building exercise to create it. Sometimes we simply need enough space in the workday to see one another as people rather than roles, inboxes, or items standing between us and the next thing on our list.

3. Agency: Having Some Say in What Happens Next

Agency is the feeling that we have some influence over what happens next, and there is a substantial psychological foundation for why that matters.

Self-Determination Theory, developed by psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, proposes three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy doesn’t mean doing whatever we want. It means experiencing some sense of volition and choice in our actions.

That can be difficult at work because we don’t always control our workload, policies, organizational decisions, other people’s behavior, or the circumstances surrounding us. But there is a meaningful difference between having limited control and experiencing no agency at all.

Sometimes agency is deciding how you approach a task. Sometimes it is setting a boundary. It might be asking a question, proposing a different solution, choosing what gets your attention first, or deciding that a problem isn’t actually yours to solve.

Agency can also mean recognizing where our influence ends. There can be an enormous drain in repeatedly spending limited capacity trying to control something we simply cannot control.

The question isn’t always, “How do I fix this?”

Sometimes it is, “What part of this is actually mine?”

4. Curiosity: Interrupting the Automatic Answer

Curiosity creates room between encountering something and deciding what it means.

Our brains are constantly making predictions and using previous experience to interpret what is happening around us. That’s useful—we couldn’t function efficiently if we had to analyze every situation entirely from scratch—but it also means that our first explanation can be heavily influenced by our expectations and existing mental models.

Curiosity gives us an opportunity to interrupt that automatic answer.

What else could be happening here? What am I assuming? What information am I missing? What could I try differently?

Curiosity is also closely connected with learning. Novelty and information gaps can engage motivational and reward-related processes that encourage exploration and information seeking. In much simpler terms: discovering something can feel good, and wanting to know what happens next can pull us forward.

You don’t need to become fascinated by every part of your job. Sometimes one interesting question is enough to change the texture of a day.

Sometimes curiosity gives us answers.

Sometimes the spark is simply getting interested again.

5. Delight: Small Positive Moments Matter

Delight may be the spark we underestimate most.

Positive psychology has long examined the role of positive emotions in well-being. Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory proposes that positive emotions can temporarily broaden the range of thoughts and actions available to us and, over time, contribute to psychological resources.

That doesn’t mean we should try to be positive all the time. Negative emotions serve important purposes, too, and forced positivity can become its own problem.

Delight is something smaller.

It is the ridiculous thing someone says in a meeting that makes everyone laugh. The tiny object on your desk that makes you happy. A perfectly timed GIF. A snack you forgot you packed. Music while you’re working. Something beautiful. Something funny. Something whimsical. Something that serves absolutely no productivity purpose whatsoever.

We tend to strip these things out of work because they don’t look serious enough. But professionalism does not require us to remove everything playful, interesting, beautiful, or human from the hours we spend working.

Delight doesn’t solve a workplace problem.

Sometimes it simply makes a moment better.

And perhaps we underestimate the value of better moments.

The five sparks—meaning, connection, agency, curiosity, and delight—aren’t a prescription for fixing burnout. Connection cannot compensate for chronic understaffing. Meaning shouldn’t be used to justify unreasonable expectations. Agency isn’t real when people aren’t actually given choices. Curiosity cannot repair toxic leadership. Delight doesn’t make an unhealthy culture healthy.

The system still matters.

But our internal capacity matters, too.

Protecting that capacity is not the same thing as accepting responsibility for the conditions that are draining it. We can advocate for systemic change and still pay attention to what gives something back to us. We can recognize that something is wrong and still allow ourselves to enjoy something good. We can want our workplaces to be better without surrendering every bit of joy until they are.

So perhaps the question isn’t, “Am I happy at work?”

That’s an enormous question.

Try something smaller.

Where are your sparks?

Where do you find meaning? Who gives you a sense of connection? Where do you still have agency? What makes you curious? What brings you a moment of delight?

And there is one more question worth asking:

What keeps extinguishing them?

Because the answer might tell you something about what you need to protect.

Or it might tell your organization something about what needs to change.

Sources & Further Reading

World Health Organization. “Burn-out an occupational phenomenon.” International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). The WHO defines burnout as an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.
World Health Organization: Burn-out an occupational phenomenon

Office of the U.S. Surgeon General. The U.S. Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health & Well-Being. The framework identifies five essentials for workplace well-being, including Connection and Community and Mattering at Work, while emphasizing the role organizations play in creating healthy working conditions.
U.S. Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health & Well-Being

Ryan, Richard M., and Edward L. Deci. Self-Determination Theory. This body of research identifies autonomy, competence, and relatedness as basic psychological needs associated with motivation and well-being. It provides some of the research foundation for thinking about agency and connection at work.
Self-Determination Theory overview

Gruber, Matthias J., Bernard D. Gelman, and Charan Ranganath. “States of Curiosity Modulate Hippocampus-Dependent Learning via the Dopaminergic Circuit.” Neuron 84, no. 2 (2014): 486–496. Their research found that states of high curiosity were associated with activity in reward-related brain circuitry and enhanced learning and memory.
Read the Gruber, Gelman & Ranganath study

Fredrickson, Barbara L. “The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology: The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions.” American Psychologist 56, no. 3 (2001): 218–226. Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory proposes that positive emotions can temporarily broaden our range of thoughts and actions and contribute over time to personal resources.
Read Fredrickson’s article