It is a Tuesday evening, a little after six. You are standing at the sink with warm water running over a pan, and you notice you feel nothing about it. Not tired, exactly. Not sad. Just flat, as if someone turned down the color on the whole day.
You are still doing everything. You answered the emails. You drove where you needed to go. You made dinner. But somewhere in the last few months, the point of all of it went quiet.
This is one of the quiet costs of long strain, and it can come from a diagnosis, a money worry, a family crisis, a job that no longer makes sense, or simply watching the news too closely. In Staying Strong in Unsteady Times, I lean on the work of Aaron Antonovsky, who described three things people need in order to cope: life has to make enough sense, you need enough resources, and the effort has to connect to something worth protecting. When that last piece breaks, people feel hollow.
Hollow is hard because you cannot fix it by doing more. You are already doing plenty.
Researchers who study work have a name for something that helps. It is called job crafting. Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane Dutton described it in 2001, after looking at how people reshape their own jobs in three ways: the tasks they do, the people they connect with along the way, and how they think about what the work is for. As I understand the research, one often-cited example involved hospital cleaners. Some described the job as emptying trash and mopping floors. Others saw themselves as part of helping patients heal, and they tended to add small human touches, like a kind word to a patient or helping a visitor find the right room. Same building. Same mop. A different thread running through it.
That third change, how you think about what the work is for, is the one I want you to try tonight. In the book I call it the "in service of" practice. Before an ordinary task, you finish this sentence: "I am doing this in service of..."
The dishes are in service of a home where people feel looked after. The report is in service of a paycheck that keeps a roof overhead, and maybe of a coworker who can breathe a little easier. The walk is in service of a body that can keep showing up for people you love. Nothing about the task changes. What changes is that it points somewhere again. It is a small way of saying the second of the book's three coherence sentences: This still matters.
Two honest cautions. First, this is not forced cheer. If you cannot finish the sentence, that is information, not failure. You may be depleted and need rest, or something in your life may really need to change. Second, it does not replace real help. If the strain is about safety, money, or health, this practice sits beside concrete steps, not instead of them.
In my twenty-five years in addictions work, I learned how much a person needs a reason attached to the next small thing. The reason does not have to be grand. It has to be true.
So tonight, try it once. Pick one ordinary task. Say the sentence out loud if you can. Then notice whether anything in the room shifts, even slightly. If it does, you have found a thread. If it does not, you have learned something about what you need next. Either way, you are not doing this wrong.