The idea that work might be fulfilling, rather than just painfully necessary, is a strikingly recent invention.
Open Dr. Johnson's celebrated dictionary, published in 1755, and the word fulfillment doesn't even appear.
Nowadays in a prosperous world, we don't only expect to obtain money through our labor, we also, to a greater or lesser extent, expect to find meaning and satisfaction.
It's a big ask and helps to explain why so many of us have career crises often on a Sunday evening as the sun begins to set.
To help us on the quest for fulfilling work here are six useful ideas.
Firstly, accept that being confused about careers is perfectly normal.
In a pre-industrial world there were, at most, some 2,000 different trades out there.
Nowadays there are estimated to be half a million different options.
The result? We can become so anxious about making the wrong choice, we end up making no choice at all.
Psychologists call this "the paradox of choice," paralysis stemming from too many options.