Is This All There Is? — Issue #01
The question nobody asks out loud, until they finally do.
ONE STORY, ONE SIGNAL, ONE TOOL, ONE QUESTION - EVERY WEEK
April 28, 2026
Issue 1 - “Is This All There Is?”
I started writing this newsletter because I kept hearing the same question. In coaching sessions. In hallway conversations at conferences. In that moment when a client said something they hadn’t planned to say out loud.
The question comes from people who did everything right. Who worked hard, built the career they were supposed to build, earned the respect that was supposed to feel like enough. Who found themselves, somewhere in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, with a thought crossing their minds they weren’t ready to sit with.
Is this all there is?
Welcome to More Than Work. If you’re here, that question has crossed your mind more than once. This newsletter exists for what comes next.
💬 A de-identified composite scenario based on my coaching experiences. This story does not reflect the experience of any particular individual or organization in any way.
She was 54, a senior administrator at a large health system, 16 years in. She ran a team of 40, managed a budget that would make most people dizzy, and had built a reputation as the person who got things done.
She came to coaching because she couldn’t sleep.
She’d already tried the obvious fixes: tighter boundaries around email, earlier bedtimes, a vacation she didn’t fully unplug from. She’d told herself it was burnout and treated it accordingly. The exhaustion wasn’t physical, though. Something else was wrong, and she couldn’t name it.
“Nothing is wrong,” she told me in our first session, almost apologetically. “That’s the problem. Everything is fine and I feel terrible.”
We spent two sessions cataloging what was working. And it was a long list: salary, stability, relationships with her team, genuine impact on patient care. She was safe, respected, well-compensated. And hollow.
She was somewhere else. Had been for a while. Showing up every day in a role she had outgrown so quietly, so gradually, that she hadn’t noticed the growing until she felt the stuck.
By our third session, I’d stopped trying to diagnose what was wrong with the situation. The situation was fine on paper. What she needed was permission to ask a different question. So I gave her a thought experiment: if her current role disappeared tomorrow, what would she actually want to build next?
She went quiet for a long time. Then: “I’ve never asked myself that. I’ve always just asked what I was good at.”
That’s the whole shift. “What do I actually want?” is the question that almost never gets asked. The “What am I good at?” question crowds it out. One question gets you a job; the other gets you a career you can actually live in. We spend our careers getting very good at answering only the first one.
📊 A key data point and my insights about what it means for the changing world of work around us.
Only 20% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. That means 8 in 10 people go to work every day somewhere between checked out and quietly miserable.
Gallup, State of the Global Workplace, 2026
Gallup has tracked employee engagement globally for more than two decades. The methodology spans industries and income levels. This isn’t a story about people stuck in bad jobs. It’s about disengagement that runs straight through organizations most people would consider good places to work.
That statistic doesn’t tell you who’s in the 80%. Many are highly paid professionals who ticked every box their younger selves put on the list.
The “is this all there is?” moment doesn’t announce itself with a crisis. More often it arrives quietly: in the commute, in the Sunday evening dread you keep telling yourself is just stress.
That discomfort is data. The instinct is to mute it.
⚙️ A framework, tool, tip, prompt or skill that you can save and put to use immediately.
The Career Drift vs. Crossroads Audit
The first instinct when this question hits is to quit. Sometimes that’s the right call. But more often it means something subtler: you’ve drifted from what mattered, and the job isn’t necessarily the problem.
This tool involves three questions. Answer them in writing if you can.
Question 1: Is this about the work itself, or the conditions around it?
The work might be right; the environment might be wrong. Responsibilities that stopped engaging you years ago feel like a career problem. More often they’re a context problem. If you changed the context, would the work feel different? If yes, you may be in drift, not at a crossroads.
Question 2: What changed, and when?
Think back to when you were last genuinely engaged. What was different? The nature of the work itself, how much say you had in it, how much it felt like it mattered? You don’t need a solution yet. Just name the change. You can usually find the answer quickly. The hard part is pausing long enough to ask.
Question 3: What would “better” actually look like?
Start somewhere more concrete than “what would I rather do.” Specifically: what would need to be true for you to feel like this work matters? If you can answer that clearly, you’re at a real crossroads with real options. If you can’t, you’re probably still in drift, and the next step is clarity, not action.
The administrator in our story above came back to Question 3 in our third session. When she finally answered it, clearly, without hedging, she didn’t quit. She asked for a new role in her organization, one she’d been too afraid to name out loud. She got it. She’s still there, and she sleeps fine now.
You can copy and paste the three questions here. Use them as a journal prompt or a thought exercise.
Question 1: Is this about the work itself, or the conditions around it?
Question 2: What changed, and when?
Question 3: What would “better” actually look like?
🤔 This week’s high-value coaching question for you to consider in whatever way you like to reflect.
When did you last genuinely look forward to Monday? What was true then that isn't true now?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”
Oliver wasn’t asking for a five-year plan. She was asking what you’re paying attention to. This newsletter is a standing invitation to ask yourself that question.
If More Than Work has found you at the right moment, it can land in your inbox every week: one story, one signal, one tool, one question. Subscribe below.
Until next week,
Thanks for taking a look at my first issue - all feedback is welcome!