This study examines negotiations surrounding meaningful work in the extreme context of top sport. Extreme contexts are prominent sites for such analyses because they typically entail the lucrative promise of particularly meaningful, unique experiences. However, working in extreme contexts also often requires significant physical and emotional investment, which may cast doubts on the meaningfulness of these sacrifices. We deploy an embodied narrative sensemaking approach to examine athletes’ work. Drawing on 30 interviews with top international athletes from Finland, we examine the narrative constructions of meaningfulness and meaninglessness in their careers. Our findings show that the core narrative provides resources for the athletes to ground their work in a unique and eudemonic feeling of being an athlete. The athletes also construct two alternating narratives to negotiate the norms laid out in the core narrative. The findings elucidate how these three narratives occupy alternating time-spaces and how embodiment is both constituted and constituting of these meaningfulness narratives. Our findings enrich prior theorizations of meaningful work by addressing the linkages of embodiment in the temporal narratives, as well as highlighting the embodied dynamics of meaningfulness and meaninglessness in extreme work conditions.
