January 23, 2023 • 31 mins
We can put huge amounts of physical and emotional energy into our jobs - even basing our self-worth on our achievements at work and letting ourselves be defined by what we do. So have our careers taken over too much of our lives?
Simone Stolzoff (author of The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work) argues that we should stop hunting for the "perfect" job - that idealized career that will prove to others how smart, industrious or virtuous we are - and instead find an occupation that allows to us live happier and more rounded lives that don't revolve only around work.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Imagine you're at a cocktail party and you're getting
to know someone new. You've just asked the stranger's name
and where they're from. What's the next question out of
your mouth? Did you try to learn more about this person?
(00:35):
If you're like most people, you might have thought to ask, so,
what do you do? And you probably didn't mean that
question as in what do you do for fun? Or
what do you do to relax? Or what do you
do when you want to feel happier? You probably meant
that query to imply what do you do for work?
And we asked this question because, at least implicitly, we
(00:57):
think our jobs kind of matter for who we are,
and not just because being a doctor or a lawyer,
or a teacher or a podcaster helps us put food
on the table. These days, we often think of our
jobs not just as a means to an end, but
as a deep reflection of who we are. More and more,
our work identities wind up taking center stage as a
fundamental part of our identities of how we think of
(01:18):
ourselves as people. And lately, especially as I've been navigating
my own sense of burnout and overwhelm, I've been wondering
is this conception of our jobs actually a good thing?
Do we really want our work selves to be the
main character in our lives? So in this installment of
our special New Year season of the Happiness Lab, we'll
be exploring what our wise inner voices might be quietly
(01:42):
trying to tell us about our relationship with work, and
whether it's finally time to gently reevaluate the identity we
get from what we do. Our minds are constantly telling
us what to do to be happy. But what if
our minds are wrong, What if our minds are lying
to us, leading us away from what we'll really make
us happy. The good news, the understanding the science of
the mind can point us all back in the right direction.
(02:04):
You're listening to the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos.
There's this narrative that we should keep searching and never settle,
and if your job isn't perfect, then there's something wrong
and you should keep looking for a new one. And
it creates massive expectations and also is dangerous. This is
(02:26):
author an overworked expert. Simony stalls off. Simony is no
stranger to the question of how work fits into our identities.
In fact, it's a worry he's been personally trying to
navigate for over a decade. I was a twenty two
year old at the University of Pennsylvania. I was studying
poetry and economics, and so from an early age there
(02:46):
was already this tension between the pursuit of art and
the pursuit of commerce. And I got the opportunity to
interview my favorite writer in the entire world. He's this
poet named a niece Mojgani. He's actually the current Poet
Laureate of the State of Oregon. And I was so
excited for this interview, and I wanted a niece to
(03:08):
give me a pep talk, you know. Here, I was
this twenty two year old young poetry student about to
embark on an unknown future, and I wanted him to
give me that voter confidence to pursue something that I love.
And so I asked him, how do you feel about
the mantra love what you do and never work a
(03:28):
day in your life? And he said something that really
surprised me and has stuck with me since. He said,
some people love what they do, and other people do
what they have to do so that they can do
what they love. When they're not working, and neither is
more noble. And I think that last part is key.
(03:48):
We love to revere people whose identities and their jobs
neatly aligned. But I think a niece's wisdom was telling
me that the other side of the equation, treating a
job as a means to an end, is no less noble.
It's nothing to fear being the young naive college student
that I was. I sort of did not heed his
(04:10):
advice and spent my entire twenties looking for that vocational soulmate,
looking for that job that would help me self actualize.
And so I worked in advertising, and I worked in tech,
and I worked in food, and I worked in journalism,
all the while looking for this perfect job that will
help me become the fullest version of myself. Eventually, Simony
(04:34):
searched for his sacred calling came to a head. He
found himself at a career crossroads when he was forced
to choose between a long term gig as a journalist
at a trendy magazine and a higher paying role at
a design firm. The decision fell overwhelming. But the thing
that I realized in that moment is it didn't feel
like I was choosing between two jobs as much as
(04:54):
I was choosing between two versions of me, And so
that was sort of the first kind of colonel that
put the wheels in motion for the book is understanding
sort of how did we get here? How did jobs
become synonymous with our identity for so many people and
so many Americans in particular. Simony's upcoming book is entitled
The Good Enough Job, Reclaiming Life from Work. The book
(05:17):
explores how we've gotten so wrapped up and thinking about
work is a deep part of our identity, as an
almost sacred calling. But the book argues that the concept
that our job should be the main characters in our
lives is actually quite new. In fact, it's only been
around for a generation or so. So my grandmother, for example,
lives in a small town in Italy. She had five children.
(05:39):
They all lived in that same small town growing up.
And my grandma worked in a coffee shop, and she
has this kind of single bulbous by set from pulling
down the manual lover at the coffee shop. And her
identity was pretty straightforward. First she was a woman of faith,
a woman of God, and then she was a mother,
a fresh pasta maker, and her job was important to her,
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but it was very much a means to an end.
And then my generation, you know, I'm probably smack in
the middle of the millennial generation. We were raised with
certain scripts that jobs should be calling's. Jobs should be
something where that you can find that you can do
what you love. And so I think a lot of
people among my peer group have been searching for work
as a means of self actualization, as a way to
(06:23):
make themselves whole, and looking for a vocational soulmate that
can deliver on that promise. And I think it actually
sets us up for a lot of disappointment. So this
is a phenomena that you've described as WORKSM. How would
you define WORKSM? Yeah, so, workism is a term that
was originally coined by a colleague of mine named Derek Thompson,
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who's a journalist for The Atlantic, And the idea is
that work has become akin to a religious identity. It's
something that people look to not just for a paycheck,
but for a community sort of purpose and meaning and
a way of making a difference in the world. And yeah,
this can be a good or bad thing, depending on
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sort of what stage you are life and how diverse
your meaning making and identity portfolios are. But the danger
of workism is a fu fold. The first is when
you have a work centric existence, you can neglect other
aspects of who you are. The psychologist Esther Perel has
this great phrase that she says, too many of us
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bring the best of ourselves to work and then bring
the leftovers home. A job is not something that is
always in your control. You know. This is something that
we have very much seen recently with the pandemic and
furloughs and people losing their jobs for one reason or another.
If your job is your sole source of community, is
(07:49):
your sole source of identity, and you lose that job,
it can really send you for an existential loop. So
this idea of workism is so powerful nowadays. But you've
argued that this is like a recent phenomenon. Talk about
some of the historic trends that got us here. So
if you think about the history of the United States,
capitalism and the Protestant work are really the two strands
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that entwined to form our countries DNA. So you can
sort of trace a line from those early days of
our country foundation to our current culture where what do
you do is often the first question people ask each
other when they meet. But there are also some of
these social and economic and political and cultural trends that
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are more recent that has made workism particularly apparent in
the last say fifty years in the US. You know,
for the majority of the twentyth century, the average working
time was declining for all workers and developed countries. This
makes sense, you know, as countries and individuals become more wealthy,
they can afford to work less. But as the twentieth
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century progressed, the technological trends and innovation continued, but certain
subsets of Americans started working more than ever. And so
the question is why how have our peer nations continued
to decline in the average time they spend working while
some Americans are working more than ever. So there's no
(09:14):
sort of single explanation. There are many different possible ways
to slice it. One is the decline of other sources
of meaning and identity in people's lives. So if you
think about things like organized religion. At the peak of
religiosity in the United States in nineteen fifties, over nine
out of every ten Americans associated with some sort of
(09:37):
organized religion. But in the last thirty years you've seen
a precipitous decline where now almost one in three Americans
do not affiliate with the religion, And so now the
world that religion once had in our lives is no
longer there for a lot of people. But the desire
for belonging, for community, for a sense of purpose larger
(10:00):
than themselves still exists. So that's one explanation. Another is
just the way that our political system is set up
in the United States. One of the reasons why our
relationship to work is so fraught is because the consequences
of losing work in the US is so dire when
when healthcare, for example, is often tied to people's full
time jobs. And the last thing that I'd like to
(10:22):
call out is the kind of cultural factors. And so
in the US in particular, we have this very individualistic
society where we've idolized businesses and CEOs have become celebrities,
and we sort of valorize these side hustles and side grinds,
and you know, work is one part and parcel with
(10:45):
our identities, and a lot of this is getting even
worse as so many of us are working from home
now or engaging in hybrid work. This idea that the
culture is telling us work is our sacred duty. It
becomes even harder to separate yourself from that sacred duty
when the sacred duty is all around you all the time, right.
You know, part of the problem when you frame work
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as a sacred duty or a sacrifice is that the
more you sacrifice for your job, the holier your work becomes,
and so those long hours are further idolized and seen
as something to pat workers on the back, as opposed
to viewing them as problems or things that deserve structural interventions.
(11:28):
This is the time of year that we get so
focused on our jobs, well, how we can do better
in our jobs? You know, what productivity app could we
download to do better, or even rethinking whether or not
we have the right relationship with our jobs. But often
we don't turn to our inner value system to really
think about what we should be doing. Why is that
a problem? A job is just one part of who
(11:49):
we are, but not the entirety of our lives. And
I think if we are solely looking through the lens
of our professionalize to determine our well being, it's easy
to neglect those other aspects of ourselves and it's easy
to mistake a job or professional success as this silver
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bullet that will make the rest of our lives fall
in place. I can't tell you how many people I
interviewed for the book who have achieved levels of personal
success and have still felt unfulfilled. And so one piece
of advice that I might give as you think about
your goal setting and your resolutions and what the next
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year might bring, is what are some ways that you
can invest in the other aspects of your life, whether
it's your relationships, whether it's your inner spiritual life, whether
it's your family or your hobbies, or your means of
feeling whole outside of work that also could use a
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little bit more love and attention in this next year.
We usually assume that having careers that give us meaning
is a good thing, that being passionate about our jobs
is something to strive for. But when we get back
from the break, we'll see that there are some real
downsides to thinking about our jobs as the most meaningful
part of our lives. We'll hear about some of these
surprising psychological costs when the happiness sad returns in a moment.
(13:26):
Author Simony stalls Off has written an entire book about
the psychological costs of investing too much in your work,
But he also experienced the pain that comes from those
costs personally. When he made the hard decision a few
years ago to abandon his career as a journalist, I
felt guilty. I felt that I was sort of abandoning
a calling. And democracy dies in darkness? And what am
(13:50):
I doing turning off one more light in the room?
And will my colleagues and my co workers ever forgive me?
Will I ever be able to publish ever again? And
I think that black and MTE thinking can be really
damaging to people when they think that their jobs and
their career decisions take such a taxing toll on themselves
(14:11):
and their identities that it begins to spill into their
life outside of work as well. And it's not just
the idea of guilt and sort of experiencing guilt. Even
when you stick with your job, there are high rates
of things like burnout and stress too, right, Yeah, I mean,
I think this is particularly true in jobs that are
a flection of your identity. I'll speak to journalism just
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because it's the field that I know best. Your worth
and your self worth are directly tied to your output,
and a lot of the ways I used to obsessively
check the reader numbers on the articles I would publish
to see the impact or see the difference that I
was making. But when you rise and fall with your
output and your productivity, it can be very precarious. It
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can put you on an emotional roller coaster. It can
keep you from being able to set boundaries around when
you are and you're not working, and in a very
individualistic culture, can push people to the point where they're
not actually being more productive. They're not actually being the
(15:18):
effective workers that they want to be, but they're sort
of caught in this loop where the lack of productivity
pushes them to work even further, which pushes them to
be less productive and ultimately drives people to burnout. And
that burnout also comes with physical consequences to like consequences
for your body. Certainly, I love the example of being
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able to rest before you need it, because often what
happens is we sort of push the buck down the
road and we think, Okay, I'll rest once I finish
this last article, once I finish this last report, once
I make this title or make this bonus at the
end of the year. But what happens when we burn
out is then we can't work at all. You know.
(16:01):
It's this sort of mental game that we play with
ourselves that Okay, when this happens, then I'll be able
to rest, when in fact, having a more sustainable, balanced
approach to productivity to work is actually what makes us
more productive and effective workers in the long term. It
(16:22):
also makes us better humans and better social companions. To
talk a little bit about the social costs of overwork
and having your identity be too kind of infused with
your job, I think one really important thing to remember
is that a work centric existence doesn't just take our
best time, but it often takes our best energy too.
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And similar to an investor who might want to diversify
the sources of their investments to be more resilient, to
have a more balanced portfolio, we too benefit when we
have a diversified identity, when we have distinct sources of
meaning in our life. But if we're spending all of
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our time working, if we're spending all of our energy
focused on our professional goals, we can neglect these other
aspects of who we are. And so in thinking about that,
I really advise people to do two things. One is
to make sure that they're carving out time and space
in order to focus on non work pursuits, and the
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second is to act to actively do things. There's this
phrase that I love from the Alcoholics Anonymous literature, and
the paraphrase it's that we can't think ourselves into better action,
but we can act ourselves into better ways of thinking.
And so if we want to diversify our identity, if
we want to diversify the sources of meaning in our life,
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we actively have to do things that reinforce that identity
through our actions and also through the social communities that
we create around them. Another problem with taking action to
kind of diversify our senses of meaning, and I've experienced
this myself, is that you kind of wind up in
this interesting chicken and egg problem. Right, so you start
working all the time, and then you're kind of exhausted
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and that you don't know what to do when you're
not working, or you haven't invested in the friendships or
the kind of activities that you do outside of work,
and then you don't know what to do when you're
out of work. So then you just work some more,
and then the cycle gets worse and worse, like to
the point that we almost don't even know who we
are when we're not working. Yeah, I mean it's so
relatable in those days where you're just exhausted and all
you want to do is turn on Netflix because it
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feels like all your brain has the capacity to do
in that moment, and nothing against Netflix. It can be
a great way to turn the brain off. But it's
through those active forms of recreation and leisure that we're
able to really derive more meaning from our non work pursuits.
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And this is something that you've talked about in terms
of taking a more active role in the kinds of
things we value so that we're not just like inheriting
the life values that exist around us, so that come
from our job, but it's like figuring out the things
that give us value outside of our productivity. After over
two years of reporting and talking to so many individuals,
I think that work is just one container in our lives.
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You know. It's obviously a container for the work that
we do, it's a container for an identity. It comes
with a certain value system of what the workplace measures
or values, and it can be a great source of
meaning and identity and purpose. But I think it's dangerous
when it's the only one. So one of the solutions
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you've come up with this this idea of this good
enough job. So what is a good enough job? And
how does it help us kind of protect our values
from getting too caught up in work? Prinsipally, a good
enough job is a job that allows you to be
the person you want to be. What I like about
the framework is that it's subjective. Maybe it's a certain
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amount of income, maybe it's a certain job title. Maybe
it's a job and a certain industry, or a job
that gets off at a certain hour that lets you
pick up your kids from school. Whatever good enough is
to you, I urge you to recognize once you have it,
because then you can convert some of that energy that
(20:22):
you might be spending questioning, oh, is this the perfect job?
Is this the dream job? Is this my vocational soulmate?
Into two things? One, an appreciation for the role work
plays in your life, first and foremost, that it allows
you to live and second into your life outside of work,
(20:43):
and ways in which you might be able to invest
in yourself, in your relationships in your community. That can
also be a source of identity and meaning for you.
Simone's advice of downsizing to a good enough job and
investing more energy in your relationships, health, and community may
sound like an amazing idea and principle, but in practice,
renegotiating a healthier relationship with your job can be hard,
(21:07):
especially when you've been caught up in that cultural work
is m for a long time. So when we get
back from the break, we'll learn about some specific practices
we can all use to reevaluate the role that our
career plays in our lives. We'll see that there are
strategies that every one of us can use to better
align our values with our identities, both inside and outside
of the office. The happiness Lab will be right back
(21:40):
overwork experts. Simone stalls Off thinks that many of us
would be happier if we took some concrete steps towards
reevaluating the role that work plays in our lives, and
the first step he recommends involves being more intentional about
how we use the time we spend away from our jobs.
I think the idea of setting up non work time
is trying to create infrastructure around our non work time,
(22:05):
as a religious institution might create infrastructure around worship or prayer.
One of the benefits of say going to a yoga
class or going on a run is their activities that
structurally prevent us from working. I think a lot of
times the pieces of anti burnout advice that we hear
(22:30):
like set a boundary. The problem with it is that
personal interventions inevitably break you know, I definitely thought this
even in the writing of the book. I was writing
a book about how to sort of right size worksplace
in our life and develop a healthier relationship to work.
And yet the looming deadline of trying to get the
(22:51):
manuscript done pushed me to open up the laptop on
the weekends when I vowed that I wouldn't be working
at all. And so the idea of kind of setting
up this intentional space is really to make sure that
we have this sacred space, is sacred time in order
to do things other than work. One small anecdote from
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one of the psychologists that I interviewed. Often what she
sees when she suggests practices like setting up intentional space
for non work activities is that they want to sign
up for a marathon or for an iron Man, or
to try and turn their leisure into another form of work,
and what she often advises them is to start small,
(23:35):
like how about a job? And I think that piece
of advice is really resonant, you know, instead of having
to think about, Okay, what do I want this identity
of mine to be and what is my six month
plan for achieving it, just start by taking small steps.
And this gets to another practice you strongly suggest in
the book, which is this idea that we have to
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get out of the optimization mindset. Generally, all the patterns
we experience and work like wind up getting us to
optimize every single second, and it can be easy to
start to try to do the exact same thing when
we're dealing with our leisure. But the whole idea is
to kind of move ourselves worth away from being productive
even when it comes to our leisure. Yeah. I think
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one great antidote to people who have a natural tendency
to optimize is something you've talked about a lot on
the podcast already, which is the value of play. And
one thing that I like about play is that it's
grounded not in future achievement or success, but present moment
awareness and whether that play is jamming if you like
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to play music, or dancing if you like to dance,
or free writing if you like to write, or playing
a board game, or doing something that isn't a means
to another end but actually it's an end and out
of itself is a great way to serve as a
counterbalance to our natural tendency to try and find a
(25:00):
productivity of every moment of our day. And this connects
to another practice you've really suggested, which is this idea
of you know, if we're investing in the jamming or
the d saying and so on, we also are just
generally investing in multiple different kinds of identities. Have you
also tried to invest in multiple different non work identities.
How's that gone for you, especially as you've been busy
writing the book and so on. Yeah, So, as I mentioned,
(25:23):
I think work really can function as a container. But
I think the value investing in other containers is that
they help us as individuals see that our purpose on
this earth is not just to produce economic value. So,
for example, one way that I have diversified my own
identity is I play on an ultimate frisbee team. I
(25:46):
know I'm not doing much to dispel the lanky California
stereotype here. But one thing that I really appreciate about
the team is that on the team, people don't care
about the last performance review or how many pages or
words I've written that day. My identity on the team
is completely decoupled from my identity as a work and
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that can be a really generative space for me to
be able to inhabit where the goals of our team
are not tied to our economic output. I have to
show up as someone who plays my particular position and
supports my teammates, but they're not asking me about sort
of the things that might be sources of stress or
(26:32):
anxiety throughout the day. And I think the more of
these containers that we have in our lives, the more
well rounded we are, the more resilient we are in
the face of adversity, and ultimately, the more developed we
are in the multiple interests each of us have. The
final practice you suggest is a bit more reflective. It's
this idea of defining what we want our work to
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be because we're not usually the ones that get to
define that, right, you know, talk about where that definition
usually comes from for many of us. Unless we define
for ourselves what we want our relationship to work to be,
our employer will happily do it for us. And so
one of the benefits of putting a stake in the
ground and saying, Okay, this is what I want my
(27:15):
relationship to work to be is it allows us to
fall back on those values. It allows us to really
understand who we are outside of work, and how work
can serve our vision of a life well lived, as
opposed to being the central axis around which the rest
of our life orbits. And so part of the goal
(27:36):
of the book is to kind of help you put
all of these different tips into practice yourself. And even
though I'm sure it's pretty hard, I'm curious if kind
of adopting all of these strategies has helped you, you know,
even in the context of writing a book, which is
pretty hard and pretty kind of productivity focused activity. It's
an interesting place to be in now because I finish
(27:56):
the book. There are no more words left to be written,
and it feels bittersweet. I am letting go of this
project that I've tinkered with for more than two years
and had something to be an anchor for my attention
as I go through my working days. And now I
(28:18):
have to eat some of my own dog food. I
have to practice, but I preach by trying to find
other sources of identity and meaning outside of the dopamine
hit that I get when I reach my self imposed goals.
And one other big change that I made recently is
I started working for myself and it's a really interesting
(28:41):
moment for me personally, where now I no longer have
that employer prioritizing my weeks. I no longer have a
manager telling me, Okay, this is what's important for you
to be working on, and I have to do some
of that work myself, and part of that means knowing
when to stop, because, as I'm sure any freelancer someone
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who has done a personal project knows, there is an
infinite capacity of more work that we can do. One
of my mentors and someone that I interviewed for the
book is this religious scholar named Casper to Kyle, and
every Friday, at the end of the week, he sends
out the same tweet, which is a great source of
(29:27):
inspiration for me. And every Friday he says, the work
is not done, but it is time to stop. And
that is sort of a personal mantra that I've adopted
in my own life, and I hope that you might too.
I hope my chat with Simony has convinced you that
it may be time to listen to what your inner
voice is telling you about work in the new year.
(29:47):
As Simony eloquently put it in his book, our desks
were never meant to be our altars. I share his
hope that with the right strategies, we can all begin
to develop a healthier relationship with what we do for
a living. So if what you heard in this episode
hit a nerve, you can start by just gently asking
some questions about the identity you get from your job.
Are you treating your career as a kind of moral
(30:09):
good in ways that leave you overstressed, overtired, and burned out.
Is your business at work covering up a deeper sense
of emptiness with what you do outside the office. If so,
maybe this is a year to start renegotiating the role
that work plays in your life. Maybe this is the
year to get more intentional about the effort and energy
you give to your non work pursuits. You two can
(30:31):
take the steps needed to deprioritize work a little in
order to prioritize life. Next week, We'll continue our requests
to hear what our wise inner voices may be telling us,
and we'll do that by finding ways to intentionally seek
out something that many of us have been missing out
on silence. We'll hear why quieting our mental and environmental
(30:51):
noise can be so essential for our well being, and
we'll learn some practical steps we can all take to
get there, even in an ever louder world. So I
hope you'll join me next week for the final installment
of this special New Year's season of The Happiness Lab
with me Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab is co
(31:13):
written by Ryan Dilley and is produced by Ryan Dilley
and Courtney Guerino. The show was mastered by Evan Viola
and our original music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special
thanks to Shane Beard, Greta Kone, Nicole Morano, Morgan Ratner,
Maggie Taylor, Jacob Weisberg, my agent, Ben Davis, and the
rest of the Pushkin team. The Happiness Lab is brought
to you by Pushkin Industries and by me, Doctor Laurie Santos,
Pushkin. Imagine you're at a cocktail party and you're getting
to know someone new. You've just asked the stranger's name
and where they're from. What's the next question out of
your mouth? Did you try to learn more about this person?
(00:35):
If you're like most people, you might have thought to ask, so,
what do you do? And you probably didn't mean that
question as in what do you do for fun? Or
what do you do to relax? Or what do you
do when you want to feel happier? You probably meant
that query to imply what do you do for work?
And we asked this question because, at least implicitly, we
(00:57):
think our jobs kind of matter for who we are,
and not just because being a doctor or a lawyer,
or a teacher or a podcaster helps us put food
on the table. These days, we often think of our
jobs not just as a means to an end, but
as a deep reflection of who we are. More and more,
our work identities wind up taking center stage as a
fundamental part of our identities of how we think of
(01:18):
ourselves as people. And lately, especially as I've been navigating
my own sense of burnout and overwhelm, I've been wondering
is this conception of our jobs actually a good thing?
Do we really want our work selves to be the
main character in our lives? So in this installment of
our special New Year season of the Happiness Lab, we'll
be exploring what our wise inner voices might be quietly
(01:42):
trying to tell us about our relationship with work, and
whether it's finally time to gently reevaluate the identity we
get from what we do. Our minds are constantly telling
us what to do to be happy. But what if
our minds are wrong, What if our minds are lying
to us, leading us away from what we'll really make
us happy. The good news, the understanding the science of
the mind can point us all back in the right direction.
(02:04):
You're listening to the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos.
There's this narrative that we should keep searching and never settle,
and if your job isn't perfect, then there's something wrong
and you should keep looking for a new one. And
it creates massive expectations and also is dangerous. This is
(02:26):
author an overworked expert. Simony stalls off. Simony is no
stranger to the question of how work fits into our identities.
In fact, it's a worry he's been personally trying to
navigate for over a decade. I was a twenty two
year old at the University of Pennsylvania. I was studying
poetry and economics, and so from an early age there
(02:46):
was already this tension between the pursuit of art and
the pursuit of commerce. And I got the opportunity to
interview my favorite writer in the entire world. He's this
poet named a niece Mojgani. He's actually the current Poet
Laureate of the State of Oregon. And I was so
excited for this interview, and I wanted a niece to
(03:08):
give me a pep talk, you know. Here, I was
this twenty two year old young poetry student about to
embark on an unknown future, and I wanted him to
give me that voter confidence to pursue something that I love.
And so I asked him, how do you feel about
the mantra love what you do and never work a
(03:28):
day in your life? And he said something that really
surprised me and has stuck with me since. He said,
some people love what they do, and other people do
what they have to do so that they can do
what they love. When they're not working, and neither is
more noble. And I think that last part is key.
(03:48):
We love to revere people whose identities and their jobs
neatly aligned. But I think a niece's wisdom was telling
me that the other side of the equation, treating a
job as a means to an end, is no less noble.
It's nothing to fear being the young naive college student
that I was. I sort of did not heed his
(04:10):
advice and spent my entire twenties looking for that vocational soulmate,
looking for that job that would help me self actualize.
And so I worked in advertising, and I worked in tech,
and I worked in food, and I worked in journalism,
all the while looking for this perfect job that will
help me become the fullest version of myself. Eventually, Simony
(04:34):
searched for his sacred calling came to a head. He
found himself at a career crossroads when he was forced
to choose between a long term gig as a journalist
at a trendy magazine and a higher paying role at
a design firm. The decision fell overwhelming. But the thing
that I realized in that moment is it didn't feel
like I was choosing between two jobs as much as
(04:54):
I was choosing between two versions of me, And so
that was sort of the first kind of colonel that
put the wheels in motion for the book is understanding
sort of how did we get here? How did jobs
become synonymous with our identity for so many people and
so many Americans in particular. Simony's upcoming book is entitled
The Good Enough Job, Reclaiming Life from Work. The book
(05:17):
explores how we've gotten so wrapped up and thinking about
work is a deep part of our identity, as an
almost sacred calling. But the book argues that the concept
that our job should be the main characters in our
lives is actually quite new. In fact, it's only been
around for a generation or so. So my grandmother, for example,
lives in a small town in Italy. She had five children.
(05:39):
They all lived in that same small town growing up.
And my grandma worked in a coffee shop, and she
has this kind of single bulbous by set from pulling
down the manual lover at the coffee shop. And her
identity was pretty straightforward. First she was a woman of faith,
a woman of God, and then she was a mother,
a fresh pasta maker, and her job was important to her,
(06:00):
but it was very much a means to an end.
And then my generation, you know, I'm probably smack in
the middle of the millennial generation. We were raised with
certain scripts that jobs should be calling's. Jobs should be
something where that you can find that you can do
what you love. And so I think a lot of
people among my peer group have been searching for work
as a means of self actualization, as a way to
(06:23):
make themselves whole, and looking for a vocational soulmate that
can deliver on that promise. And I think it actually
sets us up for a lot of disappointment. So this
is a phenomena that you've described as WORKSM. How would
you define WORKSM? Yeah, so, workism is a term that
was originally coined by a colleague of mine named Derek Thompson,
(06:44):
who's a journalist for The Atlantic, And the idea is
that work has become akin to a religious identity. It's
something that people look to not just for a paycheck,
but for a community sort of purpose and meaning and
a way of making a difference in the world. And yeah,
this can be a good or bad thing, depending on
(07:06):
sort of what stage you are life and how diverse
your meaning making and identity portfolios are. But the danger
of workism is a fu fold. The first is when
you have a work centric existence, you can neglect other
aspects of who you are. The psychologist Esther Perel has
this great phrase that she says, too many of us
(07:28):
bring the best of ourselves to work and then bring
the leftovers home. A job is not something that is
always in your control. You know. This is something that
we have very much seen recently with the pandemic and
furloughs and people losing their jobs for one reason or another.
If your job is your sole source of community, is
(07:49):
your sole source of identity, and you lose that job,
it can really send you for an existential loop. So
this idea of workism is so powerful nowadays. But you've
argued that this is like a recent phenomenon. Talk about
some of the historic trends that got us here. So
if you think about the history of the United States,
capitalism and the Protestant work are really the two strands
(08:11):
that entwined to form our countries DNA. So you can
sort of trace a line from those early days of
our country foundation to our current culture where what do
you do is often the first question people ask each
other when they meet. But there are also some of
these social and economic and political and cultural trends that
(08:31):
are more recent that has made workism particularly apparent in
the last say fifty years in the US. You know,
for the majority of the twentyth century, the average working
time was declining for all workers and developed countries. This
makes sense, you know, as countries and individuals become more wealthy,
they can afford to work less. But as the twentieth
(08:53):
century progressed, the technological trends and innovation continued, but certain
subsets of Americans started working more than ever. And so
the question is why how have our peer nations continued
to decline in the average time they spend working while
some Americans are working more than ever. So there's no
(09:14):
sort of single explanation. There are many different possible ways
to slice it. One is the decline of other sources
of meaning and identity in people's lives. So if you
think about things like organized religion. At the peak of
religiosity in the United States in nineteen fifties, over nine
out of every ten Americans associated with some sort of
(09:37):
organized religion. But in the last thirty years you've seen
a precipitous decline where now almost one in three Americans
do not affiliate with the religion, And so now the
world that religion once had in our lives is no
longer there for a lot of people. But the desire
for belonging, for community, for a sense of purpose larger
(10:00):
than themselves still exists. So that's one explanation. Another is
just the way that our political system is set up
in the United States. One of the reasons why our
relationship to work is so fraught is because the consequences
of losing work in the US is so dire when
when healthcare, for example, is often tied to people's full
time jobs. And the last thing that I'd like to
(10:22):
call out is the kind of cultural factors. And so
in the US in particular, we have this very individualistic
society where we've idolized businesses and CEOs have become celebrities,
and we sort of valorize these side hustles and side grinds,
and you know, work is one part and parcel with
(10:45):
our identities, and a lot of this is getting even
worse as so many of us are working from home
now or engaging in hybrid work. This idea that the
culture is telling us work is our sacred duty. It
becomes even harder to separate yourself from that sacred duty
when the sacred duty is all around you all the time, right.
You know, part of the problem when you frame work
(11:06):
as a sacred duty or a sacrifice is that the
more you sacrifice for your job, the holier your work becomes,
and so those long hours are further idolized and seen
as something to pat workers on the back, as opposed
to viewing them as problems or things that deserve structural interventions.
(11:28):
This is the time of year that we get so
focused on our jobs, well, how we can do better
in our jobs? You know, what productivity app could we
download to do better, or even rethinking whether or not
we have the right relationship with our jobs. But often
we don't turn to our inner value system to really
think about what we should be doing. Why is that
a problem? A job is just one part of who
(11:49):
we are, but not the entirety of our lives. And
I think if we are solely looking through the lens
of our professionalize to determine our well being, it's easy
to neglect those other aspects of ourselves and it's easy
to mistake a job or professional success as this silver
(12:10):
bullet that will make the rest of our lives fall
in place. I can't tell you how many people I
interviewed for the book who have achieved levels of personal
success and have still felt unfulfilled. And so one piece
of advice that I might give as you think about
your goal setting and your resolutions and what the next
(12:32):
year might bring, is what are some ways that you
can invest in the other aspects of your life, whether
it's your relationships, whether it's your inner spiritual life, whether
it's your family or your hobbies, or your means of
feeling whole outside of work that also could use a
(12:56):
little bit more love and attention in this next year.
We usually assume that having careers that give us meaning
is a good thing, that being passionate about our jobs
is something to strive for. But when we get back
from the break, we'll see that there are some real
downsides to thinking about our jobs as the most meaningful
part of our lives. We'll hear about some of these
surprising psychological costs when the happiness sad returns in a moment.
(13:26):
Author Simony stalls Off has written an entire book about
the psychological costs of investing too much in your work,
But he also experienced the pain that comes from those
costs personally. When he made the hard decision a few
years ago to abandon his career as a journalist, I
felt guilty. I felt that I was sort of abandoning
a calling. And democracy dies in darkness? And what am
(13:50):
I doing turning off one more light in the room?
And will my colleagues and my co workers ever forgive me?
Will I ever be able to publish ever again? And
I think that black and MTE thinking can be really
damaging to people when they think that their jobs and
their career decisions take such a taxing toll on themselves
(14:11):
and their identities that it begins to spill into their
life outside of work as well. And it's not just
the idea of guilt and sort of experiencing guilt. Even
when you stick with your job, there are high rates
of things like burnout and stress too, right, Yeah, I mean,
I think this is particularly true in jobs that are
a flection of your identity. I'll speak to journalism just
(14:34):
because it's the field that I know best. Your worth
and your self worth are directly tied to your output,
and a lot of the ways I used to obsessively
check the reader numbers on the articles I would publish
to see the impact or see the difference that I
was making. But when you rise and fall with your
output and your productivity, it can be very precarious. It
(14:57):
can put you on an emotional roller coaster. It can
keep you from being able to set boundaries around when
you are and you're not working, and in a very
individualistic culture, can push people to the point where they're
not actually being more productive. They're not actually being the
(15:18):
effective workers that they want to be, but they're sort
of caught in this loop where the lack of productivity
pushes them to work even further, which pushes them to
be less productive and ultimately drives people to burnout. And
that burnout also comes with physical consequences to like consequences
for your body. Certainly, I love the example of being
(15:38):
able to rest before you need it, because often what
happens is we sort of push the buck down the
road and we think, Okay, I'll rest once I finish
this last article, once I finish this last report, once
I make this title or make this bonus at the
end of the year. But what happens when we burn
out is then we can't work at all. You know.
(16:01):
It's this sort of mental game that we play with
ourselves that Okay, when this happens, then I'll be able
to rest, when in fact, having a more sustainable, balanced
approach to productivity to work is actually what makes us
more productive and effective workers in the long term. It
(16:22):
also makes us better humans and better social companions. To
talk a little bit about the social costs of overwork
and having your identity be too kind of infused with
your job, I think one really important thing to remember
is that a work centric existence doesn't just take our
best time, but it often takes our best energy too.
(16:42):
And similar to an investor who might want to diversify
the sources of their investments to be more resilient, to
have a more balanced portfolio, we too benefit when we
have a diversified identity, when we have distinct sources of
meaning in our life. But if we're spending all of
(17:02):
our time working, if we're spending all of our energy
focused on our professional goals, we can neglect these other
aspects of who we are. And so in thinking about that,
I really advise people to do two things. One is
to make sure that they're carving out time and space
in order to focus on non work pursuits, and the
(17:25):
second is to act to actively do things. There's this
phrase that I love from the Alcoholics Anonymous literature, and
the paraphrase it's that we can't think ourselves into better action,
but we can act ourselves into better ways of thinking.
And so if we want to diversify our identity, if
we want to diversify the sources of meaning in our life,
(17:48):
we actively have to do things that reinforce that identity
through our actions and also through the social communities that
we create around them. Another problem with taking action to
kind of diversify our senses of meaning, and I've experienced
this myself, is that you kind of wind up in
this interesting chicken and egg problem. Right, so you start
working all the time, and then you're kind of exhausted
(18:09):
and that you don't know what to do when you're
not working, or you haven't invested in the friendships or
the kind of activities that you do outside of work,
and then you don't know what to do when you're
out of work. So then you just work some more,
and then the cycle gets worse and worse, like to
the point that we almost don't even know who we
are when we're not working. Yeah, I mean it's so
relatable in those days where you're just exhausted and all
you want to do is turn on Netflix because it
(18:30):
feels like all your brain has the capacity to do
in that moment, and nothing against Netflix. It can be
a great way to turn the brain off. But it's
through those active forms of recreation and leisure that we're
able to really derive more meaning from our non work pursuits.
(18:53):
And this is something that you've talked about in terms
of taking a more active role in the kinds of
things we value so that we're not just like inheriting
the life values that exist around us, so that come
from our job, but it's like figuring out the things
that give us value outside of our productivity. After over
two years of reporting and talking to so many individuals,
I think that work is just one container in our lives.
(19:17):
You know. It's obviously a container for the work that
we do, it's a container for an identity. It comes
with a certain value system of what the workplace measures
or values, and it can be a great source of
meaning and identity and purpose. But I think it's dangerous
when it's the only one. So one of the solutions
(19:40):
you've come up with this this idea of this good
enough job. So what is a good enough job? And
how does it help us kind of protect our values
from getting too caught up in work? Prinsipally, a good
enough job is a job that allows you to be
the person you want to be. What I like about
the framework is that it's subjective. Maybe it's a certain
(20:01):
amount of income, maybe it's a certain job title. Maybe
it's a job and a certain industry, or a job
that gets off at a certain hour that lets you
pick up your kids from school. Whatever good enough is
to you, I urge you to recognize once you have it,
because then you can convert some of that energy that
(20:22):
you might be spending questioning, oh, is this the perfect job?
Is this the dream job? Is this my vocational soulmate?
Into two things? One, an appreciation for the role work
plays in your life, first and foremost, that it allows
you to live and second into your life outside of work,
(20:43):
and ways in which you might be able to invest
in yourself, in your relationships in your community. That can
also be a source of identity and meaning for you.
Simone's advice of downsizing to a good enough job and
investing more energy in your relationships, health, and community may
sound like an amazing idea and principle, but in practice,
renegotiating a healthier relationship with your job can be hard,
(21:07):
especially when you've been caught up in that cultural work
is m for a long time. So when we get
back from the break, we'll learn about some specific practices
we can all use to reevaluate the role that our
career plays in our lives. We'll see that there are
strategies that every one of us can use to better
align our values with our identities, both inside and outside
of the office. The happiness Lab will be right back
(21:40):
overwork experts. Simone stalls Off thinks that many of us
would be happier if we took some concrete steps towards
reevaluating the role that work plays in our lives, and
the first step he recommends involves being more intentional about
how we use the time we spend away from our jobs.
I think the idea of setting up non work time
is trying to create infrastructure around our non work time,
(22:05):
as a religious institution might create infrastructure around worship or prayer.
One of the benefits of say going to a yoga
class or going on a run is their activities that
structurally prevent us from working. I think a lot of
times the pieces of anti burnout advice that we hear
(22:30):
like set a boundary. The problem with it is that
personal interventions inevitably break you know, I definitely thought this
even in the writing of the book. I was writing
a book about how to sort of right size worksplace
in our life and develop a healthier relationship to work.
And yet the looming deadline of trying to get the
(22:51):
manuscript done pushed me to open up the laptop on
the weekends when I vowed that I wouldn't be working
at all. And so the idea of kind of setting
up this intentional space is really to make sure that
we have this sacred space, is sacred time in order
to do things other than work. One small anecdote from
(23:12):
one of the psychologists that I interviewed. Often what she
sees when she suggests practices like setting up intentional space
for non work activities is that they want to sign
up for a marathon or for an iron Man, or
to try and turn their leisure into another form of work,
and what she often advises them is to start small,
(23:35):
like how about a job? And I think that piece
of advice is really resonant, you know, instead of having
to think about, Okay, what do I want this identity
of mine to be and what is my six month
plan for achieving it, just start by taking small steps.
And this gets to another practice you strongly suggest in
the book, which is this idea that we have to
(23:56):
get out of the optimization mindset. Generally, all the patterns
we experience and work like wind up getting us to
optimize every single second, and it can be easy to
start to try to do the exact same thing when
we're dealing with our leisure. But the whole idea is
to kind of move ourselves worth away from being productive
even when it comes to our leisure. Yeah. I think
(24:16):
one great antidote to people who have a natural tendency
to optimize is something you've talked about a lot on
the podcast already, which is the value of play. And
one thing that I like about play is that it's
grounded not in future achievement or success, but present moment
awareness and whether that play is jamming if you like
(24:40):
to play music, or dancing if you like to dance,
or free writing if you like to write, or playing
a board game, or doing something that isn't a means
to another end but actually it's an end and out
of itself is a great way to serve as a
counterbalance to our natural tendency to try and find a
(25:00):
productivity of every moment of our day. And this connects
to another practice you've really suggested, which is this idea
of you know, if we're investing in the jamming or
the d saying and so on, we also are just
generally investing in multiple different kinds of identities. Have you
also tried to invest in multiple different non work identities.
How's that gone for you, especially as you've been busy
writing the book and so on. Yeah, So, as I mentioned,
(25:23):
I think work really can function as a container. But
I think the value investing in other containers is that
they help us as individuals see that our purpose on
this earth is not just to produce economic value. So,
for example, one way that I have diversified my own
identity is I play on an ultimate frisbee team. I
(25:46):
know I'm not doing much to dispel the lanky California
stereotype here. But one thing that I really appreciate about
the team is that on the team, people don't care
about the last performance review or how many pages or
words I've written that day. My identity on the team
is completely decoupled from my identity as a work and
(26:10):
that can be a really generative space for me to
be able to inhabit where the goals of our team
are not tied to our economic output. I have to
show up as someone who plays my particular position and
supports my teammates, but they're not asking me about sort
of the things that might be sources of stress or
(26:32):
anxiety throughout the day. And I think the more of
these containers that we have in our lives, the more
well rounded we are, the more resilient we are in
the face of adversity, and ultimately, the more developed we
are in the multiple interests each of us have. The
final practice you suggest is a bit more reflective. It's
this idea of defining what we want our work to
(26:54):
be because we're not usually the ones that get to
define that, right, you know, talk about where that definition
usually comes from for many of us. Unless we define
for ourselves what we want our relationship to work to be,
our employer will happily do it for us. And so
one of the benefits of putting a stake in the
ground and saying, Okay, this is what I want my
(27:15):
relationship to work to be is it allows us to
fall back on those values. It allows us to really
understand who we are outside of work, and how work
can serve our vision of a life well lived, as
opposed to being the central axis around which the rest
of our life orbits. And so part of the goal
(27:36):
of the book is to kind of help you put
all of these different tips into practice yourself. And even
though I'm sure it's pretty hard, I'm curious if kind
of adopting all of these strategies has helped you, you know,
even in the context of writing a book, which is
pretty hard and pretty kind of productivity focused activity. It's
an interesting place to be in now because I finish
(27:56):
the book. There are no more words left to be written,
and it feels bittersweet. I am letting go of this
project that I've tinkered with for more than two years
and had something to be an anchor for my attention
as I go through my working days. And now I
(28:18):
have to eat some of my own dog food. I
have to practice, but I preach by trying to find
other sources of identity and meaning outside of the dopamine
hit that I get when I reach my self imposed goals.
And one other big change that I made recently is
I started working for myself and it's a really interesting
(28:41):
moment for me personally, where now I no longer have
that employer prioritizing my weeks. I no longer have a
manager telling me, Okay, this is what's important for you
to be working on, and I have to do some
of that work myself, and part of that means knowing
when to stop, because, as I'm sure any freelancer someone
(29:06):
who has done a personal project knows, there is an
infinite capacity of more work that we can do. One
of my mentors and someone that I interviewed for the
book is this religious scholar named Casper to Kyle, and
every Friday, at the end of the week, he sends
out the same tweet, which is a great source of
(29:27):
inspiration for me. And every Friday he says, the work
is not done, but it is time to stop. And
that is sort of a personal mantra that I've adopted
in my own life, and I hope that you might too.
I hope my chat with Simony has convinced you that
it may be time to listen to what your inner
voice is telling you about work in the new year.
(29:47):
As Simony eloquently put it in his book, our desks
were never meant to be our altars. I share his
hope that with the right strategies, we can all begin
to develop a healthier relationship with what we do for
a living. So if what you heard in this episode
hit a nerve, you can start by just gently asking
some questions about the identity you get from your job.
Are you treating your career as a kind of moral
(30:09):
good in ways that leave you overstressed, overtired, and burned out.
Is your business at work covering up a deeper sense
of emptiness with what you do outside the office. If so,
maybe this is a year to start renegotiating the role
that work plays in your life. Maybe this is the
year to get more intentional about the effort and energy
you give to your non work pursuits. You two can
(30:31):
take the steps needed to deprioritize work a little in
order to prioritize life. Next week, We'll continue our requests
to hear what our wise inner voices may be telling us,
and we'll do that by finding ways to intentionally seek
out something that many of us have been missing out
on silence. We'll hear why quieting our mental and environmental
(30:51):
noise can be so essential for our well being, and
we'll learn some practical steps we can all take to
get there, even in an ever louder world. So I
hope you'll join me next week for the final installment
of this special New Year's season of The Happiness Lab
with me Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab is co
(31:13):
written by Ryan Dilley and is produced by Ryan Dilley
and Courtney Guerino. The show was mastered by Evan Viola
and our original music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special
thanks to Shane Beard, Greta Kone, Nicole Morano, Morgan Ratner,
Maggie Taylor, Jacob Weisberg, my agent, Ben Davis, and the
rest of the Pushkin team. The Happiness Lab is brought
to you by Pushkin Industries and by me, Doctor Laurie Santos,
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Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.