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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
Really interesting read as a manager who has suffered from burnout and is striving to help my team avoid it themselves. Some of the ways I assumed I could support a healthier work environment are actually in conflict with this goal. This book gave me a new way to look at the challenge of balancing worker productivity and well-being, and brought up some moral quandaries about my responsibility to implement policies that support an effective team, and those that support a healthy team…lots of notes to send to my boss. Ha!
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
Good reminder to free yourself of habits conditioned by capitalistic greed
informative
inspiring
reflective
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I appreciate what the author sought to do in debunking the societal message that our self-worth and identity is tied to our job. The research presented and pieces of the book were interesting, but the stories were pretty much completely unrelatable. Deciding to make a major career change after making a 6 or 7 figure salary for over a decade is not the reality that most people face in deciding to decouple their lives from work.
I like the people and stories that Simone chose. He has a pleasant storyteller vibe and pace.
Maybe because I'm at a pretty good spot career wise... it just didn't resonate with me. OK, great ... don't spend your best time and energy for work. I get that. But the lives of interviewees ... they felt more quaint. Peaceful and sated. I would have to loved for a story of someone who left the corporate ladder and made their own ladder. Trading their golden handcuffs ... for something else golden?
Maybe because I'm at a pretty good spot career wise... it just didn't resonate with me. OK, great ... don't spend your best time and energy for work. I get that. But the lives of interviewees ... they felt more quaint. Peaceful and sated. I would have to loved for a story of someone who left the corporate ladder and made their own ladder. Trading their golden handcuffs ... for something else golden?
NPR did a podcast episode with the author and I went into the book with high expectations...but honestly, the podcast summarized it well enough. :/ This book dangled some tantalizing ideas in front of overworked Americans who secretly or not-so-secretly hate their jobs but can't quit because, you know, we all need money and health insurance. But those ideas were backed up primarily by anecdotes from high earning or high profile people who had the $$$$$$ in the bank to quit their jobs and or take a sabbatical or whatever. While there was one "case study" of an underpaid librarian, for the most part the people profiled in this book were ludicrously dissimilar to most workers.
Let me climb onto my soapbox really quick...
You don't have to be a white collar worker in a corporation that’s pretending to be a family to be tethered to your job and have no work-life balance. The author briefly mentioned how even low income workers in the U.S. are working SIGNIFICANTLY more hours per week now than they were 50 years ago. Wages have stagnated for a fucking eon, and now ALL workers MUST work more just to make the basic amount of money necessary to survive. But that kind of worker - who makes below, like, let's say $50k a year just doing a regular job like retail or bus driving or barista or maintenance or yes even entry and mid-level corporate office workers - is nowhere to be seen in this book. And what separates THOSE workers from the "managing editor of Wired Magazine!!!!" and the "banker making seven figures at Blackrock!!!!!" etc. is that the majority of American workers just do not have the leverage to change their work life. They cannot quit without big consequences for their own lives. They cannot take a goddamn sabbatical (haha sorry, the sabbatical thing made me so fucking angry that I almost spontaneously combusted, like HOW NICE that you get to take a year off and your job will still be there when you get back). They don’t necessarily have the leverage and flexibility to draw better work-life boundaries in the types of roles they work. They need to work to survive, and the terms of employment are set by the employers. Their problem is probably not really that they have bought into "workism," it's that the people above them in the corporate pyramid are greedy and determined to chew workers up with long hours and low wages, and then spit them out without a pension once they can't work anymore, and then let them spend their twilight years in poverty. Yeah, the fundamental problem isn't over-identifying with our work. It's that we usually don't have a real choice about working more or less.
So it's all well and good to tell people stories about the importance of developing an identity outside of their work and even to recommend that governments provide better social safety nets and that companies provide better time off benefits...but what I really want to know is what a worker who does not have leverage can do in an economic system and in a social structure that does not permit them to work less. And other than "try unionizing!" (which like...okay, let me get my magic wand and while I'm at it I will immediately instate Universal Basic Income), I don't think this book answered that question for the average worker making an average salary who is being simultaneously crushed by the huge expense of living and horrible work culture we have ended up in.
Basically, this was a book that resonated a lot with me. I am like THIS CLOSE to quitting my own job, after all. But this book was also too short, too light on the analysis, and too focused on high earning, high performing white collar workers who could afford to peace out from Capitalism...and ultimately, that made it less revolutionary than I was hoping it would be.
Let me climb onto my soapbox really quick...
You don't have to be a white collar worker in a corporation that’s pretending to be a family to be tethered to your job and have no work-life balance. The author briefly mentioned how even low income workers in the U.S. are working SIGNIFICANTLY more hours per week now than they were 50 years ago. Wages have stagnated for a fucking eon, and now ALL workers MUST work more just to make the basic amount of money necessary to survive. But that kind of worker - who makes below, like, let's say $50k a year just doing a regular job like retail or bus driving or barista or maintenance or yes even entry and mid-level corporate office workers - is nowhere to be seen in this book. And what separates THOSE workers from the "managing editor of Wired Magazine!!!!" and the "banker making seven figures at Blackrock!!!!!" etc. is that the majority of American workers just do not have the leverage to change their work life. They cannot quit without big consequences for their own lives. They cannot take a goddamn sabbatical (haha sorry, the sabbatical thing made me so fucking angry that I almost spontaneously combusted, like HOW NICE that you get to take a year off and your job will still be there when you get back). They don’t necessarily have the leverage and flexibility to draw better work-life boundaries in the types of roles they work. They need to work to survive, and the terms of employment are set by the employers. Their problem is probably not really that they have bought into "workism," it's that the people above them in the corporate pyramid are greedy and determined to chew workers up with long hours and low wages, and then spit them out without a pension once they can't work anymore, and then let them spend their twilight years in poverty. Yeah, the fundamental problem isn't over-identifying with our work. It's that we usually don't have a real choice about working more or less.
So it's all well and good to tell people stories about the importance of developing an identity outside of their work and even to recommend that governments provide better social safety nets and that companies provide better time off benefits...but what I really want to know is what a worker who does not have leverage can do in an economic system and in a social structure that does not permit them to work less. And other than "try unionizing!" (which like...okay, let me get my magic wand and while I'm at it I will immediately instate Universal Basic Income), I don't think this book answered that question for the average worker making an average salary who is being simultaneously crushed by the huge expense of living and horrible work culture we have ended up in.
Basically, this was a book that resonated a lot with me. I am like THIS CLOSE to quitting my own job, after all. But this book was also too short, too light on the analysis, and too focused on high earning, high performing white collar workers who could afford to peace out from Capitalism...and ultimately, that made it less revolutionary than I was hoping it would be.
So many friends (by so many, I mean 3) recommended this book to me. Shout out Larzy RAs! I found myself screen-shotting so many pages of this book, so I’ll leave the many quotes I found impactful below:
“Globally, more people die each year from symptoms related to overwork than from malaria.”
“Too many people bring the best of themselves to work, and bring the leftovers home. When we give all of our energy to our professional lives, we deprive the other identities that exist within each of us—spouse, parent, sibling, neighbor, friend, citizen, artist, traveler—of the nutrients to grow.”
“When we say someone is successful, we rarely mean they are happy and healthy.”
“At the end of the day, a job is an economic contract. It's an exchange of labor for money. The more clear-eyed we can be about that, the better.”
"I want to remind people that you have to create value outside of work to protect yourself.”
“We are workers, but we are also siblings and citizens, hobbyists and neighbors. In this way, identities are like plants: they take time and attention to grow. Unless we make a conscious effort.”
“The expectation that work will always be fulfilling can lead to suffering.”
“A job, like a baby, is not always something that you can control. Tethering your sense of self-worth to your career is a perilous game.”
“Globally, more people die each year from symptoms related to overwork than from malaria.”
“Too many people bring the best of themselves to work, and bring the leftovers home. When we give all of our energy to our professional lives, we deprive the other identities that exist within each of us—spouse, parent, sibling, neighbor, friend, citizen, artist, traveler—of the nutrients to grow.”
“When we say someone is successful, we rarely mean they are happy and healthy.”
“At the end of the day, a job is an economic contract. It's an exchange of labor for money. The more clear-eyed we can be about that, the better.”
"I want to remind people that you have to create value outside of work to protect yourself.”
“We are workers, but we are also siblings and citizens, hobbyists and neighbors. In this way, identities are like plants: they take time and attention to grow. Unless we make a conscious effort.”
“The expectation that work will always be fulfilling can lead to suffering.”
“A job, like a baby, is not always something that you can control. Tethering your sense of self-worth to your career is a perilous game.”
fast-paced
informative
inspiring
medium-paced