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elizanne24 's review for:
The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work
by Simone Stolzoff
There was a lot I enjoyed about this book, from content to structure and tone. Many quotable sections!
I enjoyed re-reading some of the modern parable and koans that I have saved and savored for years - the one about the businessman and the fisherman for example. I enjoyed the case studies from people like Fobazi Ettarh and the term she coined, 'vocational awe,' the quote and meme from TikTok "darling, I have no dream job, I do not dream of labor." This is a well-crafted book, clear in its audience and purpose. The whole book is a pleasure to read (if this is a topic you enjoy, which I do!)
When comparing it to similar in the genre, Out of Office by Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel, for example, I felt it was less strident and offered more context and depth on the ways in which workism can be insidious. As this book was written 'post-pandemic' it offered less commentary on the physical office/location part of jobs that the Petersen/Warzel.
Here's my "but." The last chapter of the book "A world with less work" has Stolzoff gently chiding himself ... "Here I am, working on a book about the culture of overwork in America on a day that I'm being paid to rest" and it's in reading this sentence that I realize he has spent no time in this entirely well-written book defining and clarifying what is rest, nor has he distinguished between paid work and unpaid work and whether that trips his notion of workism. And this is something that he probably would do well to cover in a book for professionals (like himself) who (might) find great joy in applying their skills in unpaid work. I do think there's a distinction he doesn't quite make clear - for example, how would he treat this situation: Someone who is skilled at writing, and whose paid work is advertising, and who then chooses in their leisure time to also using that skill to increase donations for your favorite charity, or perhaps to write the monthly newsletter for the local Scout troop. Perhaps it will be his second book! Without properly having a definition of rest, removing 'work' from life (For the professional classes he is writing for), does leave a gaping time hole to be filled.
Here's a different kind of parable that metaphorically illustrates what could happen without filling the blank spaces in your house and life - "When an [impulse] comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first."
I enjoyed re-reading some of the modern parable and koans that I have saved and savored for years - the one about the businessman and the fisherman for example. I enjoyed the case studies from people like Fobazi Ettarh and the term she coined, 'vocational awe,' the quote and meme from TikTok "darling, I have no dream job, I do not dream of labor." This is a well-crafted book, clear in its audience and purpose. The whole book is a pleasure to read (if this is a topic you enjoy, which I do!)
When comparing it to similar in the genre, Out of Office by Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel, for example, I felt it was less strident and offered more context and depth on the ways in which workism can be insidious. As this book was written 'post-pandemic' it offered less commentary on the physical office/location part of jobs that the Petersen/Warzel.
Here's my "but." The last chapter of the book "A world with less work" has Stolzoff gently chiding himself ... "Here I am, working on a book about the culture of overwork in America on a day that I'm being paid to rest" and it's in reading this sentence that I realize he has spent no time in this entirely well-written book defining and clarifying what is rest, nor has he distinguished between paid work and unpaid work and whether that trips his notion of workism. And this is something that he probably would do well to cover in a book for professionals (like himself) who (might) find great joy in applying their skills in unpaid work. I do think there's a distinction he doesn't quite make clear - for example, how would he treat this situation: Someone who is skilled at writing, and whose paid work is advertising, and who then chooses in their leisure time to also using that skill to increase donations for your favorite charity, or perhaps to write the monthly newsletter for the local Scout troop. Perhaps it will be his second book! Without properly having a definition of rest, removing 'work' from life (For the professional classes he is writing for), does leave a gaping time hole to be filled.
Here's a different kind of parable that metaphorically illustrates what could happen without filling the blank spaces in your house and life - "When an [impulse] comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first."