Loving Your Job in the Age of Burnout
“[W]hen we talk about ‘meaningful work,’ what do we actually mean? Negotiating peace treaties, growing food, making spectacular amounts of money—all of these can be framed as meaningful, depending on who is doing the framing, and what it is they truly want. Meaning isn’t something to be found, and it can’t be uncovered by heartfelt commitment, long hours, and self-sacrifice. Meaning is something we make.”
“Hodgkinson, a journalist and writer who runs the UK magazine The Idler, advocates for people to lead less busy, less driven lives, with more diverse sources of meaning than career alone. ... His solution is to let go of the idea that full-time work is the only possible route to success, suggesting that the model of the permanent, long-hours job should be scrutinized, and that workers can take their lives into their own hands by resisting its ubiquity. ... There’s a much more global story” than the American experience alone, says Gianpiero Petriglieri, a professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD, a graduate business school with campuses in France, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi, who originally trained in psychiatry. In Petriglieri’s conception, the difference between finding a situation bearable—possibly, indeed, happy—and unbearable is about whether we experience ourselves as performing a willing sacrifice, or simply as suffering. ... For some, the ‘because’ of our job could be making the world a better place. But it could also simply be allowing us to pay the bills or care for our family. Meaning isn’t reserved for work with some ‘higher purpose.’ But it has to be there.”
“Many practical ways of combating the brutality of modern working come from within—not necessarily from self-optimization strategies or work hacks, but from simple changes that, in turn, change the culture around us. Leave the office at 6pm. Take holidays and talk about how completely you disconnected. Ask for paternity or maternity leave and take it, ostentatiously. Negotiate remote working and spend time at a cabin in the woods with your laptop and morning runs around the lake. Show your colleagues that you are free. Show yourself. This is true for managers, perhaps even more so than for workers: Petriglieri points out that when a manager has a talented report who is willing to make sacrifices, it’s particularly important for the manager to guard against exploiting them.”
Quartz, April 10, 2019: “The key to loving your job in the age of burnout,” by Cassie Werber
Manpower Group Q1, 2019: Employment Outlook Survey Global (20 pages, PDF)
Manpower Group Q2, 2019: Employment Outlook Survey Global (20 pages, PDF)
The Atlantic, February 24, 2019: “Workism Is Making Americans Miserable,” by Derek Thompson
BuzzFeed, January 5, 2019: “How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation,” by Anne Helen Petersen
Havard Business Review, August 28, 2018: “Are You Sacrificing for Your Work, or Just Suffering for It?” by Gianpiero Petriglieri
The New Yorker, June 7, 2018: “The Bullshit-Job Boom,” by Nathan Heller
Quartzy, April 16, 2018: “The Biggest Myth of Nomadic Travel is that Anyone Can Do It,” by Rosie Spinks”