Welcome back to Tip Jar. Phil Rosen here. It seems fitting at the start of a new year to reflect on our relationship to work and how much space we give our job in our lives.
It’s easy to let work become one and the same as our identity.
Our job becomes not just what we do, but who we are — but that can make us vulnerable to an identity crisis in the event of a job change or layoffs.
Today, I’m eager to share my conversation with journalist Simone Stolzoff, the author of The Good Enough Job, which comes out in May.
In his reporting, he spoke to over 100 employees across all walks of life, from Wall Street bankers to teachers, chefs, and others across the American economy, all in an effort to unpack how work has come to dominate life.
Let’s get started.
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Does a job have to be a calling?
Not necessarily, Simone Stolzoff told me in a video call this weekend.
Looking to your work for something like self-actualization is a high bar to set for yourself and your employer, he explained. That typically leads to disappointment.
Instead, as he suggests with the title of his book, happiness has a better chance of stemming from a job that’s “good enough.”
“Maybe ‘good enough’ means a job that pays a certain wage, or has certain hours, or leaves you enough energy to do what you like to do when you’re not working,” Stolzoff said. “Once you have that definition, you can recognize it and be more content, as opposed to always searching for a dream job.”
He explained that out of most of the staffers he spoke to from various fields, the happiest among them had the clearest sense of who they were when they weren’t in the office.
In large part, that often entailed viewing work as transactional — or, looking at your in the same way an employer does.
“Some of the happiest people were those who worked jobs that they weren’t particularly passionate about, jobs that allowed them to be the people that they wanted to be outside of work,” Stolzoff said.
Get the full insights from our conversation here.
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See you next time.
— Phil
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