The Good Enough Job with Simone Stolzoff #667

to be a poet. And after going through this book, I don't think anything else we could say could actually encapsulate Simo's book any better. But we are going to discuss a number of themes from the book, how to basically diversify your identity. We're gonna talk about the similarities between work and religion, or maybe the dissimilarities, uh, the false promise of chasing after status. All of this we're going to discuss.

is their craft beer equivalent? And what we mean by that is, while you're saving and investing diligently for the future, what is it that you proactively spend money on that some people might think is a little weird or you're just thrilled to spend money in a certain way while you're still handling money.

cookie guy. But I still love them, you know, And I like I'm not much of like a chocolate chip cookie snob, you know, I'm a kind of equal opportunist, from the famous amos to the artisanal like eight dollar cookie that I bought the other day.

really playing goldilocks with different jobs. I worked in tech for a few years, and I worked in food for a few years, and I worked in journalism for a few years. And it really came to ahead at a moment when I was choosing between these two particular jobs. One was to be a staff writer at a digital magazine and the other was to be a designer at this global design agency. And on one hand, it's like, oh, agony is me, you know, like the plight of deciding

between two attractive job authors. But you know, maybe you guys or some of your listeners have been in a similar crossroads before, you know, For me, I really didn't feel like I was choosing between two jobs as much as I was choosing between two versions of me. And this sort of like career and decision moment I was probably twenty eight or twenty nine really threw me for an existential loop, and I was wondering, sort of, how did my identity become so entwined with what I did

for work, what I did to make money? And that was sort of the first kernel that led to what became the research project that eventually became the book.

central to our identity, to our existence. It seems like it didn't used to be that way, and now careers are kind of all defining in a lot of ways.

social arguments, cultural arguments. The historical one is just the fact that the Protestant work ethic and capitalism we're really the two strands that entwine to form our country's DNA. From the beginning, being American was synonymous with your ability to be a productive member of society or to be able to work hard. There's also kind of economic arguments. I think this really differs depending on what side of

the income spectrum you're looking at. On the sort of lower earning side, wages have been stagnant for the last forty or fifty years, which means that people have had to work more just to earn the same money to buy the same loaf of bread. Has driven a lot

of people to work long hours. On the other side, there's the tax structure of our country and the way that employment and healthcare are often tied together that make the consequences of losing work so dire, and also the ability to consolidate wealth with the more hours that you work, greater abilities to do so. The argument I really focus on in the book is the sort of subjective or

the cultural value that Americans place on their jobs. You know, we live in a country that treats CEOs like celebrities, and we plaster always do what you love on the walls of our co working in space. We parade around our job titles and small talk conversation and on our social media profiles. And there is really this sense that you are what you do. And I think that is unique to a certain extent to this age that we're

in right now. We're work is very much in vogue, or maybe in the last three or so years, with the pandemic hotly contested about its role in our lives.

of purpose in your life. I think it's primarily a phenomenon that is most prevalent among people that have a certain level of privilege, you know, college educated Americans, But that doesn't mean that it exists. It doesn't exist in other countries, it doesn't exist in other sort of class strata. It just is particularly pronounced for people that have, truthfully the privilege to be able to choose what they want.

all of our problems? What is the I guess the problem or the difficulty in finding or putting our faith within our jobs, within our careers.

strong association with an organized religion. And there's been this precipitous decline in the past forty years where today nearly one in three almost in the latest data, Americans don't have a particular religious affiliation, whether they're agnostic or atheist,

or just don't believe in anything in particular. And so, you know, when you think about the role that religion plays in people's lives, it is obviously something to believe in, a potential path to transcendence, but it's also a primary community. It's a primary source of your identity. And so with the decline of these organized religions, the need for belonging and for purpose still remains. And the argument that they make in the book is that work, for many people

has taken on that role. But the problem is that that's not necessarily a burden. Our jobs are designed to bear. You know, this is particularly visible in the past few years with the pandemic. You know, some people, whether it was due to layoffs or furloughs, lost their jobs, you know, and if your work is your primary source of identity and meaning and you lose it, what's left well.

what it used to be. And I think people who were maybe over indexed and looking to work as a source of identity and meaning in their life were left for a rude awakening, you know. And the main sort of argument that I make in the book, when it gets into a little bit more of an editorial section, is about what you said about the value of diversifying your identity and sources of meaning beyond just what you

do for work. You know, this isn't just to protect in the case that you get laid off, But I think one of the risks of a work centric existence is that we can neglect other parts of who we are.

from any work class. And so it really was kind of a tale of two Americans and how they relate to work. And everyone was questioning their relationship to work, but for different reasons.

increased astronomically over the course of the pandemic. And yet we still haven't necessarily given these workers that we deem essential the protections and the pay and the benefit to ensure that they can keep doing their jobs safely for us all.

we find most attractive about our jobs. What are some of the benefits that you found when we take a step back and when we look to some other outlets some other ways that we are able to find our identity totally.

We're also siblings and neighbors and citizens and friends and parents, and you know, these identities they need investment, you know. They One of the main reasons or arguments for doing so is that in the case of it doesn't even have to be a layoff, but any sort of bad news in the work realm, when we have a more diversified identity portfolio, it's less likely to spill over into other aspects of our lives. We're more resilient if we

have greater self complexity. There's also a semblance not just in the sort of the bare case of something tragic or bad happening, but in just the value of being able to give our time and attention into other parts of who we are. It's important to keep in mind that identities are sort of like plants, you know, like

they need time and intention in order to grow. And I think part of the risk of living in a life that's so centered around work is that work doesn't just take our best time and often also takes our best energy as well. And so one of the arguments that Ike in the book is that in order to diversify your identity beyond what you do for work, you have to do things other than work, which may seem a little obvious, but you know, for me at least, I can definitely relate to the experience of you know,

you go to work, you come home, you're exhausted. All you have the energy to do is sort of turn off your brain and turn on Netflix. And while that can, you know, temporarily be a nice way to recharge or you know, to get lost in another world, if you really want to have other sources of meaning in your life, you need to be actively doing things and in the community, doing things with others, investing in your relationships. And so that's what I advocate for.

And you know, almost to the same extent that you view religion is that faith is it's such a personal and internal thing, and the ability for somebody outside of you to take that away kind of goes counter to I think how a lot of individuals view their faith, how they view their spirituality. And so yeah, for you to show up one day and all of a sudden, it's just like, hey, this thing that you've depended on as much as someone would typically depend on their faith,

as oh, it's no longer there. That could be incredibly dev stadium even more tenuous connection to our work than we think. And some people who if you put your hope and dreams and faith and future expectations all inside of this one vehicle which is your career, at some point problematic there's a really good chance that someone can take that away from you, it's like a janguitower and it's like you're down to just like a singular block at the bottom. If you were to pull that one thing,

it's like everything else just completely falls up. Year.

And I think the same is true with work. You know, it's what gets us into these systems where are you know, chasing carrots their entire lives and never fully feeling full.

of doing so. But by having other sources of meaning, we're able to just bounce back if say, your manager says something disparaging over the course of the work day. If you can show up as as a good father that night, or show up as a good third basement for your recreational softball team, or show up as you know, a very present friend to a buddy who is going through something. All of those I identities can help soften the inevitable bumps we face them along the reative work.

We'll get to some of those those questions dot combo right after this.

the man. And yet I don't think that going full on to that end of the spectrum is necessarily helpful or will be a recipe for fulfillment when it comes to passion. You know, I think I have certainly derived a lot of meaning and purpose and passion from my

work myself. But I think, you know, I rely a lot on this chapter of the research of this woman at Michigan State named Aaron Check who wrote this book called The Trouble with Passion, And basically her argument is that not all of us have the same on ramps to be able to translate our passions into our means of making money, and for people who have fewer opportunities, it can actually exacerbate inner quality when we tell everyone to follow their passion, but some people don't have as

much access to passion jobs as others. And I think a lot of times, you know, passion can be a stand in for fair compensation or fair pay. There's this concept in the book I talk about that's called vocational AWE, which is the idea that certain industries have a sort of perceived righteousness, like a halo effect. I'm thinking about things like healthcare workers, or like teachers, or people that

work in the nonprofit sector. And it was a concept that was originally coined by this librarian, this woman named Fobasi Utar, and she observed how this sort of rhetoric around follow your passion or you know, vocational awe, like the idea that you should be in it for something more than the money, can actually cover up a lot of the malpractice and exploitation that exists within all of

these different fields. You know, I've this mentor this woman and Helen Peterson, and she says, most of the time all passion can get you is the excuse to be paid very little. And so you know, it's a fine balance. Obviously, you know, we work more than we do just about anything else in our life, and you know how we spend those hours matter. But I think being clear headed about the fact that work is first and foremost an economic contract. It's an exchange of your time and your

labor for money. The better it can certainly be more than those things. But I think the more sort of clear headed we can be about its fundamental purpose, the better off will be.

is a thing for sure. But I guess I want to ask you too, there's a lot of people Matt and I talk about this all the time. We see stats where people make two hundred k a year and they're still living paycheck to paycheck. So often for a lot of people, it's not just that they're not getting

paid enough. So do you think not being a personal finance nerd to the extead of Matt and I like our poor savings habits in that intense reliance on that income from our day job, does that make matters worse that we are basically we tied at the hip to our employer, that we don't have enough margin or if we did lose our job or if we wanted to pursue something else, that we don't really have that ability totally.

for them. And so, you know, I think one of the misconceptions about the Great Resignation was that it was just people kind of dropping out of the labor force and sitting on their couch all day, Whereas an actuality, the majority of people that left jobs during the heart of the pandemic actually just left to find better jobs.

So I think that's really important to consider. It's like, when we feel like there is a little bit of government support or just a less fraid social safety net, people feel more empowered or define work that works better for them. And then there's kind of the second half of your question, which is, you know, thinking about people and that we're making a lot of money that might not have very much slack and their budget or their

spending habits. And I think a lot of that comes back to sort of the consumerism that is so prevalent in America and the pressure to always be spending and keeping up with the joneses and having the nice new thing and sort of foregoing some of the long term benefits that we can get from saving or having just you know, more resiliency built into your budget, versus the sort of short term rash of getting something that's shiny and new consumerism.

companies for longer. And I think, similar to your friends, so many people have seen over the past two years, how that rhetoric can be very shallow. You know, you can't fire someone from your company. But even if it was true that your workplace could be like your family, I'm not sure that's something that we should aspire to. You know, most of the families that I know are

pretty dysfunctional in one way or another. You know, and so in some ways the question about like workplace as family is sort of just a semantic distinction and just about this idea of like how much of our relationship

should be center in the workplace. And you know, I think the argument that I make is like, it's not necessarily a problem to have friends at work, but I think if your workplace is your sole source of community, that is a narrow platform to balance on, you're prone to be blown over by a strong gust of wind, whether that is getting laid off or your quote unquote family member having to give you some tough love in the sake of further in the business goals, or even

just the sort of negative consequences of the sort of in groups and the clicks that can form at work. There's been research that has found that in more familial workplaces, workers are less likely to speak up about wrongdoing, They're less likely to be transparent, they're less likely to make decisions based on sound business analysis and rigor as opposed to just sort of like trusting what your buddy says.

And so, you know, there are actual material consequences of relying too much on social ties as opposed to fundamentally what a professional relationship should be, which is based on your material goals for the company.

is like literally just I mean a hundred bucks. I'm not saying one hundred bucks is nothing, but it was one hundred bucks. And it was oftentimes somebody who came in on the weekend who like left their family in the lurch to come take care of something at work. And I was like, I'm making it my personal goal to never win this award because it felt like that was asking too much, creating a tie that it didn't

deserve that sort of stranglehold over my life. And I could tell so many people prided themselves I'm being able to win this one hundred dollars recognition in front of their coworker sort of thing. And I had just the opposite stance, and I was like, this is absurd and there's no way I ever want to be found up on that podium accepting the award because it will have meant that I dropped obligations and duties that matter a

whole lot to me. So I guess that's where I want to ask, too, how do we find create a proper attachment to work or we are working hard, where we're producing good work, where we are a part of the organization in a meaningful way without going above and beyond. We don't want to be laxa Daisa whole, but we also don't want to over exert ourselves and basically inhibit the ability for those other identity forming necessities to take place.

costing you? So in the book, I advocate for a more transactional approach to work. And it might sound crass to treat a job as a transaction, you know, especially because we've been told that jobs are meant to be meanings and identities and vocations and callings, not mere paychecks. But I think a more transactional approach to work can

actually benefit both employers and employees. I think it freese employers to be able to be straightforward about what the expectations for good work looks like, to be clear and setting up you know, this is what success would mean, and these are the numbers that we're hoping you hit. This is the sort of standards that we have here

as a company. And it frees employeees to you know, talk about compensation in a fair way and not think that somehow talking about money is undermining the best interest of the company. It freese employees to understand what is expected of them, and more than anything, it frees employees to treat work as part of, but not the entirety, of their lives. And you know, we're talking a lot about quiet quitting and workers that are sort of phoning

it in. I don't actually think that is a recipe for fulfillment or happiness either, you know, Like, I'm sure we can all relate to the workdays where you don't have enough work to do and you're sort of just twiddling your thumbs and the clock is moving slower than you thought was humanly possible. I think treating work as like a necessary evil is not necessarily a recipe for fulfillment either. But I think why social media was invented exactly just to fill all the it's like as it

fills all the unoccupied space in our days. But you know, I think it's it's finding that balance of like, what do you want works role to be in your life? How does that intersect with the necessities to do a good enough job for your company, and how you can invest the time and energy that you have in other aspects of who you are. What I like about the sort of title of the book, The Good Enough Job, is that it's intentionally subjective. You know, you get to

decide what good enough means to you. Maybe it's a job that pays a certain amount of money, or maybe it's a job that has a certain title or is in a certain industry, or maybe it's a job that gets off at a certain hour so that you can

pick up your kids from childcare. But whatever sort of your definition of good enough is, I employ you to recognize when you have it, because that's what will allow you to set better boundaries around when you can say the workday is done and not necessarily feel like you're always, you know, somehow fallen behind if you're not getting ahead.

more difficult. How do we make sure that we're working the way we want, not being rung dry by our employer, and that we still get to keep our job right because we still got to pay the mortgage or the rents or whatever it is.

between boundaries and guardrails. You can think about boundaries as sort of like the line and then the all of the highway that keeps you from going to from one lane to another, whereas guardrails are structural. They're put in place by the state they're the metal things on the side of the road that keep you from going over. And I think, you know, one of the problems with

individually imposed boundaries is that they inevitably break. You know, you can have an intention to work less, but if there is a deadline, or it's near the end of the quarter and you have a quarterly sales goal, or your boss tells you to work more hours, it can be hard to raise your hand and be like, actually,

I have a boundary, you know. I mean, I definitely found this in writing the book, you know, the great Irony said, I was like working on this book about the culture of overwork in America, and in many ways I was my own worst manager then. So I would, you know, feel crappy on weeks where I didn't hit my writing goal and it wouldn't have to open up the laptop on the weekend, even though I had a quote unquote boundary that I didn't want to do that.

And so I think, you know, the first point is that a lot of the onus to set these boundaries actually should rest on the company and on managers and creating cultures where it's okay for people to take time off, creating plans in place for distributing the workload so that there isn't an undue burden placed on any individual, hiring enough employees so that there's enough work, enough workers to spread out the work, and also creating norms around like when you should be on or.

two necessities. There needs to be the sort of policies in place that allow people to do things other than work or prioritize things outside of their work life. But there also needs to be the cultural will to do so. And I think that is what some of this kind of deprogramming or having a sufficiency mindset when it comes to work can allow us to do.

that doesn't mean that we're not off the hook. And I think in particular, we need a channel our efforts in the areas that I think where we can move

the needle the most for us as individuals. And when it came to for you to talk about some of the different boundaries that we can draw in our lives, like you talk about too, how there are some folks who like to have their work to be more integrated within their life, right, And so it's not even saying that what you should do is have hard boundaries and that's going to be how you're going to be able

to achieve happiness and a successful life. But it seems like you're just asking a lot of questions and you want individuals to kind of do the hard work, and it seems like that that is at the core of The problem here is that a lot of individuals they are not doing that difficult work. They're not setting goals for themselves. You know, they're chasing status. They're chasing after rankings or job titles or salaries as opposed to taking the time and thinking through what it is that they

want for themselves. I mean, do you feel like that that's accurate?

in the firm's history. And from his perch at the top of the org chart, he realized that he was playing a game that he didn't actually want to win, so, you know, and he hadn't taken the time to look up and ask, what is it that I actually want? You know, he was always just chasing what the market valued. But I think you know, the wisdom in his story is that the other end of the spectrum, where you just think about what you want without considering what the

market wants, is dangerous as well. It's the kind of thing that might get you in a situation where you assume a lot of student debt to pursue a graduate degree that might not actually lead to job on the other end, or a situation where you're an artist but you're so preoccupied by how you're going to pay rent that you can't actually focus on the art that you

hope to create. And so, you know, it might be a little simplistic, but I think it's really important to hold both of those incentives in your hand at the same time and thinking about, Okay, what is it that I value, what is it that the market values, and how can I find work that marries the two.

was more storytelling. But I guess I am also curious at the end, like when we talk about having that conversation with your boss, with your direct manager, Let's say you've been somewhere for years and you feel like, over time there's just been this encroachment and so I feel like that of your employer on your own personal time, and you found it harder to set boundaries, which I think probably a lot of people could relate to that.

What does it look like then, too, I mean you might start looking down the road to work somewhere else, right, that's potentially one solution. But what if you're like, I really like my job, I would just like to have a more normal relationship with it. How would you suggest starting to have that conversation with your direct supervisor to kind of set up boundaries that are going to make sense for both of you.

your desk. In the home world, that might be you know, just sitting around on Slack or Microsoft teams waiting for someone to send you a message. But what we should be valuing is the quality of the work itself. And so that's where I often start when I advise people about talking to their bosses or their managers, having a very clear conversation about, Okay, what where are we What is the sort of like status of the quality of the work that I am producing? Where am I meeting expectations?

Where am I exceeding expectations? If you want to try and get promoted or move to the next level, what is the type of work that you are expected to do? And just making some of those things clear and so you're not just sort of putting in pennies to the proverbial work piggybank, hoping to cash out one day, but you're actually, you know, working clearly towards what good work looks like at your company. When it comes to your life outside of work.

the number of hours I spend on the work. And that incentive structure is just so backwards, you know. Like I understand that lawyers bill hourly, and so there should be an expectation that they're you know, doing a certain number of hours in order to do the work for the firm. But you know, what we should be rewarding is the quality of the work itself. And I think

that can be extended to so many other fields. The thing I always advise people for outside of the office is you know, I talked a little bit about doing things other than work and practice. This means sort of

like having active forms of leisure. You know, like, if you want to conceive of yourself as more than just someone who exists on this earth to produce economic value or economic returns for a corporation, try and find realms of your life where people maybe don't even know what you do for work or don't care about your job title.

in the office. It's something where you can show up in a different realm and start to kind of cultivate those different identities.

a Jewish person began to grow. And so you can think about that in any realm of your life, whether you're a craft beer aficionado, that identity will grow if you are actively taking time to learn more about the craft beers, are going out drinking with friends.

the job you do, should you be passionate about it? Well, maybe we should be less focused on the passion side of things and instead, first and foremost, like he said, we should be thinking about it like an economic contract. Yes, I'm going to exchange my time and my talents for a paycheck.

instead we should maybe maintain a degre of professionalism. And if we think about it from maybe more of that transactional framework, Like within that framework, I think it could be healthier because honestly, I feel like it kind of goes counter to what a lot of folks are saying, where they're just like, oh, no, no, no, you know, like the whole if you're an employee here, we treat you like family.

Wall Street journal. I can't get that out of my head, just that poll about how people value money more than they value community, more than they value patriotism, or than they value family these days. It speaks so much about where we're at as a culture. I think we value our careers way more than we value a lot of those things too, because our careers are so tied to money,

and that is a shame. And so we need to start to think about how we can start watering, start pruning, start taking care of those other identity forming factors in our lives, like hobbies, like interpersonal relationships. And I think that will in all likelihood mean putting a little bit less into work and career, and I think we'll be happier for it. So I guess is this where I put in my two weeks Notice, Matt, sure, yeah, just kidding.

the bitterness that you get from the Hops. It It's been a minute since I've said blue cheese as I've described an IPA, but this one kind of had some of those sharp blue cheese elements, and when you're able to strike that perfect balance between the two, you end up with an amazing beer.