The Other Side of Workism

As you may have guessed, I spend lots of my time thinking, reading, obsessing, and writing about careers. When careers constitute 90,000 of our waking hours, I think learning about how they’re integrated into our lives is important and interesting, if not a nuanced study of contemporary life.

I recently found myself reading Workism is Making Americans Miserable in The Atlantic and for the first time ever felt compelled to respond via a Letter to the Editor.

I’m sharing it here (since I highly doubt it will be published elsewhere, much less read) and am curious to hear your thoughts on the matter (all 7 of you that have subscribed to my Medium Publication, Unstuck Project). The article is certainly an interesting read and the author does make some good points, so I would encourage you to check out his thoughts before reading my response.

Enjoy!

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Letter to the Editor

I recently read Derek Thompson’s article “Workism is Making Americans Miserable,” and while I agree a number of his assertions, I felt compelled to provide a Millennial Workist “meaning junkie” response.

I agree, modern careers, specifically white collar ones, are indeed serving to provide a sense of identity for many of us.

I also agree that it is absurd that so many social welfare programs are so intrinsically tied to work. That needs to change.

And yes, Thompson’s dystopian Black Mirror scenario certainly gave me pause:

“There is something slyly dystopian about an economic system that has convinced the most indebted generation in American history to put purpose over paycheck. Indeed, if you were designing a Black Mirror labor force that encouraged overwork without higher wages, what might you do? Perhaps you’d persuade educated young people that income comes second; that no job is just a job; and that the only real reward from work is the ineffable glow of purpose. It is a diabolical game that creates a prize so tantalizing yet rare that almost nobody wins, but everybody feels obligated to play forever.”

Perhaps in valuing meaning over income we are on an impossible neverending hamster wheel with no winners.

And yet, I would argue that it’s not the economic system that has necessarily convinced us of this value structure, as it is a survival response — a reaction to a lifetime of false expectations that, thanks to the financial crisis, are mostly unrealistic for us.

You state, “Our jobs were never meant to shoulder the burdens of a faith, and they are buckling under the weight,” and I agree wholeheartedly. Yet, I would argue that workism isn’t a search to replace the role of religion, rather, it’s a response to the limited opportunities we’ve been presented with as a result of “traumas” that are out of our control.

Many of us were brought up thinking that studying hard would lead to a decent job, with decent pay, and ultimately a decent life. We spent our lives going from one extra curricular to the next, prioritizing good grades over all else, spending months fretting over college acceptances, internships, resumes, and appearing “well rounded.” We took out loans to fund our futures that many will find themselves repaying for the entirety of their working lives.

And then, especially for those of us that graduated around 2008 (I was a 2010 graduate), we were rewarded with non-existent jobs that actually utilized our skills (beyond coffee fetching, of course), and wage stagnation that has left us with 34% less wealth than previous generations at the same demographic time of their lives.

What’s more, we see those that have graduated after us pass us by, beginning their careers with “real” jobs upon graduation, working their way up the ranks, and attaining a sense of stability that many of us are only now inching towards in our early thirties.

Is it any wonder then, if we’re going to be forced to spend the majority of our lives working — approximately 90,000 hours of it — we would want to do something that means something to us?

Is it any wonder that, with the burden of debt and stagnated salaries, we’ll never have the lives, income or free time that other generations might have been able to afford, so we might as well make the best of a bad situation and seek to enjoy work in whatever way possible?

Is it remotely surprising that, with the concept of retirement mostly out of reach and likely obsolete by the time we get there, we’d want to do whatever possible to enjoy the present moment and find a sense of fulfilment beyond wealth accumulation? (Especially since many of us will choose not to have children due to financial restraints, although we might have certainly wanted them and would have found a sense of purpose in them.)

Is it surprising that, instead of saving to purchase assets, most of us are simply saving for an inevitable healthcare expense (especially when 1 in 3 gofundme campaigns go to fund that very thing)?

I read an article a while back stating that Uber and the sharing economy have surfaced as an outcome of the fact that the millennial generation is poorer than previous generations with similar levels of education.

Have you considered that perhaps this focus on finding meaning and enjoyment in work follows that same logic? (As a result of having fewer prospects and financial potential.)

Of course, I by no means intend to sound whiny or entitled. Things could certainly be much much worse. Those without a college education are facing much more dire financial challenges than white collar millennials. And I am certainly not advocating for burnout. Rather, I hope to show that being a “meaning junkie” is a psychological response — a defense mechanism — to the financial situation we now find ourselves in.

Of course, I agree. I too am weary of the push to “find your passion” in work.

I’m a bigger advocate of enabling engagement at work. We enjoy activities when we’re good at them — but we can only determine what we’re truly good at when we’ve had the opportunity to try a variety of things.

As millennials, we’ve spent so much time, energy, and resources studying, only to find ourselves in jobs where we don’t get to use our intellect. Jobs where we’re boxed in to menial tasks. Jobs with limited paths for growth.

Yes, there is the inevitable boredom. Yes, there are tasks we dislike. But when we search for meaning in our jobs, it’s less about being passionate about every waking second of work, and more about being in an environment where we can use our strengths, learn new skills, and grow. Wanting our work to matter to us is less about viewing work as a religion replacement, and more about using our time, energy, and skills that we’ve put so much effort into building towards something that’s worth that time and effort.

Ultimately, this task lies with employers:

• How can they support employee growth and engagement?
• How can they enable an environment where people can pursue the ideas that give them meaning — whether it’s their family and hobbies via work-life balance, learning new skills via professional development, or simply time to work on their startup or blog or art or what-have-you.

The point is, when there’s less to look forward to — unlikely retirement, financial inability to have families, potential bankruptcy in the case of an unexpected hospital visit, not to mention the potential effects of climate change and a government more focused on appeasing billionaires than social welfare — it’s a natural human response to look to the present instead. In searching for fulfillment at work, millennial “meaning junkies” like myself are merely attempting to enjoy the present, do good work, and distract ourselves the inevitable financial realities of our futures.