The Good Enough Job: What We Gain When We Don’t Put Work First
97 percent of respondents in a 2019 survey agreed with the following statement: “A person is successful if they have followed their own interests and talents to become the best they can be at what they care about most.”
Simone Stolzoff • The Good Enough Job: What We Gain When We Don’t Put Work First
Relying on external markers of success can leave ambitious professionals in any field feeling perpetually unfulfilled. This isn’t to say that ambition and achievement are necessarily bad. But in order to satisfy our souls’ deepest yearnings, there must be alignment between our values and the values of the games we play. We
Simone Stolzoff • The Good Enough Job: What We Gain When We Don’t Put Work First
Workplace communication apps keep knowledge workers perpetually half-connected, in a state reminiscent of sharks sleeping with one eye open.
Simone Stolzoff • The Good Enough Job: What We Gain When We Don’t Put Work First
At the beginning of the 1500s, the new profession of the merchant capitalist emerged. Merchants purchased foreign goods cheaply and sold them to the European aristocracy for large profits. They persuaded craftsmen to sell them their goods and then traveled from town to town in search of the best price. This meant that craftsmen now competed with ot
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work. Rather than make goods for their local communities, workers made goods that were shipped to places they couldn’t see.
Simone Stolzoff • The Good Enough Job: What We Gain When We Don’t Put Work First
It wasn’t until the German theologian Martin Luther came along that our conception of work’s role in life began to shift. In sixteenth-century Europe, the Catholic Church was making a fortune selling little pieces of parchment called indulgences, pardons for sin to citizens looking to buy their way into heaven.
Simone Stolzoff • The Good Enough Job: What We Gain When We Don’t Put Work First
This type of industrialized labor, according to Marx, estranged workers not only from what they produced but also from their humanity—from the communities and identities that made them who they were.
Simone Stolzoff • The Good Enough Job: What We Gain When We Don’t Put Work First
The modern ideology of workism asks two distinct pursuits—money and inner fulfillment—to coalesce. These pursuits are not always aligned,7 and yet we increasingly look to our jobs to satisfy both.
Simone Stolzoff • The Good Enough Job: What We Gain When We Don’t Put Work First
Bolles’s message—that your work ought to satisfy you by reflecting your unique skills and desires—remains the prevailing wisdom to this day.