Ep. 225 “Embrace the ‘Good Enough’ Job: Work, Life, and Finding Peace” 

Saadia Khan 0:05

Welcome to Immigrantly, a podcast that challenges us to reimagine the immigrant experience. I am your host, Saadia Khan. And I am so excited about today's episode and I will tell you why.

Saadia Khan 0:20

But I'll start with a quote from journalist Derek Thompson, who wrote this Atlantic piece in 2019, titled "Workism is making Americans miserable." The quote goes,

"The decline of traditional faith in America has coincided with an explosion of new Atheism. Some people worship beauty, some worship political identities, and others worship their children. But everybody worships something. And workism is among the most potent of the new religions competing for congregants."

Unquote. Isn't this quote fascinating? It really got me thinking.

Saadia Khan 1:04

And by the way, he defines workism as "the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one's identity and life's purpose and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work," unquote.

Saadia Khan 1:23

Honestly, these quotations made me think a lot about the way I approach work. These words really resonate with me on a profound level, because I do see my work as my calling a passion, and an all encompassing pursuit of self actualization, whatever that means. Over the years, I have seen my spouse wholly entrenched in his work at the expense of his time with family and friends, and it's been a painful experience for me, yet he still sees his work as a manifestation of his self worth.

Saadia Khan 1:58

And now I also witnessed similar tendencies among my daughters, they are too young to experience such emotions. But why is our work so inextricably woven into our very being? Why do we measure our worth by our professional achievements? Have you ever been told by your boss that where you work is supposed to be your second home? Do you think of it like a home at all to ever actually like the job? These questions, I'm sure are relevant to the lives of the countless individuals and all of you our listeners, but I guess today says it might be wonderful not to like that job at all, but have it to be good enough to sustain your life. Yeah, you heard it right. I got to speak with Simone Stolzoff, author of the beautiful and informative book, The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work. Now Simone's work has appeared in publications like The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal Simone is an expert on workplace relationships and people's relationships with work in these conversations, from conferences to even Stanford. Simone helps people navigate career transitions, identify trends, about the future of work and develop a healthier mindset about work. Join me today as we delve into the fascinating world of work life balance, redefine success, and explored the good enough job concept. So let's get started.

Saadia Khan 4:04

Simone, thank you so much for being on Immigrantly. I'm excited. And I'm excited that you're in New York. I didn't know you lived in San Francisco. And this is your first in-person interview.

Simone Stolzoff 4:14

Yeah, it's a pleasure. And it's nice to be in the studio and be able to actually look at each other across the table.

Saadia Khan 4:19

It's fun, right? Yeah, this is my first in person interview in months. I haven't come to the studio because a lot of guests are on Zoom, and they prefer to be on Zoom. And I don't know why it's a lot more fun to be in person. But I'm glad we're here.

Saadia Khan 4:34

So I have read part of your book. Thank you for sending me a soft copy. And I've been looking through it. And it's an amazing, remarkable read. And I have a lot of questions, but I'm approaching all of this from a place of curiosity, and at times ignorance because I have never worked in American corporate sector.

Saadia Khan 5:00

I've been part of nonprofit sector, which is a bit different. And it's also different because a lot of times we are able to justify that our job is our calling. And it's our passion, which may be a myth in itself. But I will start with a quote from your book, and I quote,

Saadia Khan 5:20

We are workers, but we are also siblings, and citizens, hobbyists, and neighbors. In this way, identities are like plants, they take time and attention to grow. Unless we make a conscious effort to water them, they can easily wither, unquote.

Saadia Khan 5:38

Tell me. How do you define a good enough job because this quote, and the entire book basically talks about how we should try to parse out or in a way differentiate ourselves from our jobs by doing a good enough job. So Simone, define for me what a good enough job is? And how do we strike that balance between doing our work and our work not overwhelming us?

Simone Stolzoff 6:08

I define a good enough job as a job that lets you be the person who you want to be. That's intentionally vague and subjective, because I think one of the beauties of the term and the framework is that you can define what your definition of good enough is. Perhaps it's a job that makes a certain amount of money or a job that has a certain title, or is in a certain industry or a job that gets off at a certain hour so you can go pick up your kids from school or go on that afternoon bike ride. But whatever that definition of good enough is, I hope you recognize when you found it, it's a foil to the idea of a dream job and thinking about how our jobs might be able to support the lives we want to live, as opposed to the other way around.

Saadia Khan 6:52

Tell me what benchmarks should people use to define a good enough job?

Simone Stolzoff 6:58

I think it really depends on the person and sort of their life circumstance. Rather than thinking about the job as sort of the central axis around which the rest of your life are bits. How can you think about your vision for a life well lived, and then think about how a job might support that vision.

Simone Stolzoff 7:14

For example, you know, maybe if you want to live in a place like New York City, you have to make a certain amount of income in order to do so to support the lifestyle that you want to live. But if you are prioritizing other aspects of your life, maybe the hours are more important. And that's what will determine a good enough job. Or maybe it's the coworkers that decide the type of work life balance that a particular workplace presents. And that quote that you read in the beginning, I think the argument behind it is that rather than think about work at the center, and then trying to squeeze life into the margins, we need to take an active role in cultivating these different sides of who we are: the parent, the sibling, the citizen, the friend. And I think one of the risks are the damages of work culture in America today, as the psychologist Esther Perel says too many people bring the best of themselves to work and then bring the leftovers home. You know, we try and spend all of our best hours and energy at the office and it leaves little room for these other parts of who we are,

Saadia Khan 8:15

You know, you bring up Esther Perel and I am a huge fan. And you're absolutely right, this is so true.

Saadia Khan 8:22

But here's the thing, when we think about good enough job, do you think it is across the board across different industries, or there are specific industries where it's easier to do a good enough job, for instance, when we look at technical industries, where a person is doing some technical job, it's easy to clock in, say nine to five or whatever number of hours and then disassociate yourself from the job you go home. But for instance, if somebody is in a more creative job, it's sometimes difficult to disassociate yourself from the job itself. How do you see creatives disassociating themselves from a job and looking at it as an economic transaction, rather than something that really defines their self worth?

Simone Stolzoff 9:10

I think it can be particularly hard and creative industries or industries for sort of a social mission. I'm glad you brought up sort of the nonprofit sector and some of the other sort of care oriented professions, and then our lines of work, you know, as a journalist, as a podcaster. Our name is on everything we do. It's hard to separate our identity from our output or our jobs.

Simone Stolzoff 9:30

But I think it's that much more important that we do so there's been some research on this topic. And what they found is that when people have what researchers called greater self complexity, which essentially just means have cultivated different sides of who they are, they are more resilient in the face of adversity, which makes sense you know, if you are your job and something bad happens at your job, then it can spill over to all the other facets of your life, but there also tend to be better creative problem solvers because you have these distinct sources of inspiration, you have room in your days for ideas to bounce off each other and to synthesize all the inputs that you're taking in.

Simone Stolzoff 10:10

And I think for nonprofit sector education or healthcare, it can really be a double edged sword. And you know, maybe this is something that you found in your past nonprofit, where, where there is this sort of perceived righteousness of the work itself, you know, and there's this term that I referenced in the book called vocational awe, which was coined by this librarian, and she was talking about how in her line of work in libraries, there's this idea that libraries are these sort of democratic paragons of perfection, but it's actually that halo effect that can cover up a lot of the injustice that exists within the industry themselves. And so by framing a job as a calling, or vocation, or an identity or passion, it can actually obscure the reality, which is, first and foremost, a job is an economic contract, as you said, it's an exchange of our workers time and their labor for a paycheck. And certainly, it can be a lot more than that. It can be a meaning a sense of purpose, that sense of community. But the more clear headed, that we can be about the sort of transactional nature of work, I think the better.

Saadia Khan 11:15

I really liked this approach, and I liked the framework that you use, but Simone, at times, I think there is a lot of focus on how employees should and can approach their job. But there are so many other factors. If we take example of the US the idea of the American dream, right, America being a meritocracy, which it isn't at all. But this idea of you can achieve whatever you want to do. And then America being one of the more economically productive nation, right? I can think of China being extremely productive. And when we start thinking about the good enough concept, then in a way, there has to be some compromise in terms of how America sees itself, in terms of being economically productive, or to the level where it wants to be, and how the citizen receives that as well. Do you think there is a trade off there?

Simone Stolzoff 12:15

Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. And it's no surprise that one of the reasons why the US is so work-centric is because we exalt productivity as one of our highest sort of values as a country, from my experience, you know, my family's Italian. And part of the inspiration for the book was this kind of cross cultural analysis of thinking about other countries that might have a different relationship to work or a different sort of hierarchy of cultural priorities, and how that reflects in culture. And so, you know, the United States has created tons of wealth, they've created tons of jobs and innovations that have definitely benefited the world in many ways. And yet, I don't think it's an either or question. I don't think productivity and balance are necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, I think that in order to be sustainably productive over a longer time horizon, you need to incorporate rest and balance and protection of life outside of the office.

Simone Stolzoff 13:17

In the US, we can tend to be short sighted when you think about the wins of say, a quarter or a week, or thinking about getting that next kind of performance review metric checked off. But the flip side of that is the mentality that we are what we do, or our self worth is tied up in our ability to be productive comes at the cost of our ability to work over the long term. And it's no surprise why there's this burnout epidemic in the United States where so many people are reimagining their relationship to work coming out of the pandemic, is our ways and working right now are not working for the people that are doing the work.

Saadia Khan 13:59

Talk to me about your family. I want to go back to that. So I was reading your book, and you mentioned your mom's work ethic and how she approaches her work versus your dad's. And they're both psychologists, right?

Simone Stolzoff 14:12

My mom had a little bit more of a worldly perspective as opposed to what is customary in Italy of kind of going to school closest to home, she got a scholarship to go study in Rome, and that really broadened her worldview. And then she moved to the United States and met my dad, you know, they have different perspectives on work. I think my mom treats work as more of a means to an end, whereas my dad treats work more of an end in and of itself.

Simone Stolzoff 14:37

I don't think either approach is necessarily bad. You know, I think different strokes for different folks, but we live in a culture that loves to revere people whose identity and their jobs neatly aligned, you know, the painters, the artists, that social entrepreneurs, and I think one thing that I've learned from my mom's approach is that she has a very clear idea of why she works. She works so she can you know, feel comfortable live in the way that she wants to live to be able to support her son's education, for example, to be able to fly back to Italy to see her family. And so that idea of why we work is I think, very important to get in touch with because the alternative is that we sort of default to the reasons why other people want us to work, what the market value is, as opposed to understanding what we value ourselves.

Saadia Khan 15:22

But do you also think it has something to do with how work is monetized. And hence, our self worth is pretty much measured in numbers, which is easier to understand versus if I pick a hobby, or if I'm taking care of my kids, then my self worth manifests in different ways, but anybody looking at my work may not be able to understand how valuable it is, especially in an American society, again, because there's so much focus on monetary value, or the value added that a human brings, which can be measured in some form, right? So for me when I think about all of this, and when I was reading your book, and it's a beautiful read, because there are so many places where you pause and think, how do we make that paradigm shift in our society, from consumerism do something else or looking at our work as a means to an end and not an end? In itself? How do we make that societal shift?

Simone Stolzoff 16:25

You make a great point. And I think one of the reasons why so many people rise and fall with their professional accomplishments is because those metrics are very legible. And offices, you're quite literally ranked, and your compensation is an indication of where you are in the pecking order. You know, I think a huge cultural shift is hard to pinpoint. It can come from the bottom up, it can come from the top down, I think we've seen a lot of rethinking during the pandemic, and people reconsidering what they want their relationship to work to be.

Simone Stolzoff 16:55

I think that's really the first step is about awareness of having different models of what quote unquote, success looks like, you know, when we talk about whether someone was successful, we don't mean whether they were happy or healthy, we mean, they've made a lot of money. And I think we're undergoing a pretty profound cultural shift, or people are thinking about different ways of defining success.

Simone Stolzoff 17:16

And so if you think about some of the top down ways to intervene, one of the reasons why our relationship to work is so fraught and the United States is because the consequences of losing work are so dire when, for example, your healthcare is tied to your employment status, or your ability to stay in this country on a visa that is tied to you know, a W-2 job. And so from the top down and kind of the policy or government layer, I think we need to decouple our basic human needs from our employment. And that can come in many forms, we've seen some subtle shifts through the child tax credit, or different sort of re-knitting of the social safety net during the pandemic, but it has to come from the bottom up as well.

Simone Stolzoff 18:01

You know, one example that I bring up in the book is that Japan, as a country has one of the most progressive parental leave policies in the world, I think many fathers are entitled up to a year of paid time off. And in the last data that I looked at 5% of Japanese fathers took the time that they were allotted, which points to these sort of two parallel necessities, we both need the policies in place to be able to protect workers life outside of work, but we also need the cultural will to do so. And I think that's where the individual comes in and thinking about, okay, if we want to live less work centric existence, workers need to have autonomy and agency and their ability to diversify their identities to find other sources of meaning beyond the job. And you know, one of the trends I chronicle in the book is that one reason why work has become so central to Americans lives in particular, is because there are fewer other sources of meaning or community with the decline of community groups, with the decline of organized religion. And I think changing the culture really starts by people actively investing in some of those other sources of identity.

Saadia Khan 19:10

You bring up such an important point. And it's a great segue into my next question about how you make this comparison between decline in organized religion or subscribers of it, and increase in one's association with their work and change and work ethos.

Saadia Khan 19:29

Talk to me a little bit more about that, because again, it's so fascinating, what you're saying is that people are, in a way replacing organized religion with work because all of us as humans are intrinsically looking for a purpose. And that purpose could be religion, faith, or it could be work so we all end up worshiping something.

Simone Stolzoff 19:54

Yeah, so there's sort of like two questions in that. There is why organized religion has fallen out in the United States and some other kind of developed countries as well. The second is why did work can take its place, you know, become this secular substitute.

Simone Stolzoff 20:09

And the first one, you know, if you look at kind of the peak of religiosity in the US in the 1950s, four or five percent of Americans do not associate with an organized religion. So the vast majority of people had some sort of religious identity in their life. And then in the 70s, you start to see this precipitous decline of these organized religions. And to the point where today, almost one in three Americans is not associated with an organized religion, they're either atheist or agnostic or just don't really believe in anything, then, you know, there's many different causes of this one is just with greater wealth, people tend to be less religious, you know, our country's GDP has grown a lot.

Simone Stolzoff 20:49

There are things like the internet, which have helped people find solidarity and some of their doubts and finding communities about their people that might share their skepticism of organized religion. There's the kind of politicization of religion, especially the religious right, that has equated sort of conservative politics with Christianity and driven a lot of people away.

Saadia Khan 21:11

And it has been exclusionary, right?

Simone Stolzoff 21:13

Exactly, yeah. And you're seeing that ad in the headlines and the policies today. But the second question is why to work takes its place, you know, and I think you can think about all the different quote unquote, jobs that a religion does. So it's a faith, you know, it's a way of thinking about the world that has a moral compass, it can also be a huge choice of community through the people that you're, you know, in the synagogue, or the pews, or the mosque alongside, it can be a source of purpose, it can be a vehicle for philanthropy, or making an impact. And, you know, I think there's no doubt that the workplace can provide a lot of those things as well. I mean, frankly, it's where the Americans spend most of their time. And so those needs for belonging and community and identity remain, and a lot of people transpose that to the workplace. But you know, what I argue in the book, that our jobs are not necessarily designed to bear that burden.

Saadia Khan 22:10

This is an important point, Simone, and I want you to elaborate on it. Why do you think our jobs are not designed to do that, especially for people who viewed them as such?

Simone Stolzoff 22:21

First and foremost, our jobs are a material relationship, you know, they exist for the betterment of the company. And as so many people have found out in the last few years, loyalty to shareholders, or to a company's bottom line will always trump loyalty to its people. And I think that's where a lot of people have this sort of moment of disillusionment where the spell of work breaks is, you know, when it comes to a layoff, or furlough or when a company comes on hard economic times, they can't always be there for their people.

Simone Stolzoff 22:55

The author, David Foster Wallace has this great line where he says everyone worships, the only choice we have is what to worship.

Saadia Khan 23:03

Right.

Simone Stolzoff 23:04

And whatever you end up worshiping, will likely eat you alive. Worship beauty, and you'll never feel beautiful enough worship money, and you'll feel like you never will have enough money and worship your job and you'll feel like it's never good enough. It's never paying you enough money. It's never prestigious enough. And one of the arguments I say, for worshiping something like a god or something in the religious realm is that as my colleague, Derek Thompson argues, it's less falsifiable. If you put your faith in God, God is not gonna let you off one day.

Saadia Khan 23:44

And you also talk about this new concept of bringing your entire self to the job is in a way problematic. Now, I am a huge believer of bringing your entire self to the job. And when I say that, what I mean is being yourself whether culturally, ethnically, your work ethos, your social ethos, being unapologetic, because it takes the pressure off, you're not pretending to be somebody else, right. But what I understand from your framework is it is unnecessary to do that, because you're there to deliver services and be rewarded for it through monetary gains. Beyond that, you don't really have to, because that can create other complications. So talk to me about that.

Simone Stolzoff 24:32

Yeah, I think there's a difference between creating workplaces where people feel included and people feel comfortable being who they are, and not having to say put on a face in order to show up in a corporate environment and workplaces where there is an expectation that you have to bring your whole self to work. I think it's important to separate those two because in the latter situation where people are expected to overshare about their personal life or to, you know, stay late on a weeknight to get their work done, it can create an environment that actually exacerbates inequality and helps people feel excluded from the environment when they don't necessarily adhere to the norm, or what is the sort of the dominant culture of the workplace. And yet, I think there's been a lot of rhetoric and some progress in creating offices where more people feel like the playing field is level. And I think, you know, remote work has actually helped for this in a number of ways, especially for certain marginalized workers that didn't see themselves and their colleagues or didn't feel like they were part of the dominant culture, you know, when you work remotely, it can level the playing field to a certain extent and have people's ideas be what is first and foremost paraded around the office as opposed to their identity or how they looked or where they come from, in some ways, a question around whether or not to bring your whole self to work is a semantic definition. You know, none of us can bring our entire entire selves to work. But it's a question of finding that balance between inclusivity and making sure that people can do the functions of their job, you know, what's in the job description, and still be rewarded for that, even if they don't go out drinking on a Friday night.

Saadia Khan 26:26

So on the flip side, are we not saying that, then we are not normalizing the different human experiences and vast spectrum of humanity that we exist, whether it's cultural, ethnic, religious, sexual. What are your thoughts on that?

Simone Stolzoff 26:42

I think people should feel comfortable to be able to be their authentic self at work, there's a difference between a worker practically being able to choose what they want to share with their co-workers, and that imposition being placed on workers.

Simone Stolzoff 26:58

And so there's an example from the book, there's this professor at University of Michigan named Eric Cech. And she studies sort of the double edged sword of following your passion, and kind of the paradox of passion. And one of the examples she gave was that this hotel chain, people that work there, were forced to wear these name tags that said, Hello, my name is blank. And I'm passionate about blank. And I think that's an example of sort of bringing your whole self to work in a way that is extractive and not actually an employee's best interest. It's sort of like the passionate economy equivalent of like service with a smile, where not only do you have to do your job, but you have to, you know, wax poetic about how passionate about the job you are.

Saadia Khan 27:39

And it sounds performative to me exactly, and forced, in a way.

Simone Stolzoff 27:44

Totally. And I think, you know, at the extreme, that's sort of one of the main risks of ethos around your bring your whole self to work is, maybe someone doesn't want to maybe I don't want to share, I want to have clear boundaries between my work life and my personal life. But at the same time, as you were saying, we are more than just workers. And I think being able to acknowledge how different sides of ourselves and our demographics play into our perspective. And I think both of those things can can coexist. It can be an inclusive workplace, and not be paternalistic in the way that that culture is passed down from the top.

Saadia Khan 28:28

So Simone, I'm interested in your journey. Now, you've had a few jobs. And I assume now you're doing a good enough job. And pursuing your passions and hobbies and stuff. Talk to me, how has that journey been like? And were there any surprises along the way, even when you were following your own advice?

Simone Stolzoff 28:51

Yeah, it's an interesting place to be in right now, for a few reasons.

Simone Stolzoff 28:54

One, the book comes out tomorrow.

Saadia Khan 28:57

Oh, congratulations!

Simone Stolzoff 28:58

Thank you, I'm sort of at this place where I've written this book about the importance of separating our self worth from our output. And yet there is this like extremely materialistic quantifiable moment in my career that's about to come up layered on top of that is, you know, I just recently started working for myself. So I have had sort of a meandering career which you alluded to, I work in journalism, and I worked in design, I worked in tech, I worked in advertising for a little bit.

Simone Stolzoff 29:27

And now as I have written this book chronicling the culture of overwork in the United States, and how work centric our society is, I am working for myself and I'm finding that sometimes I'm my own worst manager. It's hard to draw the boundaries in my own work life when I am the only one responsible for what I'm producing. And so it's really a test of some of the wisdom for the book.

Simone Stolzoff 29:55

You know, I make it very clear that I am by no means an expert when it comes to getting these things, right. And I actually think that the idea that there is a right way to have a relationship with your work is flawed logic. It's more of a wobble. And there are different phases of our careers, there are different seasons of our lives. And there isn't this sort of proverbial static equilibrium of work life balance that like, once you achieve it, you just sort of float five feet off the ground, you know, it's an actuality, it's a constant question of figuring out what our relationship to work should be. And I think I wrote the book to help people reflect on it to help people put their jobs and the perspective and in the context of the rest of their life.

Saadia Khan 30:40

And also, it's fluid, right, maybe at some point in life, you can maintain that balance, but then that balance may tilt more towards you working, and you talk about being an entrepreneur, and doing your own stuff. And that's a very difficult place to navigate this work life balance, because I started the podcast, and then I started this company of content creation, and now I'm adding more podcasts. And it becomes very difficult because in my mind, I'm creating something that is so necessary, and in my mind, it is that necessary, right, and other people may not see it that way. But then for me, it's thinking about it 24 hours, and I have to be intentional not to think about it as much. And I wonder how are you being intentional in giving yourself that space and not thinking about your work and your book, and what you're putting out in the world as much,

Simone Stolzoff 31:38

The best way that I found to do so is to outsource the willpower to do things other than work, You know, I think one of the hard parts of individually imposed intentions or boundaries is that they inevitably break. So rather than just thinking, okay, I shouldn't treat work as such a big part of my identity or my sole source of meaning, the antidote to that is to find other sources of identity and meaning, you know, and when the work in your jobs at the center of your life, it doesn't just take your best time, but often your best energy too.

Simone Stolzoff 32:14

You know, and maybe this is something that you found, as you're growing your businesses, if you are just eating and breathing and sleeping your job that leaves room for a little else. And so would I advise you and advise anyone who is looking to maybe think a little bit less about their job or to diversify their identity beyond their professional lives, is to think about how you can actively invest in other identities or other sources of meaning, you know, you brought up that metaphor of a plant and how it has to be watered with our time and energy. That's true for for each identity that exists within us. And you know, doesn't have to be a religious tradition, it can be your recreational softball team, or, you know, your book club. But as you water them with your intention, they will also grow inside of you.

Saadia Khan 33:00

Now, I am Muslim, and I am a practicing Muslim. So I do focus on my faith. And then I have kids who take up a lot of my time as well. And recently I've started going on these long hikes with my husband, because that's the only time where he and I can really connect in the wilderness when he doesn't have his phone and I don't have my phone, and we are not checking it every five seconds.

Saadia Khan 33:26

I also think it's quite cultural. So the culture that I come from–a collectivist culture, community based, always prioritizes family and community over anything else—I am in a way hardwired to prioritize those things, I will always in a way prioritize my family and my bond with them over anything else. And America being hyper individualistic, it also becomes difficult for people to connect with anything else other than something that is very personal to them.

Saadia Khan 33:58

And a job in a way is more personal than other activities that people engage in. Right. So what I'm hearing is that there has to be a paradigm shift in so many ways, right? Individualistic societies versus collectivist societies, lack of religion and what that means and how people manifest it. Now, lack of religion is fine, but how people manifest that also is something and then government policies because America prides itself in being this capitalistic society which can be so problematic. There aren't as many social services or social safety nets that we talk about. Wages stagnated, no health care outside your job, no free education. So Simone, there is a lot that will have to come together for it to manifest in ways that you're hoping it to manifest right?

Simone Stolzoff 34:53

Of course, and you know, if you are holding your breath waiting for universal health care, you're gonna suffocate it I think this can be really disempowering. It's, you know, similar to any sort of big social change, like addressing the climate crisis, if we're just waiting around for top down interventions, you know, can really alienate us. And so one question that I pose to your listeners is, what is one small way that you can actively invest in your non work self?

Simone Stolzoff 35:22

You know, I don't think it has to be big, I'm reminded of this conversation I had with a psychologist, that's worked with like ambitious type A professionals. And she says, okay, you know, you should try and, like, invest in some other aspects of your life. And they say, okay, I've got it, I'm gonna sign up for an Ironman, or try and read 52 books this year, you know, and in many ways, like, try and turn their leisure into another form of work or striving.

Simone Stolzoff 35:47

And so I think it can be really small, it can be a weekly hike date with your husband, or it can be a game of tennis that you play with your best friend or trying to pick up a new musical instrument, not because you want to become a rock star, but just because it's a creative outlet that helps you get in touch with who you are when you're not working. And so that's what I urge people to think about is what is just one container, one realm of your life where you can measure your own success by something more than your ability to achieve.

Saadia Khan 36:15

That's a great point. But I do want to ask you, how do you think this manifests in gig economy where people are doing four or five jobs, they are not tied to one, which isn't always good, right. But then it also means that everything becomes a job, like they're doing things all the time, and they have to monetize in a way, and then we bring in social media, where people are monetizing social media presence. So everything is so intertwined.

Simone Stolzoff 36:40

That's a very important point. And it's important to separate the issues that are facing hourly and gig workers from some of these issues that are more kind of ethereal and existential, that are plaguing knowledge workers.

Simone Stolzoff 36:53

For perspective, the majority of workers don't work to self actualize. They don't work to be there sort of greatest reflection of their personality.

Saadia Khan 37:03

That's a privilege.

Simone Stolzoff 37:04

they work to survive. Yeah, and you know, there's a whole host of other conversations, we could be having of how to make work sack less for people that are having to work more than ever just to put food on the table. In the book, I chose to primarily focus on white collar, college educated knowledge workers, and I did it because for one, they're the workers who are most likely to look for work as their source of self actualization and identity. There's an inverse relationship between how much money people make and how many other sources of community and identity and meaning they have in their life, I think, out of necessity, you know, people who don't have as much have to be more mutually reliant, and they have to cultivate other safety nets on their own because they can't necessarily rely on a paycheck or the government to help them out. It's tricky. It's sort of like a both/and thing. And we need these interventions at the scale of policy and at the scale of company policy as well. And we need individuals to have a mindset change in order to be able to locate work as just one aspect among many that can lead to a fulfilling meaningful life.

Saadia Khan 38:17

How much do you think revival of unions would help or facilitate this process?

Simone Stolzoff 38:23

I am very for it, you know, and I think we're at a time culturally in the US where the approval rate for unions has never been higher since 1965, I believe. And I think it represents this sort of worker empowerment of understanding that workers have strength in numbers, and that managers and ownership class don't always have workers best interest in mind. You know, we're seeing this in writers in Hollywood, but also, you know, the teachers in Oakland and the nurses in New York City and new graduate students in Ann Arbor. And I think this this shift towards unionization and collective organizing represents an acknowledgment that we need protections in the form of contractual obligations.

Saadia Khan 39:11

Absolutely.

Simone Stolzoff 39:11

Not the rhetoric around, you know, doing what you love, or for something greater than yourself. You know, the difference between a workplace and a family is that in a family, the love is unconditional. The workplace the love is conditional by definition.

Saadia Khan 39:29

So Simone, are you saying no more happy hours and winter parities?

Simone Stolzoff 39:35

I don't think so unnecessarily. You know, I think work can be a source of community in people's lives. And you know, I think the data shows that people that do have friends at the workplace tend to be happier and stay at the company longer. But I think there's a difference between making those types of activities mandatory and making them something that workers can opt into. And so I don't think that we have to make work worse in order to have a better relationship to it, I just think people need to actively invest in other sides of meaning and identity.

Saadia Khan 40:07

You know, it's so interesting you say that because in America, we have introduced laws that give workers an option to be part of a union or not, right, but we don't give them an option to attend a winter party, which is so crazy.

Simone Stolzoff 40:26

I think, you know, especially what we might think of as progressive workplaces to a lot and formed in the forms of, you know, benefits and treating workers. Well, that seems to come at the expense of workers acknowledgement that they are workers that they are working in solidarity with other people working in their fields and workers across the economy. You know, one of the theory pieces that has really stuck to me is that in the United States, sort of this core mythology around the American dream, leads lots of people to believe that they're just sort of one lucky break away from being an owner themselves. And it leads to people voting in ways that are against their own best interest, because they think, okay, just what and a few lucky breaks, I'll be the boss myself. Exactly. Because the reality, which is just the numbers of at all, we can't all be owners, we can't all be bosses. And I think workers are waking up to the fact that when they band together, there is strength.

Saadia Khan 41:26

You saw, right, because in America, ownership is so sacrosanct, and a lot of rights exist with the owners, right? And you see that at the expense of employees, whether it's busting unions, or other laws that are detrimental.

Saadia Khan 41:41

And you said this in the beginning, but I do want to circle back to the impact. We've seen that after COVID, there is more work life balance, and people are opting for hybrid structures. And that's because people were not organized, but there was a critical mass who decided to do this. So imagine that critical mass being organized and rooting for the rights are being proponents of what the need in form of unions that could do wonders, right?

Simone Stolzoff 42:12

A lot of our standards around work are not always that way. You know, things like the 40 Hour Workweek, or the two day weekend, or the nine to five day they are the result of labor organizing are the result of workers banding together to demand better conditions, which is to say that they were negotiated before and that can be negotiated again.

Saadia Khan 42:34

Yeah, exactly. Simone, you are always welcome to come back and talk to us more about this. Because as I said, your book is fascinating. Thank you for sending me an advanced copy. I'm reading it, I'm enjoying it. It's very intuitive in ways as well. And I would like every single person to get a copy and talk to you about getting copies, should they get it from Amazon? Or do you have an independent bookstore that you want them to go to?

Simone Stolzoff 43:03

There's a website called bookshop.org that allows you to buy something in a similar experience to Amazon where it shows up on your doorstep. But the money goes through the individual bookstores in your neighborhood. And now you can learn more at the goodenoughjob.com That's where all the links are to different places you can get to get the book and by the time this episode airs, it'll be available everywhere books are sold.

Saadia Khan 43:26

In the end, I'm going to ask you a question that I asked all my guests.

Saadia Khan 43:30

If you were to define America in a word sentence or phrase, how would you do that?

Simone Stolzoff 43:35

I would define American as a place that believes dreams are equally accessible to everyone, but does not create the conditions for that to be true

Saadia Khan 43:47

On point. Oh my gosh, I love it. Thank you so much. This was so good. Thank you for coming.

Simone Stolzoff 43:53

It's great being here Saadia.

Saadia Khan 44:02

Renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel once said, don't give the best of you to strangers, and bring the leftovers home. Instead, keep some for those who love you, unquote.

Saadia Khan 44:16

I truly think that as Americans, we have lost the ability to differentiate between our personal life and our work. Our work has taken over our lives. And to be honest, I don't know how to separate the two. I don't do it myself either. Which is sad. Although I do consider my work as my calling and my passion. I know there is so much room for other stuff in my life, which I have set aside. But how do you feel about this? Do you think we should distinguish between our personal lives and our work? Is it even worth it? And do you think it will have to be a critical mass of people For it to be successful rather than one person taking a step in the right direction. Write to me with your thoughts with your feedback on this very special interesting episode.

Saadia Khan 45:11

You can always reach me at saadia@immigrantly pod.com. This episode was written by Rainer Harris and produced by me. The editorial review was done by Shei Yu. Our incredible editor is Haziq Ahmed Farid and the music for Immigrantly is done by Simon Hutchinson. Until next time, take care and work less.