[Ep. 383] Why You Don’t Have to Love Your Job with Simone Stolzoff

Jessica 

Welcome Simone to the more money Podcast. I’m thrilled to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Simone 

It’s a pleasure to be here.

Jessica 

So I’ve mentioned to you several times. I’m a huge fan of your book, I learned about it by listening to I think, possibly the happiness lab or another podcast that you were on. And I’m like, Oh, this, this is a book for me. And so I pre ordered it, read it and like yeah, this was amazing. And I’ve been you can’t I don’t even know how many people have recommended it to so far because I feel like this is a really important book. And I haven’t seen anything else like it. It’s called the good enough job reclaiming life from work I on the show we you know, obviously talk about money, personal finance, how to kind of elevate your situation and just how to navigate work life. But what often gets lost in the shuffle is our identities and our wishes and our values and our dreams. Because you just get just get lost in trying to achieve your goals and things like that. And I was just having. I have a group of women. We’ve been in a book club for over 10 years now. And so I’ve seen a lot of ups and downs in a lot of their careers. And a lot of them have kind of come to a point in their lives for the realizing I don’t think I’m going to find my passion or I don’t think I think it’s maybe okay and it shouldn’t be judged. I shouldn’t be judged for working a job that’s fine, but it’s not like the love of my life, and then just enjoying the rest of my life. But we’re often kind of I think judged for oh, you’re not doing the cool job that maybe you don’t have maybe not a cool person but Believe me, I’ve met a lot of people who have cool jobs, and they also hate them.

Simone 

So yeah, I think it’s, you know, a reflection of our modern era where there’s been a decline of a lot of other sources of meaning and identity in people’s lives, things like organized religion, or neighborhood and community groups. And so you pair that with the expectation that everyone should have a dream job, or if you haven’t found work that you love, that you should keep searching. And it creates these really high stakes, it creates high expectations that often can’t be delivered upon, you know, our jobs are not necessarily designed to be our sources of self actualization and our primary communities. And so you get the message on one hand of you know, that we works have always do it to live on the walls. And you know, people say, you know, find your dream job, follow your passion. And then people don’t have as many other interests or passions or identities that they’ve invested in. And as many people found out during the pandemic, it can eventually hang you out to dry.

Jessica 

I mean, it’s honestly feel like divine intervention, finding your book, because this year in particular, I’ve been on kind of a personal journey of trying to disconnect my work from my personal identity, anything a lot, a lot of it was just reflecting on who I was during the pandemic, and stuff like that. But I realized, if someone asked me, What are your hobbies, and like, I don’t have any, I don’t really do much besides the work that I do, which I love. But it’s all I have to talk about. And like, I feel like there should be there should be more to that. And so I’ve, you know, made it a priority, being more social, having a better social life and doing activities that aren’t about being productive, or how you can turn your side hustle into, you know, or you’re passionate to his side hustle. Why can’t you just have fun? So I think this is a really important. I’m curious, though, what inspired you to write the book? What was it just that you were talking to a lot of people, and you’re like, there’s, there’s something here that no one’s really talking about?

Simone 

there’s sort of two ways. And one is I’m a journalist by background, and I’ve been on the labor beat for the majority of my career. So I places like the Atlantic and quartz and wired writing about our relationship to work. And the second is more personal so and about five years ago, or so I was working in a magazine job in New York, and a recruiter reached out to me about a job in the design industry, which I didn’t really know much about it was for this company called IDEO that I’d heard of, and sort of that was like a potentially cool place to work. And, you know, I was flattered that the recruiter reached out, I took the call. And I ended up sort of passively going through this interview process. And then I found myself at this crossroads, I got the job. And I had to decide between whether I wanted to stay working as a journalist, I wanted to leave to join this design firm. And you know, maybe some of the listeners have been at a similar sort of crossroads in their own career. To a certain extent, it’s like, you know, woe is me the agony of having to decide between two attractive job paths. But on the other hand, it didn’t feel like I was choosing between two jobs. So as much as it felt like I was choosing between two versions of me, you know, there was the Simona, the journalist and Simoni, the designer. And either path that I took felt like it was like turning off part of who I was. And so the book is really an investigation to how we got here, I knew I wasn’t the only one who was conflating my job with my identity. And so the books are trying to do two things. One is investigate how work has come to be so central to particularly Americans, but also by extension Canadians lives. And the second is an argument about the value of diversifying our identities, you know, so for financial podcasts like this one, you know, much as an investor benefits from diversifying the sources of stocks in their portfolio, we to benefit from diversifying the sources of meaning and fulfillment and identity in our lives. Absolutely.

Jessica 

I know one thing that I feel is probably changed over time, or maybe not, I can’t remember what you wrote in the book. But why is it that especially now it seems like we are trying to get everything that we need out of our job, or, you know, our social interaction, personal satisfaction, and I think part of it too, is there’s all these companies and you talk about, like the Googles, the Apples, the startups of the world that are like, oh, please stay longer, and we’ll feed you and we’ll we have events and all these things. And I remember there was a time I was interviewing for some startups, and they had all these things, these attractive things. I remember one I stayed at just for a week, because it was I realized quickly is this going to be a terrible life and terrible job, but they’re like, Oh, we’ve got beer Fridays, and we’ve got games and it’s really fun. And then I did the week of the work and I’m like, I’m excited for beer Friday. That’s So far, and literally just people went to the fridge, grabbed a beer and went back to their desk and worked on like, oh my god, this is not what they know what I signed up for. I was hoping this could fit because I was I was new to Toronto, because I just moved to Vancouver. I was hoping it could fill that void of a social life. Oh, this is how we get to know, you know, make friends and didn’t do that. Why do you feel like we have, instead of just having a job and then go home and have our lives, we want the job to be everything?

Simone 

I think there’s a few different ways to answer it. On one hand, the idea of conflating our identities with our jobs is nothing new, you know, if your last name is Miller, or Baker, you might think that this is, you know, always existed, the Protestant work ethic and capitalism are sort of the two strands of entwine to form America’s foundation, you know, but I do think there are a few aspects in the last 40 or 50 years that have made jobs and the importance that we place on them particularly central to our lives. One is the ways, especially in America, where the consequences of losing work have become so dire, if you, for example, are tying your health care to your employment status, you’re tying your abilities to in this country, if you’re an immigrant to your employment status, then you look at things like stagnant wages, you know, people have had to work more just buy the same loaf of bread. And so there’s this kind of level of precarity, that undergirds the entire economy, where people think that if they aren’t somehow getting ahead, they’re somehow fallen behind. But the argument that I really focus on in the book is it’s cultural, it’s this sort of subjective value that so many of us place on our jobs. And part of that is a reflection of the decline of some of these other institutions, if you don’t have a church, or you don’t have a social group in your community to rely upon the need for, you know, belonging, and community and purpose remain, and many people have been transferring on to the place where they spend the majority of their time, which is the office. And you know, there’s this sort of Silicon Valley ethos of the cushy, office perks, and all inclusive campus that have encouraged people to center so much of their lives around their work. But there are a few risks here. One is pretty straightforward. Your job might not always be there, you know, if your job is your primary source of identity, or your go to gym and dinner spot, and you lose your job, you know, to a furlough to a layoff, or your job materially changes. Because there’s a global pandemic, you can be left asking what’s left, then there’s the expectations argument that I talked about a little bit before, we’re always expecting our jobs to be perfect for always expecting our jobs to be a dream, it can create a lot of room for disappointment and for suffering. If you think that, you know, all your friends have these dream jobs, but you haven’t quite found yours yet. The third is the the main argument about the book, which is, if we are giving all of our best time and all of our best energy to our jobs, it can neglect other parts of who we are. So certainly we are all more than just workers, we are neighbors, and we are friends, and we are citizens. And we are, you know, athletes, travelers, artists, what have you. But if we are only investing in our professional lives, those other identities can wither. You know, in order to be a good friend, you need to show up as a friend and really invest in your relationships in order to consider yourself you know, amateur guitar player, you have to make time in your weeks to practice the guitar, if you want to be invested in your neighborhood, you have to be showing up as as a neighbor and building relationships investing in causes that you care about. And yet so many of us bring the best of ourselves to work and bring the leftovers home, which is reference to Astra per hour, she has this great argument about how similar to our romantic partners were expecting our jobs to deliver all of these different roles in our lives. And they’re not necessarily set up to do so.

Jessica 

Yeah, and I know one thing that you talked about in the book and I I’ve heard this in many of the jobs that I’ve had in the past is, you know, these these employers want you to kind of rely on them and loyalty and everything and they use the term you know, we’re a family. I heard that in so many different jobs. But what at one point, you’re just like, oh, that’s, you know, you feel really included. You get that sense of community that we’re really lacking in this world. And oh, loneliness is an epidemic right now. And so it feels some of those needs are like, Oh, this is great. You know, it just moved to the city. And now I have this family. That’s my work life and blah, blah, blah. And then you realize that you start seeing the cracks and you realize this job is not you know, there’s a lot of things that I don’t like part of it and then it’s hard to leave. It’s hard to leave a job where there is this kind of there’s nothing outside of your job and that’s probably why I stayed at lots of jobs longer than I should have because I didn’t know how to exit especially when we had this friends and family kind of mentality. Why do you think it’s so important to make sure like and is it even possible when this culture of like, Oh, we’re, you know, loyalty, we’re a family? How is it possible to kind of disconnect yourself? Because when I have seen employees try to do that to be like, No, I’m leaving right at five, instead of staying staying for the social hour, or, you know, whatever, there is some sort of social engagement engagement that’s created in the workplace, they never come, they look like they’re not a participator. They’re not really you know, and it can actually hurt their work, they may not be assigned certain things, or the vibe is just like, oh, yeah, they’re just not a team player. Is it possible to have that boundary set?

Simone 

And I think, ultimately, it makes sense why some employers, either consciously or unconsciously try to push the narrative that we are like a family here, you know, the implied assumption is that we look out for each other, we care about each other as humans, in addition to being workers. And you know, that’s all well and good. But the problem is that families and workplaces have fundamentally different goals. You know, for one thing, most families I know, are pretty dysfunctional, I don’t know if that’s the thing that we want to aspire to. But you know, the idea with family is that the love is unconditional, you know, that’s what makes things a family. But with employment, you know, not well, employment contract is by definition, conditional. And so there’s this great paper that I referenced in the book that has a great name to it, called friends without benefits. And it’s sort of about the dark side of these familial bonds in the workplace. And what the researchers found is that in companies that tend to have these kind of familial very social cultures, there are definitely certain benefits. You know, people tend to be happier at work when they have a best friend, for example, and they feel psychologically safe, like they can trust and share their opinions openly with their co workers. But there are also downsides for one, employees are less likely to surface wrongdoing, because it feels like if you see something that’s going poorly, and you bring it up, but somehow, you know, betraying your family, and family like cultures, they tend to be less transparent, because information tends to travel through social channels, and through relationships with people who you know, rather than through open channels, where everyone can see people tend to trust the opinions of their friends, rather than more rigorous business analysis. And so there’s sort of like the business case for not over investing and the relationships at work and keeping some level of professional kind of semblance of who you are just in a work context. I think there’s also the personal argument, which is, if you are staying late, and having dinner at the office every night, that is an opportunity that you’re missing, to have dinner with your family, or your friends, or your people in your local community. And so I think we are seeing sort of a shift away from these more paternalistic office cultures where the idea is that you come here, and you can do your laundry and your dry cleaning and stay to go to the gym, and it’s your go to buy. And, you know, that isn’t to say, there’s anything wrong with free food or having a place to exercise. But the idea for work is that it should be a means to an end, you know, that we should show up and do good work, at the end of the day, we should be able to go home. And sometimes when these lines between our work lives and our personal lives blur, that can be harder to do.

Jessica 

Yeah, and I mean, one thing that I experienced, especially my last corporate job, before I became self employed, I was there for almost three years. And I really, I think over invested myself that was you know, I had all my friends there. And you know, I spent way too much time there, I did a lot of overtime. That was the culture, it was a law firm, to be fair, very toxic. And you know, there was a lot of social activities, all these things. And when I decided I need to leave, this just isn’t a healthy environment, I’m not getting what I want, I wanted to get a promotion, it wasn’t working out. And then eventually, you know, handed in my notice, it was even interesting. I mean, I didn’t hand in two months notice, which is way too long, if we’re not recommend, but during that time, I thought a lot of my friends would, you know, stay loyal to me and we’d continue those friendships. And I can already see them kind of retreat and kind of make what make room for whoever my replacement was. And then once I did leave and try to keep up some of those relationships. It was just very hard to do because we didn’t actually have a ton in common because I no longer work there. So we could no longer talk about work. There was only maybe one person that I still now keep in touch with and so it’s it was very difficult, but I wish looking back I did make more of an effort to build a life outside of work. But it’s sometimes when you’re in an environment where you are working, you know, more than eight hours a day, you’re there. And then you’re getting the emails, when you’re at home or on the weekends, which is a whole other thing. It’s hard to make that pivot. But you know, what would your suggestions be if someone is realizing, oh, my gosh, I don’t want to be it’s kind of like the same thing of, you know, when someone gets into a new relationship, and they just get super invested, and then they start, you know, ignoring their friends, because they’re just like, so in love and excited about this new relationship. And then maybe the relationship goes sour, they break up and they realize, Oh, where’d my friends go? I don’t, you know, you don’t want to be in that position. What can people do to make sure that they are still doing a good job, they’re still participating. But they’re not putting themselves in a position where it’ll be difficult to leave. Or when they leave, then, gosh, there’s no one around, I have to start from scratch building a new friend group and a new social life.

Simone 

Yeah, I think there are two things that come to mind. One is that modern work, especially modern knowledge, work is incredibly leaky, it can very easily fill all of the unoccupied space in our days, if we allow it to, you know, carry around offices in our pockets. And I think the first step is to carve out space in your days and your weeks in your in your life, where working is not an option. You know, one of the benefits of going on a walk with your best friend or going to a yoga class is that they provide the structural barriers that prevent you from multitasking. And they keep you the President in a moment where you’re not sort of like a shark with one eye open on your email. The second is, it might sound simplistic, but if we want to cultivate identities, beyond the professional identities in our lives, we have to do things other than work, you know, identities are sort of like plants, they need water and intention in order to grow. And so you know, it’s not very actionable advice to say, like care less about your job. But the other side of the coin is you can care more about other things, you know, as you said, try to do things in your life that remind yourself that you exist on this planet to do more than just produce economic value. And so whether it is you know, investing in your relationships, or learning a new instrument, or some form of exercise or getting involved in a cause that you care about, I think it’s really important to have these containers where there’s a different value system beyond the value system of your company or the market. Obviously, the office presents one sort of container that has one system of value, where everything is quantified, and you can kind of see what matters in that environment. But finding another environment that has a different source of values where maybe people can care less about what you do for work, I think is really important. So for example, I love to play pickup basketball. I think one of the great things about playing pickup basketball is no one cares how many books have sold that week, or words I’ve written, they care that I show up on time and that I’m a good passer and that I box out when I rebound, you know, these other sorts of ways to demonstrate your value in the community. And then my identity is reinforced by these people that see me as a teammate first as opposed to a marketer or a writer or someone that has to deliver this deliverable before.

Jessica 

And I feel like that’s something especially if you were someone like me, who definitely got a little too invested in the hustle to culture and grind and shine and and doing all that because you want to, you know, see how you can reach your potential. It’s, you don’t want to honestly be like me, where you’re in your mid 30s. And you’re like, oh, my gosh, I sure I worked hard, and I achieved a lot of things. But then what’s the kind of lose the point of it, you lost the plot a little bit. And so it’s really important to make, yeah, setting those intentions and doing hobbies and trying something new a priority because I think a lot of us are just getting into a routine and run autopilot. I’m curious, you mentioned at the end of your book, because you were working full time while you wrote this book, which I think is commendable because I don’t I mean, I work for myself and that’s that’s one thing, but I can kind of say no to work you were working full time. Then at the end the book you mentioned that you left that job I’m curious as any of your perspectives on anything changed or while you were writing the book, did it kind of make you think hmm, what am I doing maybe I should maybe try something new.

Simone 

Totally. You know, I think there’s a great irony that I was writing a book about right sizing workplaces in our life on the side of a full time job and I thought that when I left work now like you I’m self employed, i Everything would be fixed in my life. I thought my tendencies to overwork or to check my emails on the weekend was a reflection of the culture. So the company that I worked for the manager that I have. And then I started working for myself and I realized I was the worst manager that I’ve ever had, like I was the problem, it was my own sort of drive to tie my self worth to my productivity. That kept me working all the time. I think one of the the other sides of the coin of what we’ve been talking about is that the research shows that people who have what they call cultivated greater self complexity, who have invested in other sides that themselves tend to be fuller versions of themselves, you know, in terms of their personal lives, but they also tend to be better workers as well. You know, I think, especially when we are in a knowledge economy, and the deliverable of what you’re making will be something like a podcast or strategy document or a headline for a marketing campaign, our brains need space in order to synthesize all the inputs that are coming in, in order to rest and recharge, we all know this, on a personal level, if you’re on our alive end of a 12 hour day, you’re not going to be firing at all cylinders. And so the research shows that people who have greater self complexity tend to be more resilient in the face of adversity. You know, if you’re rising and falling, based on your professional accomplishments, and your boss says something disparaging, it can very easily spill into all other aspects of your life. Unless you’ve cultivated other sources of meaning. It people tend to be more creative and innovative if they have other hobbies or interests outside of work or sourcing other ideas. And so I think a lot of these ways in which we measure what it means to be successful at work, like the number of hours that you spend in your office chair are holdovers from a more industrial age. And as we move into a knowledge economy, we’re seeing this through the four day workweek experiments, people notice on an individual level, there isn’t always a direct relationship between the number of hours you put in, and the quality of the work that comes out. And so I’m encouraged by this kind of cultural shift that we’ve seen over the course of the pandemic, it’s not as simple as you know, follow your passion or don’t follow your passion or care about your job or don’t care about your job. The question is about, you know, sustainability and balance and how you can design a life that your career supports, as opposed to the other way around.

Jessica 

Have you found now that I guess it’s been some time since you left your job and the books been out? You’ve been a better manager on yourself? Have you found more of a balance? I mean, for me, it took me years to figure that like, it took me years to allow myself to take weekends off, because I was just so in the routine of Work, Work work. And also when I was working full time, at my last job, I also was doing this type of thing with the podcasts and stuff on top of it during all my free time. And so I didn’t have free time. And then when I then had free time, I filled it up with work, because I didn’t know what else to do. Are you have you found a solution? Are you in better balancing everything now?

Simone 

Yeah, you know, it can be kind of a chicken and egg problem, right? It’s like you work all the time. So you don’t know what to do when you’re not working. And you don’t know what to do what you’re not working. And so you work similar. Yeah. And I have found better balance, I think part of it comes back to sort of structural boundaries and barriers of having something at the end of the workday to signify that the day is done. And, you know, I have this mentor named Casper, Kyle, who sends out this tweet on Friday nights that I really appreciate. And he says, the work is not done. But it is time to stop, you know, having that type mentality of like, okay, there will always potentially be more to do. But this is time to stop for today. And these are the reasons why I’m stopping so I can be able to invest in myself and other ways. I think another thing that’s helped me is trying to find community, especially being self employed, finding other people that have similar struggles and being able to find solidarity. And I think, you know, one of the biggest things that you lose when you start working for yourself or co workers. And so I think one is co workers and the other is space. And so one thing that’s really helped me is having dedicated places where I work and places where I don’t work. And so I’ve been part of a co working space community, which has been very valuable, having like a very clear desk setup, where all I do there is work and having some of those spatial boundaries, you know, they can often trickle down into being temporal boundaries and spiritual boundaries as well. But I think it’s hard. And I think it’s particularly hard in an office environment to where there’s expectation of the company that you work certain hours, or if the CEO is sending emails at 10 o’clock, what’s to stop you from also doing the same? And so I think one of the big things that I talked about in the book is that a lot of onus is often put on individuals to create boundaries to practice self care to find work life balance on their own, when in actuality the answer tissues that are better equipped to give us some of the structural protections are the employers are the government, you know what ways that you can have firm guardrails that keep people from overwork, whether it’s norms around communication, or paid time off, or ways of making the consequences of losing your work less dire. Often we tend to individualize whether, in fact structural issues and issues that will require systemic response.

Jessica 

I think it’s yes, it’s difficult a finding a workplace that understands everything that we’ve been talking about understands that the benefits of having your workers like work their regular hours and leave and have a life outside and, you know, don’t look at your email, your work email on weekends, I haven’t found a workplace that progressive yet, but hopefully, they’re, they’re becoming more, you know, as more millennials and Gen Z’s take up some of those leadership roles will hopefully we’ll see some of those things, but I think at this moment, yeah, the only way to, to kind of have that structure is for you to create that structure for yourself and put those boundaries on yourself. It’s different. I feel like it’s, it’s easy to say, probably difficult to do, depending on what kind of work environment you’re in. So would you say, you know, you realize you’re in a work environment, that’s just not letting you have any boundaries? They, you know, keep on encroaching on them? Would it make sense to look elsewhere?

Simone 

I think that depends on the person, you know, it’s hard to give one size fits all prescriptive advice, I think there’s definitely things that you can do within a job environment, if it’s intangible things like collectively organizing or finding solidarity with other co workers that might be experiencing similar things. So it doesn’t feel like the onus is just on you to make the change you wish to see, I think this is particularly relevant to passion professions or professions, where people are in more of a service mentality, there’s this concept in the book that I talk about called vocational, ah, which is that in certain lines of work, particularly creative, or are mission driven lines of work, there tends to be this sort of righteousness of the industry or of the work itself, you know, if you’re an educator, or if you’re a nurse, for example, people think, oh, you know, you’re you’re working in education, no one does this for the money, you know, you put the kids first or, Oh, you work as a nurse. Yeah, you’re, you know, an essential worker, but we’re not gonna compensate you in line with the severity of the work that you’re doing, because you’re doing it for the healthcare system, or to be a healer. And I think that mentality can be really dangerous, I think it can cover up a lot of malpractice or the injustice that exists in these fields. And make people think that if there are problems with, you know, the way that they’re treated, or the amount of overwork that is, in their weeks, or their days, or their months, at it somehow just the result of this individual choice, as opposed to this structural problem. And I think one of the things that it’s encouraging is we’re seeing people start to push back, you know, there’s the writers and actors in Hollywood, there’s the auto workers in Detroit and in Michigan, and people are seeing that there is power and strength in numbers. And a lot of times these issues that we have with the workplace are not just on you, there are things that people are experiencing across the board. And so there’s one thing that advocate and then to the book, which is for a more transactional mentality more transactional relationship to work, which might sound crass, because we’ve been told that jobs are meant to be callings and passions and locations. But I think, you know, we’ve seen that employers already treat work transactionally they hire employees, when they add value, they fire employees when they don’t. And there is something to gain from employees having a similar approach of thinking about, Okay, what am I giving to this job? What am I getting in return? You know, a job is first and foremost, an economic contract, it can certainly be a lot more than that. But if the contract if the exchange is not working for you, if you’re giving more than you’re able to get, or you’re not getting enough to support the life that you want to lead, then I think it might make sense to move on.

Jessica 

Or if you’re, you know, young, you’re you’re at the stage where maybe you’re thinking of college or you’re in college. I mean, that’s that’s one that was one big shock, where I didn’t really consider what I would, what lifestyle, I’d have to leave, I’d have to give up. I went to film school and so I thought I was gonna be a famous filmmaker. And then I finished university and then I realized the reality of working in the industry. I’m like, There’s no way I know, I don’t want to, you know, especially starting at the bottom, not earning a lot working 16 hour days. I’m like, this doesn’t sound like anything. So it’s not what I signed up for. And then on the other side of it like Well, well, what else do I want to do? I wanted to do something that was going to make change the We’re also for movies, I wanted to make some, you know, documentaries and some art films that would change the world. The other side of it was like, well, maybe I can help people work for a nonprofit. And then again, you look at all these charities and nonprofits that are doing amazing work, and they pay their workers, not enough to live on. And so it’s it’s, it’s difficult, I guess, making that choice. And also going counter to everything we’ve learned about like, we’re we asked kids, when they’re really young, what do you want to do when you grow up as if that is going to be what identity Do you want to have? Right? It’s not about what job do you want to have. So you can make money. And then you can do your hobbies. It’s always just like, what kind of person do you want to be? And we always want to do something aspirational, or, you know, life changing are important. So it’s difficult to try to shift that idea and maybe make a different choice, maybe, you know, do a job that you didn’t think that you would do that maybe isn’t your passion, and then try to do your passion outside of that. I think yeah, often we don’t feel like there is a room for us to do a passion outside of our nine to five or work hours. But I think that’s kind of probably the best way to go about it. Right?

Simone 

Yeah. And I think one of the things that I like about the term they’re good enough job is that it’s subjective, you know, you get to choose what good enough means to you, maybe one person is good enough job is a job that pays a certain amount of money, someone else, the job that’s in a certain industry, or has a certain job title. And maybe for someone else, it’s a job that gets off at a certain hour, so they can pick up their kids from school or go and pursue cycling, which is the real passionate passion outside of work. But I think the importance is recognizing, when you have a job that is good enough, as opposed to thinking about this dream, or this perfect job that’s out there. When we’re able to recognize what good enough means to us, we can start to be the people that we want to be and not just think that we are what we do.

Jessica 

And getting rid of that. What’s that saying that if you love what you do, you don’t work a day in your life. It’s like that is a bunch of crap. You have a job, a job, a job is a job no matter what I was just talking to my husband the other day, and we both have no jobs. We’re both self employed. And so we are doing what we love. But there are so many times where my gosh, I don’t want to do that. But I have to because it’s a job. It is not. Yeah, this isn’t a fantasy, this isn’t just having fun all the time, it’s there’s always going to be work, there’s always going to be things that you don’t like to do. And so reframing and being okay with the idea that it’s okay, if you don’t absolutely love what you do, you can still find things that you like, yeah, really that I mean, the thing that really drew me to your book was really trying to disconnect you as a person to you as a worker, because I feel like we’ve lost sight of what those two things mean. Like, we really don’t pay attention to who we are. Because no one no one asked me what my hobbies are. But when I’m if I got an opening, I’ll tell them. Now tell them. I’m curious with that. What are some of the things that you’ve been able to open up space in your life to do that have really brought you happiness and value?

Simone 

I mean, I feel very lucky that I’ve found a career in journalism and writing that does align with a lot of my interests. But I have also made a conscious effort to try and make sure that these aren’t my only interests. And these aren’t the only ways I’m spending my time. So one recent one is that my wife and I have been learning how to Salsa dance is fun, because I’m very, very bad at it. And it’s like refreshing to be in this sort of mentality of, of not trying to become an expert or not trying to monetize this in any way. It’s just a form of play, which I think is like a really nice antidote to overwork, or workers MSA define it in the book, because it’s not indexed on any sort of like future potential or trying to get a certain outcome. It’s just about the present moment and enjoying ourselves while we do it. So I Yeah, it’s something that maybe some of the listeners can try whatever form of play is most relevant to you, you know, there’s jamming. If you’re a musician, there’s crafting, if you’re an artist, you know, I think there’s different forms of activities that you can partake in for the intrinsic pleasure and doing them not because they help you get a certain outcome. And I think it’s a good reminder, even if you’re, say, trying to learn a foreign language for 10 minutes a day, that we exist on this earth to do more than just produce economic value.

Jessica 

And yeah, I love that part of your book, where you talk about how, and I think that this must be what because when we associate play we associate with being childish or being a child. And as an adult, it’s like, well, we don’t play anymore. And for years, I wouldn’t allow myself to like play video games and stuff, because I thought, like, no, that’s gonna distract me from the work that I need to do because I’m a serious adult. But I mean, bleh is fun. And it’s like we need to have more fun and we need to be less serious and we need to actually enjoy ourselves and yeah, really reintroduced happiness and joy way, for the sake of it. So I think that’s a really Yeah, lovely message. And your book, again, is just so incredible. I think everyone should grab a copy because there’s so many people I know that listen to my podcast that listen to it. So they could learn how to be better at their money so they can quit their jobs that they hate. So this is a great book to kind of add to the other component of once you’ve got that good, you know, f off fund or the emergency fund that’ll allow you to maybe leave a not so great workplace or to, you know, retrain and go back to school and figure out what you want to do next. This is a great book to also make you think about let’s let’s not forget that work isn’t the only thing. So Monica, it was such a pleasure having you on? Where can people find more about you online and grab a copy of your book?

Simone 

Yeah, I think the best place is just the good enough job.com You can find me on social I also run a little book club for articles. That’s called the article Book Club, which is, yeah, Article book club.substack.com. And yeah, thanks so much for having me on. Jessica. I appreciate you taking an interest in my work.