THE END OF #CAREERGOALS?

Why do we work anyway?

On this month's list, we have five links sparking conversations to consider the job market, the current wave of resignations, and the all-encompassing sense of anxiety and burnout that seems to be omnipresent.

” For decades, job productivity has been increasing while real wages haven’t.”

It might seem that this great resignation is all about market forces BUT we cannot talk about this movement without considering its nuances - different sectors show very different levels of job offers x resignations- and analyzing the emotional relationship and expectations we have with the idea of WORK.

Here’s our top list for understanding this moment:

1. The article that started it all asks: is the age of ambition over?

I realised that people can be a hostage to the ambitions they had as a younger person. I think this happens all the time, that what looks like a dream in your twenties might be a nightmare later in life.

2. ?This INSIGHTFUL podcast may not seem like it will discuss how we see work – as it initially focuses on office furniture – but trust me on this and give it a go. Here's a sneak peek:

“ The office is at this inflection point. And that’s why, it makes sense that office designers are promising a lot right now, including an office of the future that’s more comfortable, more pleasant, and more tailored to the needs of workers. And this is not the first time that designers have tried to fix the existential malaise of office workers with?furniture. In fact, back in the 1960s, we had a lot of the same problems.

3. ?Why are small tasks so hard to complete?

Why didn't our education result in jobs that are super cool and that we love?

Why is adulting a verb??

More on that and BURNOUT on this great pre-pandemic article by Anne Helen Petersen.

To describe millennial burnout accurately is to acknowledge the multiplicity of our lived reality. (…) We’re deeply in debt, working more hours and more jobs for less pay and less security, struggling to achieve the same standards of living as our parents, operating in psychological and physical precariousness, all while being told that if we just work harder, meritocracy will prevail, and we’ll begin thriving.

4. Again: is the age of ambition over??

The broader world is getting darker — climate change, crumbling democracy. It feels impossible to change it. But work? Work could change. An idealistic generation has set about demanding a utopian world, on a local scale, in their own little Busytowns. More diversity, more attention to structural racism, better hours, better boundaries, better leave policies, better bosses.

4. Burnout x Job Security – something that I consider on my work with I LIKE NETWORKING, so I really enjoyed this interview with Daniel Peters.

If we can charge 1,000 pounds for a coat or a dress, then we can very much offer somebody a London Living Wage to help our businesses to succeed. We talk a lot about burnout in general, but somebody who is an intern has to go and take a second paid job in order to survive — that’s where there’s a big problem.

People who come from diverse communities, in particular, might often have to pay a substantial amount of money to help their family to survive. When we don’t take these things into consideration, we are putting up more barriers for people from those communities, not allowing them to even consider an internship. Just covering transport and lunch is a token gesture: These young people have bills to pay, they might need to buy food to put into the fridge for their working-class family.

5. More on the woes affecting work in the Creative Industries via Otegha Uwagba for Eleanor Halls’s newsletter PassTheAux

I think the pressure to always have a big project to announce, to be constantly churning out work. Seeing your peers and contemporaries get shiny new book deals, announce this amazing accolade, or they've made the Sunday Times bestseller list.