Letting Go of Work’s Grip on Your Life

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In our always-on world, work has leaked into every corner of our lives - the morning coffee line, kids’ soccer games, the final minutes before going to sleep. Being busy at work has become a sort of badge of honor, and our personal lives have fallen to the wayside.

In this episode of the What’s Next! Podcast, Simone Stolzoff and I explored why it’s so important to have an identity outside of work and how to confront the common fear that seeking balance will somehow make us appear lazy or less committed to our jobs.

Here are a few of my favorite takeaways from my conversation with Simone:

How can people categorize work as one of the elements among many that contribute to their life versus it being the only thing that contributes to their life?

I think there are two steps.

The first is to carve out space in your days and weeks where working is not an option. Work is incredibly leaky. If you were working on a Model-T on the assembly line, you couldn’t necessarily take that back to your living room and continue to work. But now we carry around offices in our pockets. It might sound simplistic, but if you want to derive meaning in your life from things other than work, you have to do things other than work, but it starts with your ability to be present in other facets of your life.

The second step is choosing how you want to fill that space. If we want to derive meaning or identity or community, it requires time and energy. Maybe it’s just connecting with an interest or hobby, like learning an instrument or learning a new language, not to master it or to monetize it, but just to connect to the inherent joy in doing those types of activities.

If we want to diversify our identities, we have to make sure that we are wiring these different identities with our time and our attention.

So many people struggle to step away from work because they fear they’ll miss out or that it simply won’t happen without them. Do you have any advice for confronting this?

In an age of increased automation, it becomes that much more important that we're sourcing inspiration and finding ways to cultivate interests and hobbies outside of work. The research backs this up. It shows that people with greater self-complexity, who have cultivated different sides of themselves, tend to be more resilient in the face of adversity. If you're rising and falling based on your professional accomplishments alone, and your boss says something disparaging, you have a bad day at work. It can very easily spill over into all the other facets of your life.

I foresee that in the future, companies might start to compete with each other to be perceived as the most “life-balanced” in the same way that they might compete today to be seen as the most mission-driven.

Can you share more about the powerful statement in your book that work won’t love you back?

I first want to give credit to Sarah Jaffe, who is one of the OG labor journalists who wrote a book titled Work Won’t Love You Back.

To me, it’s a reminder to be clear-headed about the idea that a job is a business relationship. It’s an economic contract. Businesses have material goals and unfortunately, their loyalty to their bottom line and their investors will almost always trump their loyalty to their people.

You should care about your job and find work that is important and meaningful. But make sure that it's not the only aspect of your life that you're investing in because it might not always be there.

I hope you enjoyed this month’s Think Forward Newsletter. You can also follow me on:

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Mahalo,

Tiffani

If you don’t know Simone, he started his career as an independent journalist and consultant. He was formerly the design lead at the global innovation firm IDEO. He regularly works with leaders—from the Surgeon General of the United States to the Chief Talent Officer at Google—on how to make the workplace more human-centered. Simone also has a new book out called, The Good Enough Job.