Our unhealthy obsession with work – and how to overcome it

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This week, senior writer Lauren Goode interviews author Simone Stolzoff , who argues that the US is in thrall to “workism”—the dangerous illusion that your job is the only source of self-worth. Do you agree? Have your say in the comments.?

Tech layoffs reveal an unhealthy obsession with work

It’s so nice that everything’s back to normal at the office now, isn’t it? If “normal” means mass layoffs, empty office buildings, confusing return-to-office policies, AI panic, and the whiplash-y feeling that just when employees were starting to redraw some boundaries between work and home, an economic downturn has forced society to fret even more about work. Managers are channeling this too by emphasizing “efficiency”—at least if they’re not among the many managers Mark Zuckerberg has laid off in his quest for, well, efficiency.

In this sense, Simone Stolzoff’s new book couldn’t be better-timed. The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work posits that we—and Americans, especially—have fetishized work to the point that we’ve lost our identities to it. “For white-collar professionals, jobs have become akin to a religious identity: In addition to a paycheck, they provide meaning, community, and a sense of purpose,” says Stolzoff, a designer who has worked at IDEO and written for The Atlantic, Quartz, and WIRED.

The book kicks off with a parable about an MBA type urging a fisherman to scale his business into a global operation. The fisherman replies that he already has what the MBA is promising he could achieve in the long term: enough success to feed himself and his family, as well as plenty of time for leisure. The MBA is, of course, befuddled. It’s a tiny but meaningful story that goes down as easy as an oyster; the book makes a tasty meal of snackable tales and anecdotes.

The Good Enough Job, which I’ve been reading this week, also includes reporting on the decline of organized religion, the rise of always-online work culture, and our willingness to use work as a means of self-actualization. It all adds up to a stark portrait of a society truly obsessed with work. That’s risky, Stolzoff says, especially in light of the recent layoffs in the tech sector. I talked with him about our relationship to work and whether it’s possible to achieve any kind of work-life equilibrium in the modern era.?

Read the full interview here.

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Until next time

WIRED has launched a new podcast, and it is cohosted by senior writer Lauren Goode, alongside our global editorial director Gideon Lichfield . It's called Have a Nice Future, and our first episode features an interview with San Francisco mayor London Breed on the future of cities.?Listen here.

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