Quiet Quitting: Redefining Work Boundaries in a Culture of Overwork

By now you’ve heard about “quiet quitting”—when an employee doesn’t actually quit their job but makes a private commitment to themself to do the bare minimum. While it isn’t a new phenomenon, and one I find funnily misleading and sadly revealing.

How do we come to a place of such deeply normalized overwork that sticking to only what’s on your job description for your job can be described in any measure as “quitting?”?

Gallup reports that 59% of the global workforce are quiet quitters. The appeal seems to be not just about doing less, but caring less. Not only do hours and pre- and post-work phone use decrease but fear and anxiety do too.

As you all know by now, I’m no stranger to overwork or burnout—there are very few leaders who are—and I think it’s one of today’s most dangerous myths that overwork is necessary to being a good leader. I value and believe in a strong work ethic but won’t enable the kind of “grind” that demeans and depletes people.

If work does not intrinsically motivate someone to get creative and invest willingly, then its usefulness, ability to create value and pleasure should be questioned. If it makes a worker push and push until they die at their desk a la Karoshi, it should definitely be quit—in fact, loudly quit.?

Some of my clients in management were stressed about the phenomenon when it was at it’s height on social media last year. What if all their employees quiet quitted at once and the office came to a grinding halt??

I asked them two things. First, if employees doing only what their contract says stops an organization’s function, were those contracts honest? Second, if it’s a trend among multiple direct employees, what does this reveal about areas for growth in your leadership?

It is tempting to be the kind of high-output leader who pushes and pushes for productivity, worsening the capacity of some of your most passionate and creative workers. Indeed, it’s been my hardest working clients and partners for whom this term has been most exciting. For the chronic workaholic, quiet quitting has been a way to encourage themselves of going easier, doing less, and setting a sustainable standard that allows for a richer life.?

For those of you in the same boat, may I suggest slowly and mindfully reducing your workload---no one likes it when the office mule turns into a human with boundaries. One of my clients was put on a performance improvement plan after she started enforcing the kind of workload her coworkers had sustained for years.?

Be sure you can survive losing your job—be smart about your money and references for the next gig. The working world is still very much one where your health doesn’t matter as much as your usefulness. For the earnest and sincere, giving is much easier and more dangerous.

Next week, I’ll be talking about “loud quitting.” I'll let you guess what that means. Until then, take good care.?