There's a shift happening that employers can't ignore.

The “Dream Job" is tightly interwoven with “hustle culture”, especially in the USA where your job gives you health insurance. No job means no health insurance and that is pretty scary. The notion of constantly needing to go above and beyond, to prove your worth every moment and, if you aren’t getting ahead, you are failing at critical components of both hustle culture and the dream job. It also impacts when great employees are promoted to managerial roles they aren’t suited to. It’s all part of the same dilemma. We want to get ahead, we must push ahead, we must hustle to make more, to buy more, etc.

What if some people are satisfied with less?

What if they are satisfied with their job and don’t want the management role because they like what they are doing? Managing people is tough and not everyone wants it. Yet, people may look down on you for not wanting more, going for the next promotion, or being content with “The Good Enough” job.

The ”dream job” with the 24-hour car service, the catered meals at the office, that thousands of people would kill for, well maybe those incentives are less important to you if you realize you want to have dinner at home with family or friends, or you want to leave work at a reasonable hour to make a class.

How do we deal with “workism” and “hustle culture”?

Ester Perel has been quoted as saying, “We bring our best selves to our work, and the leftovers to the rest of the people in our lives.” That’s a pretty strong statement worthy of reflection. It requires a large systemic change that will not happen overnight. I think the younger generations are demanding it more and this will cause ripple effects. According to Simone Stolzoff , “We need to decouple our basic human needs from our employment status.” We need to honor work/life balance, we need to explore opportunities to socialize, to grow as people both spiritually and intellectually outside of work. Whether you take classes in art, languages, acting, or you garden, bake, woodwork, run, do yoga, or play pickleball. Find people with like-minded hobbies or values at a volunteer opportunity, a class, or a social gathering. People need to look outside of work for validation. As I've written before, this often presumes a level of privilege that many don’t have.

While interviewing people for his book, Stolzoff found that “those with the healthiest relationships to their work had one thing in common: they all had a strong sense of who they were when they weren’t working.”

It is important to define what kind of relationship you want with your work, and I think millennials are doing that more and more. This causes a dilemma with employers who aren’t used to employees demanding balance. It is all part of a great shake-out that started with remote and hybrid work during the pandemic. People suddenly got a taste of flexibility and now there seems to be no going back. The first question candidates ask us about any job is whether it is hybrid or remote. If we say it is in the office 5 days a week 90% of applicants withdraw.

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to meet a friend out of town overnight. We treated ourselves to pedicures and we discussed the juggling act of parenting, entrepreneurial life, aging parents, and all the responsibilities that go along with it and how tired we are at the end of the day, but how we still want to maintain our friendships. Our pedicurist said, “I came from the Philippines where I was a nurse and I am studying to get certified in Canada, I work full-time as an esthetician, and I have a 3-year old baby with no parents in the country to help me." She said "the Filipino community here is very nice but not as tight-knit as in Montreal or Toronto, so not as supportive. I want to see my friends, but I am exhausted. Mostly I want to take a bath after working, studying, and taking care of my baby and go to sleep.”