Life’s Meaning Outside of Work - Simone Stolzoff

oh by the way before we get into this episode I would love to tell you a little bit about life notes now Life notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers and it contains my notes from life so notes from books that I've read podcasts I'm listening to conversations I'm having and experiences I'm having in work and in life and around once a week I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers so if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning almost in real time as I'm learning it you might like to subscribe there is a link down in the show notes or in the video description Simon welcome to the podcast how you doing thanks for having me it's great to be here so this is going to be interesting so you have written a book um called the good enough job I have which is interesting so in my audience a lot of people and me struggle with this feeling of like what do I really want to do for work what should my career really be I have all these interests and I want to find something I'm passionate about but I also want to find something that pays well and that has some sort of impact and that you know ideally gives me enough flexibility to do whatever I want and almost everyone I speak to who is in their 20s and even 30s struggles with this sense of what is what's the meaning of my work and why am I working Beyond just to pay the bills um which is kind of your specialty your your specialist subject how did you first get interested in this this sort of topic yeah I mean well the good thing about being a journalist is I don't have to necessarily be the expert I can just point the camera at different experts around the room but for one thing I am a reporter and my beat has always been work and so the professional angle answer to that question is that I've been tracking work particularly in the US for the last 10 or so years in my own career and I recognize that work has come to fill this outsized role in Americans lives in particular you can look at the data comparing the US to other countries and while all of our peer Nations have decreased the number hours they spend working each year certain subsets of Americans particularly college educated Americans are working more than ever which is a historical it kind of begs the question why typically the Richer a person or the Richer a country get the less they work because frankly they can afford to work less but in the last 30 or so years we've seen this ahistorical trend where certain Americans are working more than ever so that's sort of like the the business answer the professional angle there's also the very personal one which is that work after working as a journalist for a number of years I had an opportunity to interview for another job outside of the industry that i' had grown up in and the job was at a design Agency for this firm called idea and you know I sort of passively went through the interview process always take the phone call and I got to the end of the road and I had these two job offers one was to continue being a reporter I was writing for this trendy magazine in in New York City and the other was to be a designer and on one hand you know what was me oh the agony of having to decide between two attractive job offers but you know if you or you know anyone in the audience has been at a similar career Crossroads before it can feel existential there was sort of Simone the journalist on One path and there was Simone the designer on another path and it didn't feel like I was choosing between two jobs it felt like I was choosing between two versions of me and I knew I wasn't the only one and I could feel the same thing that you mentioned among many of my peers who were looking for a vocational soulmate they were looking for that perfect job that could help them self-actualize and I started asking you know maybe our expectations are just a bit too high nice so how did how did we get here how did we arrive at this place where so much of our our identity is so tied to what we do for work yeah and has it always been like that well there's many ways to answer that question if your last name is is Miller or Taylor maybe you can say that it's always been like this you know particularly for Americans the Protestant work ethic and capitalism were sort of the two strands that entwined to form our country's DNA but I also think there's been some changes in the last 30 or 40 years that has made this kind of conflation of work and identity particularly relevant to more and more people for one there's been a decline in other institutions that used to provide meaning and identity in our lives things like organized religion or neighborhood and Community groups you know in 1950s over nine out of every 10 Americans belonged to some sort of organized religion which provided purpose something larger than themselves Community a reason for being and today almost one in three Americans doesn't affiliate with any religion at all so without these institutions the need for belonging for meaning for purpose for identity remain and many people have turned to where they spend the majority of their time which is the office you can also look at political reasons you know part of the reason why our relationship to work is so fraught is because the consequences of losing work is so dire particularly in places like the US where healthc care is tied to employment or if you're an immigrant your ability to stay in this country is tied to employment so it isn't just about the paycheck it's also about your livelihood in a broader sense but the third which is the one I really harp on in the book is this sort of subjective value that we particularly in the west have put on to work you know I was just driving through London today and I saw a Wei work and it said always do what you love plastered on the side of the building and we treat CEOs like celebrities and there is this implicit or often explicit idea that if you haven't found your dream job if you haven't found what you love you should keep searching keep trying because it's some sort of moral failing or shortcoming if you haven't gotten there but I think that mentality also comes with a lot of risks oh okay that's interesting cuz I guess um this is sparking sparking a bunch of different thoughts so one question I often used to think about is asking people with jobs the question of do you look forward to Mondays and even when people said that they enjoyed their job the answer was almost always well no cuz like surely no one looks forward to Mondays cuz it's like the weekend and like you know yeah you know I enjoy being a doctor but like I still don't really look forward to Mondays and I just sort of assumed that that's what a job was a thing that you wouldn't look forward to but then I started doing the sort of YouTube entrepreneur writer type stuff and now I can say had on heart that for the most part I do look forward to Mondays M I'm like huh that's cool I feel like my life has had a step change in happiness maybe since I started doing a thing where the thing that I look the the thing that I do for for work is something that I actually look forward to and I sort of this idea of looking forward to Mondays and I'm also then not sure because people like people in their 20s or whatever will ask me and be like hey how do you how did how do how do you find a job that you love I'm like I don't know you just got to I don't know trying there's the whole Cort angle of like get really good at something and develop career capital and autonomy and Mastery and purpose and blah blah blah that gives you intrinsic motivation but then there's the whole thing around around like I mean I could have I could have had all those things in medicine but I think for me I would have just been less likely to look forward to to to Mondays any that makes sense yeah I mean maybe I'll answer your question with a story which is when I was 22 years old I was a poetry student um actually that's not completely true I studied both poetry and economics and you can already see a bit of a tension between sort of the pursuit of Art and the pursuit of Commerce and I had the opportunity to interview my favorite writer in the entire world this guy named anise mojani he's a spoken word poet and I asked him you know anise how do you feel about the Mantra do what you love and never work a day in your life and I was expecting him to give me this pep talk you know I was a poetry student he was a professional poet I wanted him to say follow your passion and and the money will follow you know get really good and develop that career capital and your life could be a dream and he didn't he said something I'll never forget he said you know Simone I think some people do what they love for work and others do what they have to for work so they can do what they love when they're not working and neither is more noble and I think that last part is key you know especially in today's day and age we love to Revere people whose jobs and identities neatly align you know the YouTuber or the social entrepreneur or the painter but here was my professional Idol a professional poet no less telling me that it's okay to have a day job and so I think you know the question of do you look forward to Mondays is really important you know we work more than we do just about anything else and how we spend those hours matter but I also think the question of do you look forward to whatever you're going home to at the end of the work day on Monday is important and sometimes people who are ambitious people who are really looking for that vocational soulmate get in this Loop where they work all the time and so they're not sure what to do when they're not working and then they're not sure what to do when they're not working and so they work some more and it creates this imbalance this way in which we invest so much into just one facet of who we are without rounding out the rest of the person o that's fun so I had a moment a few like probably like last Saturday where it was a really nice day here in London and I didn't have anything on my calendar and I could do whatever I wanted and I was like hm what do I want to do today and I really wasn't sure I was like I I guess I could sit on the sofa and play Playstation I guess I could read a book could play the piano and play some guitar uh I was like I'm I'm seeing some friends for dinner anyway and I've seen a lot of people this week so I kind of want to spend this this day by myself I was thinking huh what the hell do I do and my mind just kept going to I'm so like I'm so used to working and working to me feels so enjoyable and so purposeful and so like you know flow sty and stuff when I'm doing it yeah that then when it's a weekend I I do often feel like I'm at a bit of a loss I'm like huh what what do normal people do on the weekend I don't know I guess I could watch TV guess I could finish off the last of us and that question that that was kind of puzzling um I wrote about it in my neweta that week cuz I was like huh this is kind of weird yeah it's like I was I I found the thing that I loved for work which meant that I never had to work a day in my life and yeah had this question of like do you then look forward to the weekend do you do you look forward to the thing you do outside of work like I look forward to the weekend in the sense of like I don't have any meetings in the calendar which is nice but then I I really know what to do with that time and something a friend of mine suggested was like I making like a menu of options of like when I have free time here are some hobbies that I can do and stuff and it felt it felt kind of lame I was like what the how did yeah check the asano board to see what your hobbies are again yeah I I think you know it points to some of the risks that I was mentioning one is the first that we mentioned about expectations if you're always expecting your job to be a dream that creates a lot of room for disappointment the second is something that a lot of people found out during the pandemic which is that your job might not always be there you know maybe it's just because it's a weekend or a company holiday but maybe it's because you were laid off or fured by no fault of your own and if your work is your sole source of identity and you lose your work you can be left asking what's left but the third which is you know something that I think your weekend predicament really speaks to is the fact that we are all more than just workers right we are Someone's Child and someone's sibling and someone's friend and a Community member and a citizen but all of these other identities guitar player traveler artists that exist within us need attention they're sort of like plants they need water and attention in order to grow and if we're just investing in the work identity those other identities that exist within us can wither and so in order to really conceive of yourself as more than just a worker to see yourself as a guitar player or someone who values their physical health or someone who is a good partner you have to be able to invest in those identities with your time but if we're only working it is a very narrow platform upon which to balance nice I like that multiple identities and you have to invest in those multiple identities with your time H how do you how do you figure out what these identities are that you want to that you want to cultivate yeah it's a good question you know it's sort of like asking people what are your values it can be hard to Define really succinctly you know certainly you can Journal about it or you can do a values card sword or I'm sure there's 10 different online quizzes about it but I think you know these different identities some of them we are born with and some of them we get to choose I often ask people what they like to do when they were a kid you know did you like to play pickup Sports did you like to draw did you like to hang out with your friends and do nothing there's probably some clue there of what it is that you really would do if you had an idol Sunday with nothing else to do but then I think the other aspect to it is that passions much like your passion for work are developed through our investment in them what makes an identity or a hobby meaningful is the fact that we are squaring our hips towards them we are investing time in them and the same can be true that's sort of the the moral argument about the value of investing in these different identities I think there's also the business case to be made you know the research shows that people who have what researchers call Greater self- complexity tend to be more resilient in the face of adversity imagine you know you're really ambitious and you sort of rise and fall based on your professional accomplishments and then your boss says something kind of disparaging at work if you haven't invested in other facets of who you are that one comment from your boss on a Friday can spill over into all the other facets of your life it can completely consume you but also through those different identities that's where we get inspiration to come up with really novel interesting things I mean you know this as a a creative worker it's not always when you're banging your head against your keyboard that the brilliant ideas come maybe it is through through that active form of rest or Leisure like playing guitar or like going on a walk with someone that you care about that is where you might see things that are outside of just the purview of what you're doing on a daily basis I think it's one of the problems with corporate culture these days is all of our time is sort of compartmentalized into these calendar blocks and we're have all these meetings we take in all of these inputs but we have very little time to synthesize all that we're taking in we have very little time to make meaning from everything that we're doing and so there's a really strong business case to be made for the value of much as an investor benefits from diversifying the stocks in their portfolio we too benefit from diversifying the sources of meaning and identity and purpose in our life yeah I really noticed this when I when I first arrived at med school because I think as in high school a lot of my identity was tied to my academic performance and I was like you know I was a nerdy kid I wasn't really any good at sports didn't really have anything going for me I felt except the fact that it was really good academically and then towards the end of high school I was like you know this is kind of annoying like let me also I don't become a close-up magician or something and so I tried to dable with these other things to sort of diversify my identity a bit and then I go to med school where everyone there was the highest ranked academic person in their school and suddenly I was bang average and I was like holy [ __ ] this pillar of my identity which was academic prowess in order for that to for me to maintain that pillar of identity I'm going to work really really really really freaking hard and I don't want to do that and I was like oh this is kind of bad um and I read a Mark Manson blog post around that time which was about this idea of like diversifying your identity and diversifying identity into these different sources and that was when I was like okay I that sort of coincided with starting my first business that went well and then I sort of had that as my identity I continued with the magic stuff I started getting more into music um later on like the YouTube channel became a thing and so kind of doing well academically then became just one of the I don't know arrows in my quiver as it were rather than the only one um but I I always kind of wondered whether it is better in a vertic commas for our source of identity and esteem to be like internally generated and like an enlightened sort of chap rather than externally derived from Hobby a profession B and I don't know family member C that kind of thing does that make sense totally yeah and I think there's increasing pressure to make our Hobbies more and more legible you know sometimes it's not okay to be just a baker but you have to have a side grind where you're selling your baked goods at the farmers markets or maybe it's not okay just to be a painter you have to post your paintings on Instagram and do it for the claps I don't think that necessarily has to be the case you know I think you and I both know that intrinsic motivation things that are derived from Mastery and autonomy and purpose as you mentioned tend to be a much more sustainable fuel source than just doing it for the Applause or for the exic sources of motivation and so you know it begs the question how do you find these other identities and how do you water them and I think you know there's a few different ways to do so but the primary thing that I tell people it sounds simplistic but if you want to derive meaning from things Beyond work you have to do things other than work no offense to Netflix I think so many people will you know go to work and come home and all they'll have the energy to do is try to turn off their brain and turn on the last of us or what have you and not to say that you know The Last of Us isn't a great show but it's not going to be a source of meaning in the same way that an active hobby like guitar playing or learning a new language or becoming a member of a book club will give you meaning to your life it'll both rejuvenate you in a way that will make you a better worker but it'll also be another way of conceiving of who you are Beyond just what you do for work that's nice and one of the things I found myself thinking as you were talking about the work identities thing was you know I've got this exercise that I I always share with my audience which is you know what does your ideal Tuesday look like because life is made up of a series of Tuesdays as Tim said at one point um Wednesdays and Thursdays all that stuff um and so instead of trying to for like the big picture like oh these big accomplishments um like oh I wrote a book it's more like what does a normal Tuesday in your life look like oh I spent 4 hours doing writing in the morning great that's fun but I've never once asked myself the question of what does an ideal Sunday look like because I I I think I've optimized really well for the ideal Tuesday which is broadly a work day where there's maybe some something social happening in the evening with friends but I've never once asked myself on a day where i'm not doing any work and idle Sunday what would I choose to do with that time I'm sure if I asked myself that question I would would come up with like oh well this would be my idle Sunday menu of options and stuff and it would probably lead to some interesting realizations I suspect yeah I mean it makes me wonder you know productivity to what end like why do we want to cross things off of our to-do list or get through our work tasks ostensibly it's so that we can go home or have a Sunday to yourself without any obligations but I fear that people treat Crossing things off the list as the end in IT of itself there's this great story from the author Tony Morrison and she has had many jobs over the course of her career Beyond just being a writer she grew up and used to clean rich people's houses in her own words in her hometown of laurine Ohio and she was coming home from cleaning people's houses one day and she was complaining to her dad about it and her dad said listen you don't live there you live here with your family go to work get your money and come on home and I think we all need something to come home to or else we'll just continually be on that hamster wheel but the things that we're coming home to also need to be intentional and conscious decisions so you've probably seen this diagram of concentric circles about habit formation where on the inside or on the furthest ring there's um outcome based habits where you set a goal you know I want to lose 50 pounds for example then the next ring in is the the process based goals so things like I'm going to go to the gym every Tuesday and Thursday and the inmost circle is identity based goals I am going to be a person who goes to the gym I conceive of myself as someone who believes and values in physical health and therefore I go to the gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays and as a result of that I might lose 50 pounds but the research shows that when our habits are built around these identities not just the outcomes not just the processes they tend to be a lot more sticky which is why I think diversifying our identities are so important you know we have this society-wide conversation about work life balance or we have the soci society-wide conversation about burnout but I actually think these phenomenons are all Downstream of this question of identity this question of how do I conceive of who I am in this world and how do my behaviors reinforce that this episode of Deep dive is very kindly sponsored by wab which stands for you need a budget now for many people money is a cause of guilt and anxiety you never entirely sure where all your money goes and you're left feeling guilty about purchases big or small money is often associated with restriction fear and uncertainty but your money is an extension of you in many ways and it's obviously not ideal to feel so bad about it now wab is an app that's helping millions of people change their mindset around money it's built on four simple habits which could transform the way you think about money these habits are firstly give every dollar a job two embrace your true expenses three roll with the punches and four age your money now these habits are actually really simple giving every dollar a job basically just means that you plan out the different things you want 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that sense the making of a YouTube video and the writing of a book and the doing of a podcast and the giving of a talk or running a workshop is not a means to an end it is the end itself it's like doing it for the sake of doing the thing rather than for the sake of the money or for the sake of the time off or whatever yeah how does how does that land yeah I mean I think it goes back to that original quotee from my mentor which is some people do what they love for work and others do what they have to for work so they can do what they love when they're not working and I don't think there's anything wrong with the fact that you found the career where you can align your passions and your interests with what you do to make money it's awesome and that model doesn't work for everyone and I think the risk is that we try to impose this idea of dream jobs that if you haven't found it don't settle keep searching as Steve Jobs said but we all are running around some of us diabolically like a chicken with their head cut off trying to find this dream job as if if the work thing falls into the place the rest of my life will figure out but as the cliche goes wherever you go there you are we're still people and work can be a false idol that can easily be falsified so I'm so glad that you found this you know portfolio career with many different things that brings meaning to your life and it reminds me of a story of one of the people that I read about in this in the book Liz who was a a teacher and derived an immense amount of her identity from being a teacher she loved it she would happily work 80 hour weeks as a public school teacher in Colorado and then she contracted lime disease she was out hiking in the woods in Vermont and she went from being a teacher who derived so much of her identity and selfworth from her job to her mom's spoon feeding her chicken soup in bed her productivity was no longer something in her control and she said something that is really stuck with me which is she learned from the chronically ill Community about the value of defining our ourselves based on our Evergreen characteristics as opposed to things Tethered to our productivity or to a market so she started to think of herself not just as a passionate public school teacher or a swimmer but as a generous friend or someone who shows up for her local community or someone who is naturally intellectually curious these Evergreen traits that no Market or job or boss can ever take away from her and so I hope that for the entirety of your career podcasting and writing and making YouTube videos continue to bring so much value and joy to your life but I hope that you also thinking about what are those other things in your quiver so that if that time were to end you would still have other pillars of your foundation yeah oh that's good stuff I'm curious I've you know a follower of your channel for a long time and it seems like this year you've really committed to your physical health you've really you know made a commitment towards going to the gym being consistent I'm curious both where that came from and how it's been to really invest in this other identity good question like I turned 30 last month and I knew that the 30th birthday was birthday was coming up and often like most people I interview on the podcast are slightly older than me if not very much older than me and one piece of advice I've often got is take care of your health because you you know for for all the obvious reasons and i' never really made it a conscious commitment to take particularly seriously all sincerely um until the start of the year when I was yeah fig figuring out what are my goals for the year or what would be cool to have done by the end of the year and I thought you know what this is the year that I'm actually going to kind of double down on this health thing because you know for the sake of like mostly for the longevity stuff um you know I read Peter's outlive listen to a bunch of the longevity Bros thought about like oh you know I want to have a family and kids and grandkids and stuff and I'd really like when I'm 60 70 or whatever to have enough energy and physical Vitality to be able to play with them and hang out and stuff without getting tired all the time and so that was the sort of thing in the back of my mind of like okay for the sake of that end goal let's focus on mostly the process based habits of I'm going to show up to the gym a few times a week going to eat broadly healthily and try and get X number of steps per day um but I don't really think it's seeped into my identity just yet cuz when you are like when you mentioned like kind of watering that identity I sort of felt surprised of like H do I think of myself identity wise as someone who's healthy someone who's fit someone who takes care of their health I'm not sure I do it's not or if I were to list out my identities it would it wouldn't be anywhere near the top like 50 yeah um yeah yeah I mean that makes a lot of sense you know and I I imagine that as youve devoted more attention to it it's become more fulfilling to you you know in the same way that after not having gone for a run in a long time the first run is can feel like pulling teeth it can be incredibly hard and then as you settle into the groove of the Habit it not only produces long-term and short-term results but it is more fulfilling to see the progress measured I'm thinking about what you said about career Capital you know this so good they can't ignore you framework and how Cal frames it is he says you know develop skills that are rare and valuable and I think something similar can be said for whatever you want to call it maybe identity Capital which is develop identities that are valuable to you which is to say they reinforce the values of the person you want to be in the world and they are rare because they take time in order to develop them you know what makes something valuable or meaningful in our life is the fact that there's an opportunity cost is the fact that you're at the gym when you could be sitting on the couch or you're out seeing a friend when you could be doing more work and so in that way I would encourage anyone to think about what are the things that they value I had this old Professor that used to say show me your calendar and I'll I'll tell you what you value and I think that often people throw out values like I value Community or I value healthy eating but unless those values are reinforced with behaviors then they're shallow nice okay I want to double click on this back on this point around like that quote from your from your Mentor um it's okay so the quote can you can you remind me what the quote was yeah some people do what they love for work and others do what they have to for work so they can do what they love when they're not working neither is more noble you okay so you mentioned that the the thing that's coming to my mind that's like an objection to this is surely it is better to have your cake and eat it to as it were surely the thing to Aspire to is to be someone who loves what they do for work and also loves what they do outside of work rather than framing it as like an an either or Choice which is what that quote makes it seem like perhaps yeah I think it's less of a binary than the quote sets it up to be but I think the point that he was trying to make that I believe in is that some people really do treat work as a means to another end and that can be a an extremely fulfilling way to live your life you know not to say that some jobs aren't fulfilling intrinsically but people who have a sense of why they're working whether it is for the innate pleasure they get from showing up and doing the work each day or from the pleasure that they might get from supporting the people that they love or their real passion of sailing that they can do I've seen and talked to so many people who have put all of their identity eggs in the professional basket only for that basket to reveal its holes and I think part of this IDE a of a good enough job is thinking about how your job can support your vision of a life well- lived as opposed to the other way around right now so many people treat work as the center of their existence and trying fit everything else in the margins and what anise was saying is that other people put other things in the center and work is a way of propping up that other value that they have yeah that's good stuff yeah one of my team members Allison she is like the exact sort of the person I've met who's the exact embodiment of that mode where I mean she's really good at her job and stuff but her whole thing is like you know I'm I'm sorry Ally it is just a job at the end of the day I'm like yeah great it's good that she has that perspective on it and she says that she's the happiest person that she knows she's always like hanging out with friends going to plays in London and traveling and stuff and the fact that the job you know she's our head of customer success and she gets to talk to struggling YouTubers and help them with emotional support and stuff and there's flexibility and it pays okay she's like great that takes all the boxes for me so that I can then do the other stuff outside of work which is interesting because from my perspective I am one of the happiest people that I know and I put a lot of my identity eggs into the work basket which is which is working for now but I always have in the back of my mind that like you know anything could happen if I suddenly become unable to speak for example that's going to be a massive blow to my sense of identity if I become unable to work unable to be productive unable to teach that's going to be a massive blow to my sense of identity and there was a um a coach of mine who's a was a former psychologist who asked he sort of asked the question of like hey you know if you had if you had a period of two years where you weren't allowed to make any YouTube videos or you weren't allowed to post any content what would you do at that time and I was like oh well I mean I would read load's philosophy and i' sort of get my materials prepped and figure out what the next book to write could be and figure out what the next I don't know the next Arc of my teaching career could be he was like okay what if I told you you that you are never allowed to create any content and put it on the Internet or teach anything at all what would you do then and I was like damn I would get really depressed then because then I as as he asked me that question I felt like oh then what's the point like I I remember being surprised by that because like if I were to ask my mom him Mom if you suddenly weren't allowed to be a psychiatrist how would you spend your time she wouldn't say I'd end up i' I'd end up really depressed because I wouldn't really have anything to do but I found myself giving that response and if I were to ask Allison Allison if you if you lost a job or suddenly one weren't able to work and had to find a different job what would you do she'd be like oh she'd like shrug and be totally okay because actually her identity and maybe sense of self comes from lots of things other than the thing that she's doing for work yeah I remember this interview that I did also with a psychologist for the book and she sees a lot of patients like you ambitious kind of type A overachievers and she talks about you know trying to help them invest in facets of themselves Beyond work and often her patients will say okay I've got it I'm going to run an Iron Man or I'm going to read 52 books this year yeah and in many ways they try and turn their Leisure into another Quantified form of Labor and she says hold on a second why don't you start small why don't you start with a run or why don't you start with reading one book or devoting 15 minutes to reading each night and go from there because I think people can often get in the similar trap to work as they do with their leisure activities like for example an athlete you know do you remember Michael Phelps it's Olympic season after he won more gold medals than any other Olympian he fell into this pit of depression and I think the cause was that he dreamed the biggest dream he could possibly dream and then he achieved it and the question was what's next what's left I think you and I both know many people who have similar stories of thinking okay once I hit 1 million subscribers or once I make VP or once I you know make my first million then I will be fulfilled then I will be happy then I can focus on you know building a deeper relationship with my loved ones and it just doesn't work like that once you reach the peak of one Hill you might be just continually searching for the next one I I'm thinking about the story of K he who's a mutual friend of ours and his path is so relatable I think particularly for an immigrant you know he is first generation Cambodian American and he continually had this sort of defer happiness mentality where in high school we said okay the goal of high school is to get into the best college I possibly can and so he got top grades got into an Ivy League school and he got to this Ivy League school and he said okay the goal of college is to get the highest paying job that I can and my options are doctor lawyer Banker or engineer and he chose to become a banker on Wall Street and then he said okay the goal of Wall Street is to make the most money can and he became the youngest ever managing director at Black Rock he owned an apartment in New York City before he turned 30 he was making a seven figure salary and he was about 35 years old and he was preparing to go to the wedding of one of his best friends and he's looking in the mirror and he's combing his hair and a chunk of his hair falls off into his hand and he learns that it's related to stress related alopecia and here's a man who has every trapping of success he has all of what journalist David Brooks would call the the resume virtues you know Ivy leag graduate seven figure income all this onp paper success and yet he was so stressed out that his hair was literally falling out and I think what kay did which I don't think you did necessarily is he just thought about what the world valued you know in the form of what he can get paid for the most or what has the most prestige without considering what he himself valued but I think there's risks on the other end of the spectrum too we all know a friend who maybe quit their job to go all in to pursue becoming a musician or to pursue their art in some way but is so stressed out by how they're going to make rent that they can't focus on the actual art they hope to produce or maybe they dropped everything to go to a graduate school to pursue a degree that doesn't lead to any stable job prospects on the other side and we see the value of thinking about what the market values in one hand the value of thinking about we what we ourselves value on the other hand and the keys is to pursue something that sits at their intersection and I think you've done that in many ways you found something that you intrinsically value making YouTube videos writing having conversations like these that the market also happens to Value but I think too many people just think about what the market values without consulting what they themselves value as well yeah because I think about this question a lot like around like every every every every few months I will find myself on a flight somewhere where I don't get Wi-Fi and I'll find myself thinking sort of my mind will go to the question of what is the point of work and and and and it happens like probably every six weeks or so like H what's the point of work and I have all the journaling and stuff or I've asked this question before and I always land on okay well the point of work is like you know to do something that to do something you enjoy to do something that ideally the market will Rewards or or to make enough money from the thing to feel like you're having an impact to feel like you're being fulfilled and for me right now and this stage of my life like this Creator writer YouTuber thing seems to seems to take those boxes okay we're good and then another six weeks and I'll ask that question again and I'll be like but I swear we asked this question like six weeks ago like surely my answer should be more like stable and sometimes we'll get to a filming day where where the team's around and I'm just sort of a bit tired in the morning and it's like the prospect of filming a handful of YouTube videos that day where I haven't had enough sleep and I'm like hm I don't I don't need to do this I can just chill and live off the 4% returns of the S&P or whatever the hell people people do so why am I doing this again and then the team will always kind of like smile and grown to be like yep we've been here before and so like what's up with that I mean I think that's a old question you know and I think the leveled up question is what is the purpose of life you know if you're asking yourself what is the purpose of work I think that is part of that bigger question of what is the purpose of your life and my goal with the good enough job the book is to make sure that people are defining that bigger question of what is the purpose of their life on their own terms you know what is the purpose of work if you don't Define it your boss will gladly Define it for you or your employer will gladly Define it for you and you can think that you know the purpose of work is to sell software as a service to meet my quarterly sales goal or the purpose of work is to surpass Mr Beast in subscribers and the problem with those sort of outcome based goals is that they're immediately falsifiable you can achieve them and realize this is an altar that I shouldn't have been praying on all along do you know David Foster Wallace he has this great speech the this is water speech and in it he makes the case for praying to some sort of God or Cosmic or other worldly being and he says if you pray to anything else it'll eat you alive pray to beauty and you'll feel like you'll you're never beautiful enough pray to money and you feel like you'll never have enough money but pray to a God pray to some Cosmic Force larger than yourself and maybe that won't become falsifiable work is extremely falsifiable maybe the algorithm changes or maybe there's a global pandemic and you can no longer give an iners talk or maybe your company faces economic headwinds and the reason why I try and instill this idea of a diversified identity is so that when that day comes when that one pillar of your identity inevitably crumbles you can still stay on T nice what does the good enough job then mean oh I'll tell you where it came from first we're sitting here in London it's a an illusion to a theory that was devised by this British pediatrician named Donald winot and winot was observing these parents in the mid 20th century in England and all of these parents wanted to be the perfect parent they wanted to Shield their kid from experiencing any sort of negative emotion or harm and when the kid inev inevitably felt frustrated or scared or sad the parents took it extremely personally they thought it was a reflection of their own shortcomings so wi aott came up with this alternative he called it the good enough parent or the good enough mother and he believed that an approach that valued sufficiency more than Perfection would benefit both the child and the parent the kid would learn how to self soothe and take care of some of their own problems and the parent would learn how to not lose themselves in their children's emotions so obviously I'm making a direct parallel to the Working World and our jobs much like a crying toddler are not always in our control but to me you know I Define it pretty broadly I think a good enough job is a job that allows you to be the person that you want to be and why I like that sort of vague broad definition is because it's subjective for one person it might be a job that pays a certain salary that allows them to support their family for someone else it might be a job that allows them to talk to interesting people in podcasts or make interesting videos to connect with people around the world where someone else it might be a job that gets off at 4:00 every day so Allison can go to the West End and see a play or you can pick up your child from daycare or you can go on that afternoon bike ride that really is the thing that brings your life meaning but whatever your definition of good enough is I hope that you recognize when you find it because then you can spend that idle Sunday doing something other than working yeah so so I read your book when it first came out um but hearing you kind of describe sort of say say the stuff out loud is sort of like hitting me on a different level where I'm like [ __ ] yeah good enough job this a good stuff um when did it come out it came out like this time last yearo a year ago ex yeah I think I I had a bit of a sort of like in in in around October last year just before my book was coming out I had a lot I was sort of grappling a lot with issues of identity and how much of my identity I'm holding on to the [ __ ] New York Times best list maybe and I read your thing about that which is really interesting and I had a uh you know was going to Austin and planning to spend a whole week just like filming content and then like one of my friends had a had like a health scare and so I ended up not filming the stuff and realizing appreciating the mortality of life a little bit more and sort of pulling these sorts of threads around yeah what is the purpose of life what's the purpose of work um tried and uh try to uh iosa ceremony to try and get at that question and what came back from that for whatever that's worth was that yeah pretty much everything is Meaningful if you make it meaningful and we and we kind of create our own meaning and things which is kind of interesting but it's like I I haven't reread your book since then and so hearing you talk about it now it's like I'm like oh okay this this is connecting on a deeper level than it did when I first read the book yeah thanks for saying so you know I think the cliche is that you write the book that you need to read and I think I wanted to explore this topic because it's one of those intractable questions you know we work more than we do anything how we spend those hours matter and you are more than what you do and how do you square those two things and one of the new ways that I've started thinking about it since the book came out is that it's not just about us you know we often think about work from this extremely individualistic perspective of what will be most fulfilling to me or even what impact would I like to have through the vehicle that is my job but if you think about the other concentric circles of which we are a part you know being a member of your family being a member of your neighborhood being a member of this Society at large those identities all deserve our attention and so my sort of macro case for the good enough job is that if we are able to invest in our families our community ities our countries then it's not just our own sense of meaning that we'll become more robust but our neighborhoods will become more robust more resilient our countries will become more robust and resilient we will feel like we have the time and energy to give to things other than producing economic returns for ourselves or for our companies or our employers you know as peral has this line that hit me like a brick it was kind of the impetus for writing the book in some way she said too many people bring the best of themselves to work and bring the leftovers home and I hope that by reading the book or by coming across some of these ideas people think about what they're bringing home and see their lives outside of work as is worthy of their time and their energy as well so a good enough job is a job that helps you be the person you want to be what if someone really hates their job but that job actually does help them be the person they want to be because like I don't know they're they care it's they're in that second category of people they're in that I kind of have to do this so that I can do all the fun stuff outside of work but at at the same time they also really hate their job how does is would your approach be stick it out because actually you've got all these sources of identity and meaning outside of work so it's all good bro or would it be like hey let's figure out how we can help you have a bit more fun at work or like how how do you approach that yeah you know it's a little hard to give prescriptive advice when it comes to something like your career but I think about a few things one is this study that I know both of us are familiar with from these two researchers that went in to interview a bunch of workers who you might not think of as in a particularly fulfilling or meaningful line of work which is janitors at hospital and so Jane Dutton and Amy ranesi went to this hospital and they interviewed all these janitors and they saw that the janitors roughly broke up into two categories one group felt that their job wasn't very high skill they didn't really go out of their way to interact with many people and ultimately they weren't very happy at work the second group was much more social they did a lot more interacting with their colleagues as well as the patients they thought their job was higher skill but the most important difference of that second group was that they saw themselves as an integral part of the healthc care system they saw themselves as healers and the sort of takeaway from that study is this idea of job crafting or how can you make the job that you have more like the job that you want part of it is just mindset and mentality how can you connect your job to a greater why that you believe in part of it is being able to craft the actual activities of your job is there a way that you can work with your boss or your manager to be doing more of the things that you like and more less of the things that you don't and so I'd start there I'd say you know what what are the ways in which you can craft the job you have to be more like the job that you want for some people they might need a new job they might need to look around and take a leap but before quitting I would encourage them to start experimenting start prototyping whether that's putting themselves out there by applying to other opportunities or taking a class on something that they might be intrusted in or if they don't have time for either of those things just doing some real thinking about what is it about this job that I hate so much and is this the suffering that I'm willing to put up with in my life and if the answer is no then they might need a change but I think it also brings up this third point which is that the question itself of what do I want to do or what do I want to do most is a question that takes a certain level of privilege to even be able to ask yourself and it's not necessarily a question that everyone can afford to ask themselves you know we're sort of having this conversation mostly I think with the frame of maybe knowledge workers or people that have a level of latitude with what they choose to do for work but the majority of people globally don't work because because they want to they work because they have to and that's also a reality in sort of where we began the conversation you the original translation of the word work in Latin translates to not enjoyable activity and and that way thinking about the why you work as a means to support your livelihood or your life is as anise would say equally Noble I think that for people who work as a means to an end that's the norm that's the way that the majority of people work globally and as much as it feels good to you know sit here in our cush positions on the mic saying that everyone should go find their dream jobs the reality is that that's not how our society is set up and so I guess your whole shtick is that if someone is feeling a lot of pressure that they must find their dream job and they haven't yet found it it is worth them asking the question of what would a good enough job look like and you mentioned earlier in the in the conversation that some people it almost sounded like some people can't find their find their dream job and I guess you know if we think of the sorts of people that listen to this podcast it's probably not the sort that are in the global majority of having to having to work and a lot of our viewers and listeners will be in that position where they could go they're broadly knowledge workers they could go for job a b c they might have different levels of pay attached to them they might have different levels of like activity that they're doing different levels of prestige and in that position when you do have those options and you know that you don't for example have to take a minimum wage job to support your family but you do have that that extra latitude to be able to make the choice that's where it feels even more pressurizing it's like yeah like some friends of mine who are living in Pakistan are not really grappling with this question they're like I've got my job it pays a decent amount we all have to work for a living let's just do the thing and I guess people uh from from from reading some stuff around work it's sort of in in a our sort of like grandparents generation the whole idea of enjoying your job wasn't also wasn't really a thing it was like oh you do the work because you do the work to support your family and it's like the question of enjoying your job wasn't even a thing but now because all of us like M like Millennials and genz almost have this option that like oh we see people out there who do have their have the dream job it creates this feeling of pressure that unless I also have my dream job I am like lacking in some way or another and it sounds like your approach and what you're trying to get people to do with this book is to say that hey it that's not the only way to Happ fulfillment I the only way to happen us and fulfillment is not merely by having a dream job that kind of thing yeah is that fair to say I think that's very well summarized and I'll just double click on one idea which is that this isn't a case for dropping your standards you still get to Define what a good enough job means to you you know you look at the cover of the book The Good Enough job reclaiming life from work and you might think it's this like slacker Manifesto or this excuse to sit on your couch or watch more with the last of us and that's not what I'm saying at all it it is a little subversive and that I'm taking this idea of good enough that we normally think of as a way of settling and saying you know maybe that's the goal as opposed to the fallback option and I think a healthy level of Detachment is a really good thing for the work itself nice um final question I guess is like um we we don't know each other very well we haven't this is the first time we're meeting um but you know we've both followed each other online for some amount of time from what you know of my stuff what are some questions I should be asking myself after this conversation to help diversify my identity away from this like all eggs in the work basket yeah I mean I think your therapist was under a good start with those questions of what would you do if you couldn't do what you do I would also return to what do you say that you value and how does how you spend your time reflect or not reflect how you say what you say that you value and then the third is just thinking in a broad sense of regret minimization what are the things that you might be thinking on your deathbed that you wish you could have done that you're putting off today or that you're waiting until next quarter or next week to do and how can you think about doing them today nice saon I think that's a great place to end this thank you so much thanks for having me all right so that's it for this week's episode of Deep dive thank you so much for watching or listening all the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or in the show notes depending on where you're watching or listening to this if you're listening to this on a podcast platform then do please leave us a review on the iTunes Store it really helps other people discover the podcast or if you're watching this in full HD or 4k on YouTube then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode that would be awesome and if you enjoyed this episode you might like to check out this episode here as well which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode so thanks for watching uh do hit the Subscribe button if you aren't already and I'll see you next time bye-bye

Make money with the skills you already have: https://go.aliabdaal.com/lbapoddesc Subscribe to LifeNotes 👉 https://go.aliabdaal.com/lifenotes_deepdive Sponsored by YNAB - visit http://www.ynab.com/abdaal Sponsored by Brilliant - visit https://brilliant.org/DeepDive/ for a 30-day free trial and 20% off Brilliant's annual premium subscription If you want to start or grow a channel, check out my Part-Time YouTuber Academy here 👉 https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0bLbMB0 I’ve built a brand new community for like-minded people called Productivity Lab. We’ll have online classes, workshops, and coaching to help you double your productivity. You can find out more here 👉 https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0bLby-0 📚 Check Out My New York Times Bestselling Book Feel-Good Productivity! 👉 https://go.feelgoodproductivity.com/podcast 📧 Sign up for LifeNotes - my weekly newsletter where I share actionable productivity tips, practical life advice, and high-quality insights from across the web directly to your inbox. 👉 https://go.aliabdaal.com/lifenotes/podcast In this episode of Deep Dive, I sit down with Simone Stolzoff to explore how work and identity often intertwine, and why it’s essential to find meaning beyond just a job. We talk about the importance of investing in different areas of life, setting realistic expectations for work, and finding fulfilment outside of the career. Tune in for practical tips on how to diversify your identity, prioritise what truly matters, and embrace a balanced approach to life. 🙂 00:00 Intro 03:15 Work and Identity 05:04 The Risks of High Expectations for a Dream Job 08:24 Investing in Multiple Identities 12:36 Finding Meaning Outside of Work 18:41 Evergreen Characteristics 28:02 Investing in Physical Health 31:28 Developing Identities That Are Valuable to You 32:59 The Fulfillment of Work as a Means to an End 34:24 The Pressure to Find a Dream Job 44:31 Diversifying Your Identity Beyond Work 🔗 CONNECT WITH SIMONE 🐦 X ( Twitter ) - https://x.com/SimoneStolzoff 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thepizza_bagel/ 💻 Website - https://www.simonestolzoff.com/ 👥 Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/simone-stolzoff-5a16b648/ 🔗 CONNECT WITH ALI 🎥 YouTube Channel - https://youtube.com/@UCoOae5nYA7VqaXzerajD0lg 🐦 X ( Twitter ) - https://twitter.com/aliabdaal 📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/aliabdaal 💻 Website - https://aliabdaal.com/ 👥 Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ali-abdaal/ 📄SHOW NOTES & TRANSCRIPT Visit the website for the transcript and highlights from the conversation - https://aliabdaal.com/podcast/ 🎙️ ABOUT THE PODCAST Deep Dive is the podcast that delves into the minds of entrepreneurs, creators and other inspiring people to uncover the philosophies, strategies and tools that help us live happier, healthier and more productive lives.Want to start your own podcast? We use Transistor! https://go.aliabdaal.com/transistor 🎧 LISTEN FOR FREE Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/deep-dive-with-ali-abdaal/id1587142091 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7gZkflCpck1rTixj8M7yHt RSS: https://feeds.transistor.fm/deep-div 🙏 LEAVE A REVIEW If you enjoyed listening to the podcast, we’d love for you to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts to help others discover the show :) https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/deep-dive-with-ali-abdaal/ 👋 GET IN TOUCH You can also Tweet @aliabdaal with any feedback, ideas or thoughts about the lessons you’ve learnt from the episodes and we can thank you personally for tuning in 🙏 PS: Some of the links in this description are affiliate links that I get a kickback from 😜