The "Good Enough" Job | #86
On meaning, money, and good enough
Hey friends!
Good morning from Lisbon where I just did my first-ever “ruck” (walking with a weighted backpack) to start the day.
A few personal updates:
🇳🇴 We recently completed Sprint #2 of our year and celebrated with a friends trip to Oslo. S/O to
who inspired me to experiment with new working schedule this year (we’re doing 6-7 weeks on, 1 week off).🇵🇹 I submitted the second step of my application to become a Portuguese resident last Friday, which was a big personal milestone I’m excited about.
🧑🏼💻 We’re in the midst the busiest period for our training business, Forgewell, to-date. It’s great news, although I’m struggling to write and publish as much as I would hoped as the other work is full-on.
The Good Enough Job
For this issue, I wanted to do something a bit different and introduce all of you to a friend of mine and a brilliant thinker,
.
I met Simone whilst living in SF, and we’ve kept in touch online (mainly through Twitter, follow him @SimoneStolzoff) and I’ve loved the direction his writing has taken the past few years.
He’s been investigating our culture’s relationship with work, which is a topic I’ve been fascinated by, especially since leaving the US in 2016 and being exposed to a wide variety of cultures who place a different emphasis on the role of work in one’s life.
Yesterday, Simone published his debut book, The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work, and I wanted to spread the word about what I believe is an important conversation we should be having.
For this issue of One Percent Wisdom, I wanted to share some of Simone’s writing and thoughts with all of you. Hope you enjoy!
How to Balance Meaning and Money
Below is an excerpt of an article which Simone wrote for Every, which you can read in full here. The bolding is mine :)
—
A businessman is sitting on the beach of a small fishing village when he sees a fisherman approach the shore with his daily haul. Impressed by the quality of the fish, the businessman asks the fisherman how long it took him to bring in his catch.
“Just a short while,” the fisherman replies.
“Why don’t you stay out longer to catch more fish?” the businessman asks.
“Because this is all I need.”
“But then what do you do with your time?”
“I sleep late, catch a few fish, play with my kids, take a nap with my wife, and then join my buddies in town to drink wine and play guitar,” the fisherman responds.
The businessman is shocked. He explains that he has an MBA, and that if the fisherman follows his advice, he could help him grow his business. “You could buy a bigger boat,” the businessman says, “and use the proceeds to open your own cannery.”
“Then what?” the fisherman asks.
“You could move to the city to open a distribution center.”
“And then what?”
“You could expand your business internationally and eventually take your company public,” the businessman says. “When the time is right, you could sell your shares and become very rich.”
“And then what?”
“Well, then you can retire, move to a small fishing village, sleep late, catch a few fish, play with your kids, take naps with your wife, and join your buddies in town to drink wine and play guitar.”
The fisherman smiles at the businessman and continues down the beach.
I love this little parable. It’s an adaptation of a German short story from 1963 and has since been translated and shared widely.
I first came across it in a Facebook post. It wasn’t just the story, but the first comment that has stuck with me since. Under the post, someone wrote, “There’s nothing noble about a life of mere sustenance. His life of idyll is great until he gets sick, there’s an algae bloom that kills the fish, or his boat throws a rod. He needs the extra investment capital to weather the unknown.”
I was tempted to roll my eyes. I knew that type of reply guy. He’s the one who raises his hand in English class because he “disagrees with the premise of the question.”
At the same time, he had a point. The tension between the fisherman and the commenter’s retort represents one of the most important questions we face: how do we balance the pursuit of a secure living with a meaningful life?
What role should work play in our lives?
Two caveats before we get into it. First, I can’t answer that question for you. Your relationship to work is yours to determine. Though not everyone has the privilege to dictate what they do or how many hours they work, we all have the ability to form a perspective on work’s role in our lives. If you don’t set boundaries around your work, it can easily seep like a gas into all of the unoccupied spaces.
Second, the role work plays in our lives is not fixed—nor should we want it to be. It’s by wrestling with work’s place that we figure out what we care about—how our careers stack up against our values, our loved ones, or whatever else we hold dear. There will be seasons when we’ll prioritize work and those when we’ll prioritize life outside of work. So I’m wary of any one-size-fits-all prescription or the idolization of “work-life balance,” as if there’s some mythical state to which we should all aspire.
That being said, I’ve spent the past three years writing a book about how work has come to dominate our lives and how to reclaim our lives from its clutches. Here’s where I net out.
I came into the book project thinking I was going to write a manifesto for the fisherman—a declaration of support for the simpler, less work-centric life. I had observed how central work had become to my own life, the lives of my peers, and the culture of our county. The balance felt off. We worshiped celebrity CEOs, plastered “Do What You Love” messages on the walls of our coworking spaces, and treated jobs akin to religious identities. But as a result, to paraphrase psychotherapist Esther Perel, too many people brought the best of themselves to work and kept the leftovers at home.
Over the course of reporting and writing, though, my hot take tempered into something more lukewarm. (Mind you, I began the book pre-pandemic, pre-great resignation, pre-quiet quitting, and pre- whatever anti-work meme trends next.) I still believe we ought to design our work around our lives rather than the other way around. But I don’t think the “work sucks” view serves workers either.
The truth is we work more than we do anything else—more than we eat, sleep, or see our families. How we spend those hours matters. Framing work as a necessary evil does not necessarily lead to fulfillment. Part of my critique of anti-work and anti-capitalist memes is that there aren’t many viable alternatives. We must all still pay rent.
Sure, UBI experiments and countries with robust social safety nets show how it’s possible to make the consequences of not working less dire. But the reality is that the majority of us will work for the majority of our lives. The more interesting inquiry is not whether you are pro- or anti-work, but how you can fit work into your vision of a life well lived.
Simone’s Practical Tips
Although The Good Enough Job is not a self-help book that will give you the 10 secrets for finding meaning in your work or life, I know readers of this newsletter love those practical tips, so I asked Simone to share with us a few ways we can put into practice the lessons he’s learned about crafting a better relationship to our work.
Diversify your meaning-making portfolio: Much as an investor benefits from diversifying their investments, we, too, benefit from diversifying our sources of identity and meaning. For example, research shows that those with a more differentiated idea of themselves—what the researchers call having greater “self-complexity”—are more resilient in the face of professional adversity. I give concrete steps for how readers can invest in alternate sources of meaning in their lives.
Craft your definition of "good enough": One of my favorite aspects of the "good enough" framing, is that it's intentionally subjective. Your definition of a "good enough job" can be a job that pays a certain wage, gets off at a certain hour, or gives you the time and energy to do what you love when you’re not working. But research shows that those who take the time to determine what they value are better able to recognize when they have it (as opposed to maximizers whose pursuit of perfection leaves them perpetually unfulfilled).
Find opportunities to trade more money for more time: Historically, the richer a person or a country became, the less they worked because, well, they could afford not to. But in the mid-1970s, a strange trend began in the U.S. Despite increases in wealth, the average American’s working hours flatlined—and some American workers, namely college-educated men, started to work more than ever. However, research shows that people tend to be happier and more fulfilled when they value time over money—time they can, for example, invest in their hobbies and relationships.
For More Simone:
Thanks for Reading!
As always, I appreciate your attention and readership.
Leave any feedback in the comments or just hit reply to message me directly.
Until next time,
Connor.
one of my faves
Such a thoughtful read - thanks for this one!