Simone Stolzoff’s new book The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work highlights America’s unhealthy obsession with work and its disastrous economic implications. Stolzoff argues that we’ve fetishized work to the point that we’ve lost our identities to it by believing that jobs are the only source of self-worth. With the recent rise and inefficiency of office work, and the mass layoffs in the tech sector, her book couldn’t have come at a better time.
The Good Enough Job contains a variety of anecdotes, reporting and parables about our relationship to work and introduces the concept of “workism”. This is the dangerous illusion that your work is the only source of self-worth, and it often takes the form of white-collar professionals using their job for meaning, community, and a sense of purpose. Stolzoff urges us to reject the idea of scaling up our businesses even if it provides financial success at the expense of leisure time.
Stolzoff aims to show the dangers of being enslaved by the American work culture, particularly with the pandemic, economic downturns and the unflagging rise of the always-online work culture. He talks of the difficulty of achieving work-life equilibrium in the present era, demonstrating how our culture is willing to sacrifice free time and personal identities in pursuit of work. He emphasizes the need to draw boundaries between work and home, a task which has become increasingly difficult with mass layoffs and unclear return-to-office policies.
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a notable example of a business executive who emphasizes the importance of efficiency, while laying off a large number of employees. This stands in contrast to the parable of the fisherman at the start of the book, who is happy with the success he has achieved and is content to not push for more.
Simone Stolzoff has been a designer for IDEO, in addition to writing for The Atlantic, Quartz, and WIRED. His book comes out in the United States on May 23 and he encourages readers to find a way to reject our society’s idealization of work and retain our identities and allow ourselves freedom from our jobs. Through his book, he hopes to expose the dangers of the American obsession with work, and how this can only be addressed if we open our eyes to the possibility of finding a balance between work and life.
