A few weeks ago, I read a book called The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work by Simone Stolzoff.

I've read plenty of books about work over the years. 

But Simone's book is different. It's not another guide to career change or a manifesto on how to "follow your passion".

Instead, the book pulls back the curtain on something I wrestled with for years: 

Why did my identity become so tied up with my job?

Looking back, it was obvious. I thought my worth depended wholly on my performance at work and everything I gave up to climb the corporate ladder. I really was Tom the Banker.

Simone calls this “workism”.

It’s the idea that work has become the main source of meaning, identity and purpose in people’s lives.

I thought the book was so good that I dropped Simone a line asking if he’d be up for an interview.

As you might’ve guessed (given the way this email is headed), Simone said yes.

So without further ado, let's get going with part 1:

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Tom: Could you tell us who you are and what sparked your interest in the role of work in our lives?

Simone: My name is Simone Stolzoff. I’m an author, but for the majority of my 20s and early 30s I was on this quest to figure out who I was in the working world. So in my 20s alone I worked in advertising and tech and food and design, all the while looking for a dream job.

And it wasn't until I started to become disillusioned with the search that I realised that my identity and my job had become so entwined. I knew I wasn't the only one. It was a problem that's particularly pervasive in my home country of the US. And so I embarked on a multi-year investigation into why work has come to be so central to our identities and why it’s a double-edged sword to look to work as a primary source of purpose, community and meaning.

Tom: Why has work taken on the role of a primary source of meaning and community for so many Americans?

Simone: There's lots of ways to answer this question. You can answer it from an economic standpoint or from a political standpoint, but I primarily focused on a cultural explanation. Which is that the decline of other sources of meaning and community (like organised religion and neighbourhood and community groups) has left this void where people are looking for community and purpose and transcendence, and many of them have turned to the place where they spend the majority of their time, which is the workplace.

Certainly there are other reasons about the US like the fact that we tie healthcare to full-time employment, or if you're an immigrant, the ability to stay in this country to full-time employment. If you go back to our country's foundation, there's this Protestant work ethic and capitalism which are two strands entwined to form our country's DNA.

Ultimately we live in what I call a "work-ist" society. That is to say that people treat work akin to a religious identity, not something that people just look to for a paycheck but also for purpose and meaning and so much else.

Tom: In your book, you quote the philosopher Agnes Callard: "we seek status because we don't know our own preferences." This suggests workism might be masking a deeper crisis of self-knowledge. Are we using career achievement as a substitute for the work of figuring out who we are?

Simone: I think this is a very deep question that requires a nuanced answer. I think for some people they can sort of outsource their own value system to that of their employer or their company. So at work, for example, there's a really clear hierarchy of what matters, where you sit in the hierarchy relative to other employees and how you can be "righteous."

But if you are solely making decisions based on what your employer or what the market values, you can find yourself spending your whole life climbing up a corporate ladder that you don't actually want to be on.

I think there's risk on the other end of the spectrum as well though. You can imagine someone who's just making their decisions based on what they themselves value without considering what the market values. I’m thinking of friends that, for example, have taken on enormous debt to pursue a graduate degree that doesn't lead to stable job prospects, or friends who have gone all in to pursue their art but now are so stressed about how they're going to make money that they can't focus on the art that they actually want to produce.

So I think there is this sort of crisis of meaning or self-knowledge, but it is more nuanced than just saying you must know yourself. I think the aligned approach requires you to hold what you value in one hand, what the market values in another hand, and pursue work that sits at the intersection.

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Okay, that's a wrap for Part 1.

Back for more tomorrow with part 2 and some workplace myth-busting from Simone.