Here we go with the third and final part of my interview with author and workism researcher Simone Stolzoff:

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Tom: How would you distinguish "good enough" work from simply settling or giving up?

Simone: The biggest difference is that the definition of "good enough" is subjective. You get to define what good enough means to you. Maybe for one person it's a job that pays a certain amount of money. For someone else, maybe it's a job that has a certain title or lets them work in a certain industry. Maybe for someone else it's a job that lets them get off at 3:00 PM so they can go on that afternoon bike ride that brings them a lot of meaning, or pick up their kids from school.

It's not necessarily a case that work has to be a necessary evil or a slacker manifesto. Rather, it's about setting standards for yourself so you know what your level is, so that once you achieve it you can find a sense of contentment rather than always wanting more.

Tom: As someone who's made several major career pivots, what traits do you see in people who thrive when they create their own non-traditional career paths? 

Simone: The two traits that I see in people who are successful are a comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty, and a natural drive to follow their own curiosity. I think a lot of the anxiety or risk or fear that prevents people from making big career pivots is not having certainty about exactly what the future will hold.

And setting aside for a second that this is often a fallacy, it requires you to be able to take a leap without actually knowing where you might land, which can be very unnerving for people. But I think that sort of alchemy of curiosity transforms the anxiety of uncertainty into an excitement about what possibilities might emerge.

Tom: How can someone building an unconventional career path stay confident about their choices when everyone around them is following more traditional routes?

Simone: I think the biggest thing is to find the others. To find community so you’re not on your unconventional career path alone. That doesn't necessarily mean that other people have to be doing exactly what you're doing, but trying to find people that also have taken risks so you can build a sense of solidarity and community.

Tom: You're regularly hired by Fortune 500 companies to speak about work-life balance and the dangers of workism. How do you navigate being paid by companies to tell them they're part of the problem?

Simone: When I go to a workshop or to speak, the first question I often get is "Are you going to tell all of my employees to quit their jobs?" And say, well, not necessarily!

But the truth is that the most enlightened companies recognise that in order to create productive value over a long time horizon, you need to be thinking about sustainability.

You know this on a personal level. If you're burning the candle at both ends, if you're working 11-hour days, if you work six months without taking any breaks, you're not going to be able to sustain it. You're not going to be able to produce your best work.

And so especially in a knowledge economy, I think the most enlightened and progressive employers understand that if they value employees' lives outside of the office, if they allow healthy boundaries, if they're able to give employees time to recharge and reset, they'll actually produce their best work. That's the business case as well as the moral case.

Tom: Where can readers go to connect with you and find out more about your work?

Simone: I have a newsletter called The Article Book Club that has 2,000 members. The website is articlebookclub.substack.com. I send out two articles a month that are worth reading but they’re not written by me. It's like a book club but instead of reading books you read articles. 

And then if you want to find out more about me, there's my website:

https://www.simonestolzoff.com

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There we have it.

Thank you Simone for the interview.

Back tomorrow with something different.