The Good Enough Job
Reclaiming Life from Work
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
"Superb."—Oliver Burkeman
A challenge to the tyranny of work and a call to reclaim our lives from its clutches.
From the moment we ask children what they want to “be” when they grow up, we exalt the dream job as if it were life’s ultimate objective. Many entangle their identities with their jobs, with predictable damage to happiness, wellbeing, and even professional success.
In The Good Enough Job, journalist Simone Stolzoff traces how work has come to dominate Americans’ lives—and why we find it so difficult to let go. Based on groundbreaking reporting and interviews with Michelin star chefs, Wall Street bankers, overwhelmed teachers and other workers across the American economy, Stolzoff exposes what we lose when we expect work to be more than a job. Rather than treat work as a calling or a dream, he asks what it would take to reframe work as a part of life rather than the entirety of our lives. What does it mean for a job to be good enough?
Through provocative critique and deep reporting, Stolzoff punctures the myths that keep us chained to our jobs. By exposing the lies we--and our employers--tell about the value of our labor, The Good Enough Job makes the urgent case for reclaiming our lives in a world centered around work.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Our livelihoods have become our lives," warns business consultant Stolzoff in his solid debut. Profiling eight white-collar workers (they're "the most likely to work for meaning and identity")—including an investment banker, a librarian, and a software engineer—Stolzoff uses their stories to examine how Americans have come to rely on their jobs to give their lives meaning. He cautions readers against tying one's identity to one's employment and illustrates the danger of doing so by telling of a young chef's devastation after her mentor pushed her out of the dairy-free alternatives company she founded under his tutelage and had devoted her life to. Discussing how a marketing consultant overworked himself to the point of burnout only to lose out on an anticipated promotion, the author observes that working more doesn't always pay off. To decenter work, Stolzoff supports universal basic income (which decouples "our human needs from our employment status"), encourages companies to implement mandatory paid time off, and recommends that readers view work as only a means to earn enough money to live on. Though the author's personal anecdotes sometimes drag on and distract from the profiles, his straight-shooting style makes for a blistering takedown of American corporate culture. Workaholics would do well to check this out.
