I've been fascinated by the lie-flat movement in China and the so-called Great Resignation here. I've been working since I was 13, an eighth-grader, and frankly I'm tired. I'm also angry, I've discovered. I was commuting up to three hours round-trip a day when I went into the office. Luckily I had whittled that down to two to three times per week. But that was still six to nine hours a week of DRIVING, at a time when none of us should be commuting (planet is on fire). Also: children. I'm a single mom of two kids who are now 20 and 23. I managed to do an amazing job a single mom, putting my kids first whenever possible, but at great cost to myself. I feel toxified by the shame and guilt I felt, and the fury, at all of the times I was made to feel afraid for leaving work to see my kids' play at school, or meet them for the Halloween parade around the school yard. I guess I sound spoiled. Obviously, the trade-off is clear. We trade our time for money, and we needed money. My jobs made it possible to provide a safe home for my kids. I should be grateful. If I had a better attitude, maybe I would be. I struggle with trying to figure out if there is something with our work culture or whether the problem lies with me. My biggest gripe is how work culture destroys family and community. The kids are warehoused. The elders are warehoused. There is no one to take care of our vulnerable populations. We farm this work out, and I find that troubling to say the least. I don't know what the answer is. But I find myself thinking often about the "promise" that the advent of computers were going to make it possible to reduce work hours. Why has that not happened?
Sounds like you did a great job as a single parent, Christy. Shame, guilt and fury have no place in someone who's doubly serving society: by contributing in the workplace and by raising the next generation. Perhaps you're overdue some well-deserved self-forgiveness ❤️
What a kind thing to say, Bruce. Thank you. I will mull your words over today. And... put them into action! Or at least think of how one might do that, exactly... Do the verb: forgive self. :)
May I suggest, “The Tyranny of the Clock,” an old essay by George Woodcock? Much angst about work is tied to how much we are slaves to mechanical/digital time. A farmer with a crop to plant has an entirely different view of work to a journalist with a deadline in three hours.
My son grapples with this idea. He is a well-paid COO of a small company whose ten-year-old son is a top skier for his age, with four gold medals in national and regional meets and who now resides in Park City, Utah and takes lessons with many Olympic champs and coaches. My wife – my son's mom – is French and we often travel abroad. What we've noticed is that the French have a poor reputation for labor that is misunderstood. The French are actually very good employees but... if it's time for a break, that break will occur. If they aren't supposed to work weekends, they don't and won't. Otherwise, they work right up to the minute they clock out, and will do nothing past that time. My son now appreciates the wisdom in that, though he can't and won't operate that way. He believes the French – and many other Europeans – have wisely left time for family and fun and we Americans often don't. He doesn't want to work less; he just wants to work wisely!
Super interesting! Thanks for sharing that, Jim. I definitely think our environments play a huge role in informing our working attitudes. It's no coincidence to me that the biggest group of people interested in antiwork are Americans. PS your skiing grandson sounds awesome!
I certainly read the definition of workaholic with interest. I'm a doctor - but also an academic. I can imagine not doing the academic work (though I mostly love it) but how does one stop doing the doctor/clinical part? Of course, one can't be anti-work to the point where no one does it at all in this case... But there is absolutely no doubt many many doctors would benefit from doing an awful lot of less of it, having richer lives beyond medicine, and we'd have a more caring, less burned out set of healthcare professionals.
There is certainly an enormous cultural problem/mindset amongst medics here as well - part-time medics are often denigrated and I've likened the whole mentality of being a doctor as somewhat cult-like. I think the anti-work movement is fascinating and needs exploration. I also feel that in the Venn diagram of anti-work there is a large crossover with David Graeber's 'bullshit jobs' - but I hope there's plenty of scope for keyworkers to embrace it as well.
I grapple with this thought quite often. With last year being so lucrative for freelancers, I've sometimes wondered whether I should just say yes to all forms of writing work that might come my way, no matter how busy I might be. On the off chance that this is all a dream and it just disappears someday. Because being a freelancer is such a flippant scenario, where you can't say for sure that your client will be with you 2 years down the line.
It all comes back to what you refer to - the concept of how we perceive work. We could be a farmer who loves the whole cycle of life, or we could be a farmer who just looks at the back-breaking work. I could be a writer who finds joy in every word, or I could be one who looks at it as a task to complete. Sadly for me, I kind of swing back and forth between the two. And I guess that's the challenge.
”But while I find it quite peaceful to say no to stuff I don’t want to do, it’s agonising for me to say no to the things I do want to do.”
Yes, this is the problem. I too want to work less. But really I want to work less on the things I’m not into. Because I want to work more on the things I am into!
And that’s not exactly a solution. Because I’ll just end up working the same amount! Maybe prioritization and boundaries are the answer....
I love the personal angle you've taken on the anti-work movement. It's easy to agree with the ideals, but a lot harder to extricate yourself from existing work structures.
Loved reading your thoughts on the antiwork or work less movement. One aspect about work that I struggle with is the guilt of not working. Somewhere deep in my belief system, lies a beast that will rears it's ugly head on a regular basis, telling me that I don't have a 'proper' job, i.e. I'm not employed and so not contributing to society. That cobbled with the belief that what I do isn't recognised by family and friends as work, is an inspiration killer. Of course, I do not have the privilege of being able to say 'no' as I am still building my freelance work. (Yes, I'd love to enrol on your free workshop but as your selection of dates and times do not have a time zone, I don't know which to go for.)
Not having an overflow of writing gigs, adding the guilt of bothering too much about what other people think, results in not really enjoying the fortunate work-when-I-want life style I find myself in. I will say that my situation was brought on by experiencing burn out four years ago, and I really wouldn't recommend that being the cause of change for anyone.
While changing working attitudes or habits might be a dream or ideal, there are lots of other considerations to think about: commitment to children and spouse, standard of living, how we are viewed by others and by ourselves, the unspoken contract in our relationships (something I talk about in my book The Essential Companion to Talking Therapy) and so on.
In 2021 my husband and I decided to make major changes very similar to the ones you write about. We got rid of as much stuff as we thought we could live without and sold our house in the UK. We had a large crippling mortgage and cost of living was increasing, plus my husband had just become self-employed. This all meant we had to make major changes.
We moved to Denmark (I am Danish) in July with the idea that we would buy a house outright and live for less. Six months later, and we are now renting an apartment costing us about the same as the mortgage on our house in the UK. Because of that, we are spending the money we were supposed to buy a house with and I yet again find myself in the situation of weighing up becoming employed so we can get a mortgage to buy a bigger place with space for our kids to visit. Commitments and deeply held values and believes are at play again and the changes we wanted to make have slipping away.
To make such humongous shifts in life takes more than the initial big gestures of selling up and moving to a different country. As with relationships, it soften not the big stuff that makes the lasting changes, it is the consistent small contributions that will make the dream come true. The one off big gestures only lasts for a short while, the small consistent ways of doing things differently, will have an accumulative effect on the the dream life we imagine living. To make the changes me and my husband set out to make will require us to become more consciously aware of our own, and each other's, behaviour and thoughts.
This morning about half way through reading your newsletter, I stopped to talk with my husband, who was deeply engrossed in his work (yes, he is a workaholic exactly as you describe) to remind him of our original plan. He scratched his head and made a comment indicating that this was news to him. I have to forgive him because he hadn't followed the thought process I had just experienced.
For us to stick to a plan that essentially is about making changes not only on a physical level, but on a deep psychological level too, requires regular reminders of what the plan is and why we are doing it. So, thank you Anna for poking me into action. I will now return to writing the details of our original idea to help us consult with when making decisions or just to remind us which direction we are moving in.
I love this piece!! I had no idea there's a movement of postworkists. Being involved in climate change issues, that's such an interesting piece of the big puzzle. Everything you say about your own experience is relatable as well. I keep telling myself I should take Wednesdays off. I'm almost certain I would be just as productive (not the point, I know, but still...) and I could fit in another workout (still trying to achieve). Why is it SO hard to work LESS?!
I found your essay on anti work a little ridiculous and just plain baffling. As if someone is making us have the lifestyle we all chose to have. Reduce your needs, desires and bills and reduce the need for money and decrease your work load! Is the math that hard? I laughed out loud reading about the person who took a lower paying job and is now miserable becoz they can’t make ends meet!! Seriously? Did they ever consider simply readjusting their lifestyle to their new income?
If you (as in generic “you”) truly don’t want to work, don’t but then if no one will support your lifestyle what is the recommended remedy here? That your brother/ neighbor must support you? As in “from each according to his ability to each according to his need”? Or put another way, the “state” will take care of your needs. We all know how well that has gone in anti-free-enterprise economic states, right? So well that they have to lock up their citizens inside and shoot them if they try to escape the paradise!
All of this call to tear down work is well and good on paper but how exactly does the state create wealth if we want a system where no one works? I mean am I missing something or is the anti work crowd complaining because they can’t get past the laws of physics?!
This is not to say workaholism is not a problem. It is but who’s forcing it on you? Your need to keep up with the Joneses, your chosen lifestyle, or your need to escape other aspects of life? Whose problem is it if you can’t balance your psychological needs or if you can’t stop “competing” with the person next door for money or status or a bigger tv.
Please stop conflating personal psychological problems with systemic issues that larger society or the state or the “system” needs to solve for you. If you want to opt out I say go ahead, have the courage to do it and live with the consequences!
I've been fascinated by the lie-flat movement in China and the so-called Great Resignation here. I've been working since I was 13, an eighth-grader, and frankly I'm tired. I'm also angry, I've discovered. I was commuting up to three hours round-trip a day when I went into the office. Luckily I had whittled that down to two to three times per week. But that was still six to nine hours a week of DRIVING, at a time when none of us should be commuting (planet is on fire). Also: children. I'm a single mom of two kids who are now 20 and 23. I managed to do an amazing job a single mom, putting my kids first whenever possible, but at great cost to myself. I feel toxified by the shame and guilt I felt, and the fury, at all of the times I was made to feel afraid for leaving work to see my kids' play at school, or meet them for the Halloween parade around the school yard. I guess I sound spoiled. Obviously, the trade-off is clear. We trade our time for money, and we needed money. My jobs made it possible to provide a safe home for my kids. I should be grateful. If I had a better attitude, maybe I would be. I struggle with trying to figure out if there is something with our work culture or whether the problem lies with me. My biggest gripe is how work culture destroys family and community. The kids are warehoused. The elders are warehoused. There is no one to take care of our vulnerable populations. We farm this work out, and I find that troubling to say the least. I don't know what the answer is. But I find myself thinking often about the "promise" that the advent of computers were going to make it possible to reduce work hours. Why has that not happened?
Sounds like you did a great job as a single parent, Christy. Shame, guilt and fury have no place in someone who's doubly serving society: by contributing in the workplace and by raising the next generation. Perhaps you're overdue some well-deserved self-forgiveness ❤️
What a kind thing to say, Bruce. Thank you. I will mull your words over today. And... put them into action! Or at least think of how one might do that, exactly... Do the verb: forgive self. :)
Glad to hear it! I'm finding Gerry Hussey's audiobook 'Awaken Your Power Within' to be pretty helpful with that (awful title, but some great content!)
May I suggest, “The Tyranny of the Clock,” an old essay by George Woodcock? Much angst about work is tied to how much we are slaves to mechanical/digital time. A farmer with a crop to plant has an entirely different view of work to a journalist with a deadline in three hours.
My son grapples with this idea. He is a well-paid COO of a small company whose ten-year-old son is a top skier for his age, with four gold medals in national and regional meets and who now resides in Park City, Utah and takes lessons with many Olympic champs and coaches. My wife – my son's mom – is French and we often travel abroad. What we've noticed is that the French have a poor reputation for labor that is misunderstood. The French are actually very good employees but... if it's time for a break, that break will occur. If they aren't supposed to work weekends, they don't and won't. Otherwise, they work right up to the minute they clock out, and will do nothing past that time. My son now appreciates the wisdom in that, though he can't and won't operate that way. He believes the French – and many other Europeans – have wisely left time for family and fun and we Americans often don't. He doesn't want to work less; he just wants to work wisely!
I enjoyed your ruminations on the subject.
Super interesting! Thanks for sharing that, Jim. I definitely think our environments play a huge role in informing our working attitudes. It's no coincidence to me that the biggest group of people interested in antiwork are Americans. PS your skiing grandson sounds awesome!
I certainly read the definition of workaholic with interest. I'm a doctor - but also an academic. I can imagine not doing the academic work (though I mostly love it) but how does one stop doing the doctor/clinical part? Of course, one can't be anti-work to the point where no one does it at all in this case... But there is absolutely no doubt many many doctors would benefit from doing an awful lot of less of it, having richer lives beyond medicine, and we'd have a more caring, less burned out set of healthcare professionals.
There is certainly an enormous cultural problem/mindset amongst medics here as well - part-time medics are often denigrated and I've likened the whole mentality of being a doctor as somewhat cult-like. I think the anti-work movement is fascinating and needs exploration. I also feel that in the Venn diagram of anti-work there is a large crossover with David Graeber's 'bullshit jobs' - but I hope there's plenty of scope for keyworkers to embrace it as well.
Thanks for the post.
I grapple with this thought quite often. With last year being so lucrative for freelancers, I've sometimes wondered whether I should just say yes to all forms of writing work that might come my way, no matter how busy I might be. On the off chance that this is all a dream and it just disappears someday. Because being a freelancer is such a flippant scenario, where you can't say for sure that your client will be with you 2 years down the line.
It all comes back to what you refer to - the concept of how we perceive work. We could be a farmer who loves the whole cycle of life, or we could be a farmer who just looks at the back-breaking work. I could be a writer who finds joy in every word, or I could be one who looks at it as a task to complete. Sadly for me, I kind of swing back and forth between the two. And I guess that's the challenge.
”But while I find it quite peaceful to say no to stuff I don’t want to do, it’s agonising for me to say no to the things I do want to do.”
Yes, this is the problem. I too want to work less. But really I want to work less on the things I’m not into. Because I want to work more on the things I am into!
And that’s not exactly a solution. Because I’ll just end up working the same amount! Maybe prioritization and boundaries are the answer....
I love the personal angle you've taken on the anti-work movement. It's easy to agree with the ideals, but a lot harder to extricate yourself from existing work structures.
Loved reading your thoughts on the antiwork or work less movement. One aspect about work that I struggle with is the guilt of not working. Somewhere deep in my belief system, lies a beast that will rears it's ugly head on a regular basis, telling me that I don't have a 'proper' job, i.e. I'm not employed and so not contributing to society. That cobbled with the belief that what I do isn't recognised by family and friends as work, is an inspiration killer. Of course, I do not have the privilege of being able to say 'no' as I am still building my freelance work. (Yes, I'd love to enrol on your free workshop but as your selection of dates and times do not have a time zone, I don't know which to go for.)
Not having an overflow of writing gigs, adding the guilt of bothering too much about what other people think, results in not really enjoying the fortunate work-when-I-want life style I find myself in. I will say that my situation was brought on by experiencing burn out four years ago, and I really wouldn't recommend that being the cause of change for anyone.
While changing working attitudes or habits might be a dream or ideal, there are lots of other considerations to think about: commitment to children and spouse, standard of living, how we are viewed by others and by ourselves, the unspoken contract in our relationships (something I talk about in my book The Essential Companion to Talking Therapy) and so on.
In 2021 my husband and I decided to make major changes very similar to the ones you write about. We got rid of as much stuff as we thought we could live without and sold our house in the UK. We had a large crippling mortgage and cost of living was increasing, plus my husband had just become self-employed. This all meant we had to make major changes.
We moved to Denmark (I am Danish) in July with the idea that we would buy a house outright and live for less. Six months later, and we are now renting an apartment costing us about the same as the mortgage on our house in the UK. Because of that, we are spending the money we were supposed to buy a house with and I yet again find myself in the situation of weighing up becoming employed so we can get a mortgage to buy a bigger place with space for our kids to visit. Commitments and deeply held values and believes are at play again and the changes we wanted to make have slipping away.
To make such humongous shifts in life takes more than the initial big gestures of selling up and moving to a different country. As with relationships, it soften not the big stuff that makes the lasting changes, it is the consistent small contributions that will make the dream come true. The one off big gestures only lasts for a short while, the small consistent ways of doing things differently, will have an accumulative effect on the the dream life we imagine living. To make the changes me and my husband set out to make will require us to become more consciously aware of our own, and each other's, behaviour and thoughts.
This morning about half way through reading your newsletter, I stopped to talk with my husband, who was deeply engrossed in his work (yes, he is a workaholic exactly as you describe) to remind him of our original plan. He scratched his head and made a comment indicating that this was news to him. I have to forgive him because he hadn't followed the thought process I had just experienced.
For us to stick to a plan that essentially is about making changes not only on a physical level, but on a deep psychological level too, requires regular reminders of what the plan is and why we are doing it. So, thank you Anna for poking me into action. I will now return to writing the details of our original idea to help us consult with when making decisions or just to remind us which direction we are moving in.
I love this piece!! I had no idea there's a movement of postworkists. Being involved in climate change issues, that's such an interesting piece of the big puzzle. Everything you say about your own experience is relatable as well. I keep telling myself I should take Wednesdays off. I'm almost certain I would be just as productive (not the point, I know, but still...) and I could fit in another workout (still trying to achieve). Why is it SO hard to work LESS?!
I found your essay on anti work a little ridiculous and just plain baffling. As if someone is making us have the lifestyle we all chose to have. Reduce your needs, desires and bills and reduce the need for money and decrease your work load! Is the math that hard? I laughed out loud reading about the person who took a lower paying job and is now miserable becoz they can’t make ends meet!! Seriously? Did they ever consider simply readjusting their lifestyle to their new income?
If you (as in generic “you”) truly don’t want to work, don’t but then if no one will support your lifestyle what is the recommended remedy here? That your brother/ neighbor must support you? As in “from each according to his ability to each according to his need”? Or put another way, the “state” will take care of your needs. We all know how well that has gone in anti-free-enterprise economic states, right? So well that they have to lock up their citizens inside and shoot them if they try to escape the paradise!
All of this call to tear down work is well and good on paper but how exactly does the state create wealth if we want a system where no one works? I mean am I missing something or is the anti work crowd complaining because they can’t get past the laws of physics?!
This is not to say workaholism is not a problem. It is but who’s forcing it on you? Your need to keep up with the Joneses, your chosen lifestyle, or your need to escape other aspects of life? Whose problem is it if you can’t balance your psychological needs or if you can’t stop “competing” with the person next door for money or status or a bigger tv.
Please stop conflating personal psychological problems with systemic issues that larger society or the state or the “system” needs to solve for you. If you want to opt out I say go ahead, have the courage to do it and live with the consequences!