In the fifty years since Parachute’s publication, mentions of the phrase “dream job” in books have grown by over 10,000 percent. If workism is the religion, dream jobs are the deities. But there’s a dark side of expecting work to always be dreamy. “The problem with this gospel—your dream job is out there, so never stop hustling—is that it’s a blueprint for spiritual and physical exhaustion,” writes Derek Thompson. “It is a diabolical game that creates a prize so tantalizing yet rare that almost nobody wins, but everybody feels obligated to play forever.”
