The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work

by Simone Stolzoff

That said, few Americans are immune to the culture of workism in this country. Regardless of class, nearly every worker I spoke to commented on the pressure of living in a country where self-worth and work are so tightly bound. Here, capitalism is not just an economic system; it’s also a social philosophy—a philosophy that says a person is as valuable as their output. In the United States, productivity is more than a measurement; it’s a moral good.

The answer, in short, is that the expectation that work will always be fulfilling can lead to suffering. Studies show that an “obsessive passion” for work leads to higher rates of burnout and work-related stress.

Research aside, we know intuitively that sky-high expectations are a recipe for disappointment. When we expect work to help us self-actualize—to constantly motivate and fulfill us—settling for anything less can feel like a failure. A job, like a baby, is not always something that you can control. Tethering your sense of self-worth to your career is a perilous game.

Good enough is an invitation to choose what sufficiency means—to define your relationship to your work without letting it define you.

“Work will always be work. Some people work doing what they love. Other people work so that they can do what they love when they’re not working. Neither is more noble.”

A life completely consumed by work crowds out other aspects of ourselves. In the words of psychotherapist Esther Perel, too many people bring the best of themselves to work, and bring the leftovers home. When we give all of our energy to our professional lives, we deprive the other identities that exist within each of us—spouse, parent, sibling, neighbor, friend, citizen, artist, traveler—of the nutrients to grow.

Much as an investor benefits from diversifying their investments, we, too, benefit from diversifying our sources of identity and meaning. Meaning is not something that is bestowed upon us. It’s something we create. And as with any act of creation, it requires time and energy—the time to invest in nonwork pursuits and the energy to actually do so.

Developing a healthier relationship to work is not as simple as quitting your job or taking up knitting. Not everyone has the ability to dictate their hours or choose their profession. What we can control, however, are the expectations we place on our jobs. We can choose to subordinate work to life, rather than the other way around. It starts with a simple acknowledgment: you aren’t what you do.

Sufficiency isn’t two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn’t a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough. Brené Brown

Psychological research shows that when we invest, as Divya did, in different sides of ourselves, we’re better at dealing with setbacks. In contrast, the more we let one part of who we are define us, the less resilient we are to change. For example, in one study, Patricia Linville found that subjects with a more differentiated idea of themselves—what she calls having greater “self-complexity”—were less prone to depression and physical illnesses following a stressful event. When people who had less self-complexity experienced a stressful event, it was more likely for that stress to “spill over” to other parts of their lives.

This makes intuitive sense. If your identity is entirely tied to one aspect of who you are—whether it be your job, your net worth, or your “success” as a parent—one snag, even if it’s out of your control, can shatter your self-esteem. But if you cultivate greater self-complexity and distinct sources of meaning, you’ll be better equipped to weather the inevitable challenges of life.

Overidentifying with just one aspect of yourself can also be dangerous. Take Junior Seau, a linebacker who played twenty years in the National Football League. He led his team, the San Diego Chargers, to a Super Bowl championship and was voted to a record twelve-straight Pro Bowls. B...

“When you grow up an athlete and you live in a world that praises you all the time . . . the frequency of praise that comes your way increases,” Miles McPherson, a teammate of Seau’s, told ESPN after his passing. “All that one day stops. But your body, mind and heart are conditioned to such a high level of excitement, a...

Unfortunately, Seau’s story is not an isolated incident. From professional athletes to military veterans, CEOs to supermodels, losing your professional identity can be a shock to the system—especially if you haven’t had the time or made the effort to invest in other sources of meaning in your life.

But none of us is just one thing. We are workers, but we are also siblings and citizens, hobbyists and neighbors. In this way, identities are like plants: they take time and attention to grow. Unless we make a conscious effort to water them, they can easily wither.

Diversifying our identity is about more than mitigating the shock of losing our job. We shouldn’t do it just to avoid the sting of negative feedback or the disorientation of retirement. We should diversify our identities because doing so allows us to be more well-rounded people. It allows us to contribute to the world in different ways and to develop a sense of self-worth beyond the economic value we produce. And ironically, research shows that people who have hobbies, interests, and passions outside of work tend to be more productive workers, too.