Speaker 1: Welcome to Hod of Money. I'm Joel and I am
Speaker 1: Matt and today we're discussing The Good Enough Job with
Speaker 1: Simone stoles Off.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to start today's episode a little differently.
Speaker 2: Let's start out with a quote. Work will always be work.
Speaker 2: Some people work doing what they love. Other people work
Speaker 2: so that they can do what they love when they
Speaker 2: are not working. Neither is more noble. This is a
Speaker 2: quote from Simone stoles Off's new book, The Good Enough Job,
Speaker 2: that is set to publish here in a couple of weeks,
Speaker 2: and it's actually made by Simone's favorite writer who happens
Speaker 2: to be a poet. And after going through this book,
Speaker 2: I don't think anything else we could say could actually
Speaker 2: encapsulate Simo's book any better. But we are going to
Speaker 2: discuss a number of themes from the book, how to
Speaker 2: basically diversify your identity. We're gonna talk about the similarities
Speaker 2: between work and religion, or maybe the dissimilarities, uh, the
Speaker 2: false promise of chasing after status. All of this we're
Speaker 2: going to discuss.
Speaker 3: Today and more.
Speaker 2: Simone stoles Off, thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 2: on the podcast.
Speaker 4: It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: Guys, we're glad to have you and some of your
Speaker 1: closest friends call you Simo, So we assume just based
Speaker 1: on our five minute chat beforehand, we can we're allowed
Speaker 1: to call you.
Speaker 2: That is that we switching to Semo.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Oh, it's kind of like my cocktail party line.
Speaker 4: You know, it's like Simo. It's like Nemo with an S.
Speaker 1: You know, awesome. So we'll probably refer to you that
Speaker 1: way through a lot of this episode. But Simo, we're
Speaker 1: excited to chat with you. And the first question we
Speaker 1: ask every guest who comes on the show is what
Speaker 1: is their craft beer equivalent? And what we mean by
Speaker 1: that is, while you're saving and investing diligently for the future,
Speaker 1: what is it that you proactively spend money on that
Speaker 1: some people might think is a little weird or you're
Speaker 1: just thrilled to spend money in a certain way while
Speaker 1: you're still handling money.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, so my craft beer equivalent isn't the most
Speaker 4: expensive purchase. It might pile up if you do it
Speaker 4: as frequently as I do. But I am a chocolate
Speaker 4: chip cookie fiend. I actually hate a chocolate chip cookie
Speaker 4: every single day for four years of college. It's like
Speaker 4: become a little bit of like it's like my brand now,
Speaker 4: you know, like my friends like me. It's like the
Speaker 4: cookie guy. But I still love them, you know, And
Speaker 4: I like I'm not much of like a chocolate chip
Speaker 4: cookie snob, you know, I'm a kind of equal opportunist,
Speaker 4: from the famous amos to the artisanal like eight dollar
Speaker 4: cookie that I bought the other day.
Speaker 3: Are you baking your own ever?
Speaker 4: Sometimes? Yeah, I don't know. I feel like cookies are
Speaker 4: kind of like Beatles songs, like even the not great
Speaker 4: ones are still like pretty good.
Speaker 2: Feel that way if you're mentioning famous amos in the
Speaker 2: same as like an all, let me come on, who
Speaker 2: can who's actually putting those things down? But I guess
Speaker 2: you do not discriminate one.
Speaker 1: Do you ever go off brand like the fake chips
Speaker 1: a hole or something like that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll do it.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I'm just like easily pleased. It's maybe not best for
Speaker 4: like my cultural high brownness, but I like enjoy cookies
Speaker 4: in all of their forms.
Speaker 3: No, I love it. Okay.
Speaker 2: One last question about the cookies. Do you have a
Speaker 2: favorite for lack of better words, adjunct, like, what's something
Speaker 2: that you like in chocolate chip cookies that may not
Speaker 2: necessarily be traditional.
Speaker 3: And if you say raisins this interviews over.
Speaker 4: Now, yeah, I'm a purist. I think I my like
Speaker 4: hotter take literally is that I like under baked cookies.
Speaker 4: I like cookies that still feel like a little gooey
Speaker 4: in the middle, and like the closer that you can
Speaker 4: get to the cookie dough spectrum without giving yourself sammonilla.
Speaker 3: No, I like that respect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the ability to fold a cookie in half is
Speaker 2: better than.
Speaker 4: You're getting to like my Italian roots.
Speaker 3: Way, yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I love it all right. That's somebody loves to have
Speaker 2: into your book on it like you. So you say
Speaker 2: that you're recovering workest in the intro it kind of
Speaker 2: it almost feels like an AA introduction introduction, honestly, But
Speaker 2: talk to us about maybe when it dawned on you
Speaker 2: that you were overvaluing the role of work in your
Speaker 2: own life, Like, what.
Speaker 3: Is it that caused you to reevaluate that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, you know, I think we're all about the
Speaker 4: same age, kind of smack in the middle of the
Speaker 4: millennial generation. And I think I was raised on certain scripts.
Speaker 4: You know, I grew up with lots of opportunity, which
Speaker 4: I'm grateful for, and also this mentality of you know,
Speaker 4: I could sort of do whatever I wanted, and it
Speaker 4: was just a matter of figuring out what particular career
Speaker 4: path or what particular job was the best reflection of
Speaker 4: my unique passion and personality. And I spent my twenties
Speaker 4: really playing goldilocks with different jobs. I worked in tech
Speaker 4: for a few years, and I worked in food for
Speaker 4: a few years, and I worked in journalism for a
Speaker 4: few years. And it really came to ahead at a
Speaker 4: moment when I was choosing between these two particular jobs.
Speaker 4: One was to be a staff writer at a digital
Speaker 4: magazine and the other was to be a designer at
Speaker 4: this global design agency. And on one hand, it's like, oh,
Speaker 4: agony is me, you know, like the plight of deciding
Speaker 4: between two attractive job authors. But you know, maybe you
Speaker 4: guys or some of your listeners have been in a
Speaker 4: similar crossroads before, you know, For me, I really didn't
Speaker 4: feel like I was choosing between two jobs as much
Speaker 4: as I was choosing between two versions of me. And
Speaker 4: this sort of like career and decision moment I was
Speaker 4: probably twenty eight or twenty nine really threw me for
Speaker 4: an existential loop, and I was wondering, sort of, how
Speaker 4: did my identity become so entwined with what I did
Speaker 4: for work, what I did to make money? And that
Speaker 4: was sort of the first kernel that led to what
Speaker 4: became the research project that eventually became the book.
Speaker 1: Nice Well, and yeah, I think probably, Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe some people have not had that, and they're just
Speaker 1: nose to the grindstone and they haven't had that moment
Speaker 1: of reflection. Hopefully this discussion like that we're going to
Speaker 1: have today pushes people to have a little bit of
Speaker 1: that at least start to initiate the thought process. Am
Speaker 1: I putting too much effort or identity into my work?
Speaker 1: But can you give us a brief history lesson about
Speaker 1: how we got to the point where careers became so
Speaker 1: central to our identity, to our existence. It seems like
Speaker 1: it didn't used to be that way, and now careers
Speaker 1: are kind of all defining in a lot of ways.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, there's many different possible ways to answer
Speaker 4: this question. And maybe if your last name is Miller,
Speaker 4: you probably condect to differ that. You know, identity and
Speaker 4: careers have been tied together for a long time. But
Speaker 4: I think there is something that is uniquely American about this,
Speaker 4: and also something that is unique to the last sort
Speaker 4: of fifty years or so, and so I think there
Speaker 4: are kind of economic arguments. There's political arguments, there are
Speaker 4: social arguments, cultural arguments. The historical one is just the
Speaker 4: fact that the Protestant work ethic and capitalism we're really
Speaker 4: the two strands that entwine to form our country's DNA.
Speaker 4: From the beginning, being American was synonymous with your ability
Speaker 4: to be a productive member of society or to be
Speaker 4: able to work hard. There's also kind of economic arguments.
Speaker 4: I think this really differs depending on what side of
Speaker 4: the income spectrum you're looking at. On the sort of
Speaker 4: lower earning side, wages have been stagnant for the last
Speaker 4: forty or fifty years, which means that people have had
Speaker 4: to work more just to earn the same money to
Speaker 4: buy the same loaf of bread. Has driven a lot
Speaker 4: of people to work long hours. On the other side,
Speaker 4: there's the tax structure of our country and the way
Speaker 4: that employment and healthcare are often tied together that make
Speaker 4: the consequences of losing work so dire, and also the
Speaker 4: ability to consolidate wealth with the more hours that you work,
Speaker 4: greater abilities to do so. The argument I really focus
Speaker 4: on in the book is the sort of subjective or
Speaker 4: the cultural value that Americans place on their jobs. You know,
Speaker 4: we live in a country that treats CEOs like celebrities,
Speaker 4: and we plaster always do what you love on the
Speaker 4: walls of our co working in space. We parade around
Speaker 4: our job titles and small talk conversation and on our
Speaker 4: social media profiles. And there is really this sense that
Speaker 4: you are what you do. And I think that is
Speaker 4: unique to a certain extent to this age that we're
Speaker 4: in right now. We're work is very much in vogue,
Speaker 4: or maybe in the last three or so years, with
Speaker 4: the pandemic hotly contested about its role in our lives.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, and you say it's becoming something that is
Speaker 2: turning out to be more global, Like it's essentially become
Speaker 2: an American export that other countries are now starting to
Speaker 2: follow in our footsteps, sort of like Levi's it's like,
Speaker 2: not only do you get the genes, but you also
Speaker 2: get our ridiculous work ethic.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean, I think the way that I
Speaker 4: frame it is like I think workism, which is a
Speaker 4: term that was originally coined by the journalist Derek Thompson
Speaker 4: in the Atlantic. It's the idea of like treating work
Speaker 4: akin to a religious identity. Yeah, the one thing that
Speaker 4: you look to is just a paycheck, but also for
Speaker 4: totally a community, a sense of self worth, a sense
Speaker 4: of purpose in your life. I think it's primarily a
Speaker 4: phenomenon that is most prevalent among people that have a
Speaker 4: certain level of privilege, you know, college educated Americans, But
Speaker 4: that doesn't mean that it exists. It doesn't exist in
Speaker 4: other countries, it doesn't exist in other sort of class strata.
Speaker 4: It just is particularly pronounced for people that have, truthfully
Speaker 4: the privilege to be able to choose what they want.
Speaker 3: To do totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And you kind of just touched on something
Speaker 2: I was going to follow up there with, which was religion,
Speaker 2: because you see that. But one of the problems is
Speaker 2: that more folks are trying to get the meaning out
Speaker 2: of their job that they used to find in religion.
Speaker 2: And so is a solution Should we just go to synagogue?
Speaker 2: Should we just go to church? More? Does that solve
Speaker 2: all of our problems? What is the I guess the
Speaker 2: problem or the difficulty in finding or putting our faith
Speaker 2: within our jobs, within our careers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, the data on the religiosity of Americans
Speaker 4: is pretty interesting. You know, if you look back to
Speaker 4: the height of religiosity in the US and sort of
Speaker 4: the nineteen fifties, it's something like six or seven percent
Speaker 4: of Americans weren't religious, and everyone else had a pretty
Speaker 4: strong association with an organized religion. And there's been this
Speaker 4: precipitous decline in the past forty years where today nearly
Speaker 4: one in three almost in the latest data, Americans don't
Speaker 4: have a particular religious affiliation, whether they're agnostic or atheist,
Speaker 4: or just don't believe in anything in particular. And so,
Speaker 4: you know, when you think about the role that religion
Speaker 4: plays in people's lives, it is obviously something to believe in,
Speaker 4: a potential path to transcendence, but it's also a primary community.
Speaker 4: It's a primary source of your identity. And so with
Speaker 4: the decline of these organized religions, the need for belonging
Speaker 4: and for purpose still remains. And the argument that they
Speaker 4: make in the book is that work, for many people
Speaker 4: has taken on that role. But the problem is that
Speaker 4: that's not necessarily a burden. Our jobs are designed to bear.
Speaker 4: You know, this is particularly visible in the past few
Speaker 4: years with the pandemic. You know, some people, whether it
Speaker 4: was due to layoffs or furloughs, lost their jobs, you know,
Speaker 4: and if your work is your primary source of identity
Speaker 4: and meaning and you lose it, what's left well.
Speaker 1: And even for folks who didn't lose their job, maybe
Speaker 1: they started working from home in that connection to the
Speaker 1: culture and to the community of work was sever and
Speaker 1: so that kind of changed their relationship how they interacted
Speaker 1: with their work as well. So it was seen more
Speaker 1: as like a I do this for a paycheck when
Speaker 1: I can, and it lost some of its all encompassing nature.
Speaker 1: You think that's true too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely. I mean I think regardless of what type
Speaker 4: of work, you had changed in some way in the
Speaker 4: past three years. And you know, I started reporting this
Speaker 4: book before the pandemic. I definitely did not anticipate a
Speaker 4: global pandemic helping everyone sort of reconsider their relationship to
Speaker 4: their jobs. But it was this huge wake up call
Speaker 4: I think for everyone. You know, their job wasn't exactly
Speaker 4: what it used to be. And I think people who
Speaker 4: were maybe over indexed and looking to work as a
Speaker 4: source of identity and meaning in their life were left
Speaker 4: for a rude awakening, you know. And the main sort
Speaker 4: of argument that I make in the book, when it
Speaker 4: gets into a little bit more of an editorial section,
Speaker 4: is about what you said about the value of diversifying
Speaker 4: your identity and sources of meaning beyond just what you
Speaker 4: do for work. You know, this isn't just to protect
Speaker 4: in the case that you get laid off, But I
Speaker 4: think one of the risks of a work centric existence
Speaker 4: is that we can neglect other parts of who we are.
Speaker 1: And one other thing I want to follow by I
Speaker 1: mentioned how there is a work from home class. I
Speaker 1: feel like the pandemic kind of it created dichotomy, right,
Speaker 1: and we saw other people incredibly overworked and theirship their
Speaker 1: job changed in a different way if you worked at
Speaker 1: a grocery store. My dad, who was stocking shelves in
Speaker 1: a grocery store at the ripe old age of sixty eight,
Speaker 1: like that was a different thing, right than what a
Speaker 1: lot of other people experienced. A laptop class to work
Speaker 1: from any work class. And so it really was kind
Speaker 1: of a tale of two Americans and how they relate
Speaker 1: to work. And everyone was questioning their relationship to work,
Speaker 1: but for different reasons.
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, I mean, I love harping on that
Speaker 4: term essential worker that was thrown around so often during
Speaker 4: the pandemic. It's like we saw that many of these
Speaker 4: workers were essential. My partner is an elementary school teacher,
Speaker 4: you know, and maybe similar to your father. Her workload
Speaker 4: and the risk that she had to expose herself to
Speaker 4: increased astronomically over the course of the pandemic. And yet
Speaker 4: we still haven't necessarily given these workers that we deem
Speaker 4: essential the protections and the pay and the benefit to
Speaker 4: ensure that they can keep doing their jobs safely for
Speaker 4: us all.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned diversifying your identity. Can you share some
Speaker 2: of the benefits of diversifying your identity? Right, So, when
Speaker 2: it comes to investing your money, you want to make
Speaker 2: sure that you don't have all of your eggs in
Speaker 2: one basket. And essentially, what you're saying here is that
Speaker 2: we are putting all of our eggs into this basket
Speaker 2: of career or job title or whatever it is that
Speaker 2: we find most attractive about our jobs. What are some
Speaker 2: of the benefits that you found when we take a
Speaker 2: step back and when we look to some other outlets
Speaker 2: some other ways that we are able to find our
Speaker 2: identity totally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, much as an investor benefits from diversifying
Speaker 4: the stocks in their portfolio, I think we two really
Speaker 4: benefit from diversifying the sources of identity and meaning in
Speaker 4: our lives. And there's some research to back up. You know,
Speaker 4: there's studies about what researchers call developing greater self complexity,
Speaker 4: or having different self aspects, which essentially means just investing
Speaker 4: in different parts of ourselves. You know, we're not just workers.
Speaker 4: We're also siblings and neighbors and citizens and friends and parents,
Speaker 4: and you know, these identities they need investment, you know.
Speaker 4: They One of the main reasons or arguments for doing
Speaker 4: so is that in the case of it doesn't even
Speaker 4: have to be a layoff, but any sort of bad
Speaker 4: news in the work realm, when we have a more
Speaker 4: diversified identity portfolio, it's less likely to spill over into
Speaker 4: other aspects of our lives. We're more resilient if we
Speaker 4: have greater self complexity. There's also a semblance not just
Speaker 4: in the sort of the bare case of something tragic
Speaker 4: or bad happening, but in just the value of being
Speaker 4: able to give our time and attention into other parts
Speaker 4: of who we are. It's important to keep in mind
Speaker 4: that identities are sort of like plants, you know, like
Speaker 4: they need time and intention in order to grow. And
Speaker 4: I think part of the risk of living in a
Speaker 4: life that's so centered around work is that work doesn't
Speaker 4: just take our best time and often also takes our
Speaker 4: best energy as well. And so one of the arguments
Speaker 4: that Ike in the book is that in order to
Speaker 4: diversify your identity beyond what you do for work, you
Speaker 4: have to do things other than work, which may seem
Speaker 4: a little obvious, but you know, for me at least,
Speaker 4: I can definitely relate to the experience of you know,
Speaker 4: you go to work, you come home, you're exhausted. All
Speaker 4: you have the energy to do is sort of turn
Speaker 4: off your brain and turn on Netflix. And while that can,
Speaker 4: you know, temporarily be a nice way to recharge or
Speaker 4: you know, to get lost in another world, if you
Speaker 4: really want to have other sources of meaning in your life,
Speaker 4: you need to be actively doing things and in the community,
Speaker 4: doing things with others, investing in your relationships. And so
Speaker 4: that's what I advocate for.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's about just being a well rounded individual. And
Speaker 2: as you were talking about religion a second ago, it
Speaker 2: maybe think through how getting laid off from a job
Speaker 2: that's not a I mean, it's not something that anybody
Speaker 2: wants to go through, but it's not like it's the
Speaker 2: equivalent of having your faith taken from you. And so
Speaker 2: I see that as being another problem with viewing your job.
Speaker 2: And you know, almost to the same extent that you
Speaker 2: view religion is that faith is it's such a personal
Speaker 2: and internal thing, and the ability for somebody outside of
Speaker 2: you to take that away kind of goes counter to
Speaker 2: I think how a lot of individuals view their faith,
Speaker 2: how they view their spirituality. And so yeah, for you
Speaker 2: to show up one day and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: it's just like, hey, this thing that you've depended on
Speaker 2: as much as someone would typically depend on their faith,
Speaker 2: as oh, it's no longer there. That could be incredibly
Speaker 2: dev stadium even more tenuous connection to our work than
Speaker 2: we think. And some people who if you put your
Speaker 2: hope and dreams and faith and future expectations all inside
Speaker 2: of this one vehicle which is your career, at some
Speaker 2: point problematic there's a really good chance that someone can
Speaker 2: take that away from you, it's like a janguitower and
Speaker 2: it's like you're down to just like a singular block
Speaker 2: at the bottom. If you were to pull that one thing,
Speaker 2: it's like everything else just completely falls up. Year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you guys know the writer David Foster Wallace,
Speaker 4: he has this very iconic speech, this is Water, and
Speaker 4: one of the points that he makes is that there's
Speaker 4: no such thing as not worshiping. We all worship something,
Speaker 4: either consciously or unconsciously, and whatever you end up worshiping
Speaker 4: will probably eat you alive. You know, worship beauty and
Speaker 4: you'll feel like you're never beautiful enough. Or worship money
Speaker 4: and you feel like you never have enough of it.
Speaker 4: And I think the same is true with work. You know,
Speaker 4: it's what gets us into these systems where are you know,
Speaker 4: chasing carrots their entire lives and never fully feeling full.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: It's like you can chase all the next rung on
Speaker 4: the career ladder, the next title or status or salary band.
Speaker 4: But unlike these sort of material things of the working world,
Speaker 4: religion is less easily falsifiable, you know. And I don't
Speaker 4: think we necessarily have to all find whatever, you know,
Speaker 4: God out there exists for us. That's definitely one means
Speaker 4: of doing so. But by having other sources of meaning,
Speaker 4: we're able to just bounce back if say, your manager
Speaker 4: says something disparaging over the course of the work day.
Speaker 4: If you can show up as as a good father
Speaker 4: that night, or show up as a good third basement
Speaker 4: for your recreational softball team, or show up as you know,
Speaker 4: a very present friend to a buddy who is going
Speaker 4: through something. All of those I identities can help soften
Speaker 4: the inevitable bumps we face them along the reative work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the places where work falls short.
Speaker 1: I'm still gunning for that senior podcast host title that
Speaker 1: Matt has not bestowed any but I don't know, maybe.
Speaker 3: Soon, two more years.
Speaker 1: It's always two more years ago. I know you've always
Speaker 1: he hold that like a care in front of me
Speaker 1: that I could never attain. But we've got more questions
Speaker 1: we want to get to with you, Cimo. We sespecially
Speaker 1: want to talk about the role that passion or fulfillment
Speaker 1: plays and work like do we need to divorce it completely?
Speaker 1: And so we'll get to questions on that and maybe
Speaker 1: some practical suggestions for how to find to start to
Speaker 1: remove our identity from mostly being centered around our work.
Speaker 1: We'll get to some of those those questions dot combo
Speaker 1: right after this.
Speaker 3: All right, we are back from.
Speaker 2: The break talking to Cimo stoles Off about the good
Speaker 2: enough job and Sema talk to us about meaning, talk
Speaker 2: to us about purpose and work, because it certainly seems.
Speaker 3: Like that there is this this.
Speaker 2: Push to find like ultimate fulfillment in your career. But
Speaker 2: how do you think we should think about that role,
Speaker 2: specifically the role that passion plays in our in our
Speaker 2: nine to five, Like, is the dream job?
Speaker 3: Is it just a pipe dream at this point?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a good question, you know. And I think
Speaker 4: when you like look at the cover of the book
Speaker 4: or even read the title, you know, the subtitle is
Speaker 4: Reclaiming Life from Work, you might assume that my argument
Speaker 4: is some it's like anti work, you know. And this
Speaker 4: idea of like anti work has become a bit of
Speaker 4: a meme or trend recently. There's a huge subreddit about
Speaker 4: anti work, and it's there's a lot of cultural cachet
Speaker 4: and being able to be like anti capitalist or against
Speaker 4: the man. And yet I don't think that going full
Speaker 4: on to that end of the spectrum is necessarily helpful
Speaker 4: or will be a recipe for fulfillment when it comes
Speaker 4: to passion. You know, I think I have certainly derived
Speaker 4: a lot of meaning and purpose and passion from my
Speaker 4: work myself. But I think, you know, I rely a
Speaker 4: lot on this chapter of the research of this woman
Speaker 4: at Michigan State named Aaron Check who wrote this book
Speaker 4: called The Trouble with Passion, And basically her argument is
Speaker 4: that not all of us have the same on ramps
Speaker 4: to be able to translate our passions into our means
Speaker 4: of making money, and for people who have fewer opportunities,
Speaker 4: it can actually exacerbate inner quality when we tell everyone
Speaker 4: to follow their passion, but some people don't have as
Speaker 4: much access to passion jobs as others. And I think
Speaker 4: a lot of times, you know, passion can be a
Speaker 4: stand in for fair compensation or fair pay. There's this
Speaker 4: concept in the book I talk about that's called vocational AWE,
Speaker 4: which is the idea that certain industries have a sort
Speaker 4: of perceived righteousness, like a halo effect. I'm thinking about
Speaker 4: things like healthcare workers, or like teachers, or people that
Speaker 4: work in the nonprofit sector. And it was a concept
Speaker 4: that was originally coined by this librarian, this woman named
Speaker 4: Fobasi Utar, and she observed how this sort of rhetoric
Speaker 4: around follow your passion or you know, vocational awe, like
Speaker 4: the idea that you should be in it for something
Speaker 4: more than the money, can actually cover up a lot
Speaker 4: of the malpractice and exploitation that exists within all of
Speaker 4: these different fields. You know, I've this mentor this woman
Speaker 4: and Helen Peterson, and she says, most of the time
Speaker 4: all passion can get you is the excuse to be
Speaker 4: paid very little. And so you know, it's a fine balance. Obviously,
Speaker 4: you know, we work more than we do just about
Speaker 4: anything else in our life, and you know how we
Speaker 4: spend those hours matter. But I think being clear headed
Speaker 4: about the fact that work is first and foremost an
Speaker 4: economic contract. It's an exchange of your time and your
Speaker 4: labor for money. The better it can certainly be more
Speaker 4: than those things. But I think the more sort of
Speaker 4: clear headed we can be about its fundamental purpose, the
Speaker 4: better off will be.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talked too about how like stagnating wages, and
Speaker 1: we've seen a little bit of that change recently. We've
Speaker 1: seen kind of especially at the lower end of the
Speaker 1: income spectrum. We've seen higher paces in wage growth, still
Speaker 1: not making up for lots of decades where that wasn't happening.
Speaker 1: But I guess so there is that element where for
Speaker 1: a lot of folks pay hasn't kept up and so
Speaker 1: having to work more hours just to make ends meet
Speaker 1: is a thing for sure. But I guess I want
Speaker 1: to ask you too, there's a lot of people Matt
Speaker 1: and I talk about this all the time. We see
Speaker 1: stats where people make two hundred k a year and
Speaker 1: they're still living paycheck to paycheck. So often for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, it's not just that they're not getting
Speaker 1: paid enough. So do you think not being a personal
Speaker 1: finance nerd to the extead of Matt and I like
Speaker 1: our poor savings habits in that intense reliance on that
Speaker 1: income from our day job, does that make matters worse
Speaker 1: that we are basically we tied at the hip to
Speaker 1: our employer, that we don't have enough margin or if
Speaker 1: we did lose our job or if we wanted to
Speaker 1: pursue something else, that we don't really have that ability totally.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, I think there's sort of like two
Speaker 4: parts to the question. There's one is like the what
Speaker 4: we've observed in the pandemic, where the just a monochrome
Speaker 4: of kind of social support from the government allowed a
Speaker 4: lot of people to leave jobs that weren't good enough
Speaker 4: for them. And so, you know, I think one of
Speaker 4: the misconceptions about the Great Resignation was that it was
Speaker 4: just people kind of dropping out of the labor force
Speaker 4: and sitting on their couch all day, Whereas an actuality,
Speaker 4: the majority of people that left jobs during the heart
Speaker 4: of the pandemic actually just left to find better jobs.
Speaker 4: So I think that's really important to consider. It's like,
Speaker 4: when we feel like there is a little bit of
Speaker 4: government support or just a less fraid social safety net,
Speaker 4: people feel more empowered or define work that works better
Speaker 4: for them. And then there's kind of the second half
Speaker 4: of your question, which is, you know, thinking about people
Speaker 4: and that we're making a lot of money that might
Speaker 4: not have very much slack and their budget or their
Speaker 4: spending habits. And I think a lot of that comes
Speaker 4: back to sort of the consumerism that is so prevalent
Speaker 4: in America and the pressure to always be spending and
Speaker 4: keeping up with the joneses and having the nice new
Speaker 4: thing and sort of foregoing some of the long term
Speaker 4: benefits that we can get from saving or having just
Speaker 4: you know, more resiliency built into your budget, versus the
Speaker 4: sort of short term rash of getting something that's shiny
Speaker 4: and new consumerism.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what you're talking about. I haven't seen
Speaker 3: that play off this country.
Speaker 2: We talk about that all Batari here on the show Cimo,
Speaker 2: you were discussing how it's like, is it it's like
Speaker 2: a chicken or egg situation where we are spending therefore
Speaker 2: we have to earn more or is it, Oh, we
Speaker 2: don't have the time to dedicate towards developing our identity
Speaker 2: outside of work because we are working so much. It's
Speaker 2: this sort of doom loop that we find ourselves stuck in.
Speaker 2: And I think that's definitely true when it comes to
Speaker 2: our personal finances and how that's intertwined.
Speaker 3: With our careers as well.
Speaker 2: One of the other myths that you tackle, that you
Speaker 2: address is that our coworkers, how we should not necessarily
Speaker 2: view them as family. Oftentimes folks just they believe that line.
Speaker 2: And I'll talk into a buddy of mind, and he's
Speaker 2: after getting laid off. He he highlighted the fact that, man,
Speaker 2: you know, this is a line that I believed. It's
Speaker 2: I'm a manager myself. We live by this line. But
Speaker 2: when the time comes and you get laid off, you
Speaker 2: quickly realize that your family left or coworkers are not
Speaker 2: your family.
Speaker 3: Why is that such a problem?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you know, the desire to form close
Speaker 4: bonds at work isn't misguided, and there have been lots
Speaker 4: of studies to back this up. People that have close
Speaker 4: friends that work tend to be more fulfilled by the job,
Speaker 4: they tend to stay at jobs longer, and so it
Speaker 4: should come as no surprise that companies and especially leaders
Speaker 4: sometimes use the rhetoric of family and the sort of
Speaker 4: bonds that bind us together to try and inspire employees
Speaker 4: to work for the cause or to stay at their
Speaker 4: companies for longer. And I think, similar to your friends,
Speaker 4: so many people have seen over the past two years,
Speaker 4: how that rhetoric can be very shallow. You know, you
Speaker 4: can't fire someone from your company. But even if it
Speaker 4: was true that your workplace could be like your family,
Speaker 4: I'm not sure that's something that we should aspire to.
Speaker 4: You know, most of the families that I know are
Speaker 4: pretty dysfunctional in one way or another. You know, and
Speaker 4: so in some ways the question about like workplace as
Speaker 4: family is sort of just a semantic distinction and just
Speaker 4: about this idea of like how much of our relationship
Speaker 4: should be center in the workplace. And you know, I
Speaker 4: think the argument that I make is like, it's not
Speaker 4: necessarily a problem to have friends at work, but I
Speaker 4: think if your workplace is your sole source of community,
Speaker 4: that is a narrow platform to balance on, you're prone
Speaker 4: to be blown over by a strong gust of wind,
Speaker 4: whether that is getting laid off or your quote unquote
Speaker 4: family member having to give you some tough love in
Speaker 4: the sake of further in the business goals, or even
Speaker 4: just the sort of negative consequences of the sort of
Speaker 4: in groups and the clicks that can form at work.
Speaker 4: There's been research that has found that in more familial workplaces,
Speaker 4: workers are less likely to speak up about wrongdoing, They're
Speaker 4: less likely to be transparent, they're less likely to make
Speaker 4: decisions based on sound business analysis and rigor as opposed
Speaker 4: to just sort of like trusting what your buddy says.
Speaker 4: And so, you know, there are actual material consequences of
Speaker 4: relying too much on social ties as opposed to fundamentally
Speaker 4: what a professional relationship should be, which is based on
Speaker 4: your material goals for the company.
Speaker 1: So it makes me think of the last real job
Speaker 1: I had. Fortunately, I don't have a real job now,
Speaker 1: I just podcast, but the last real job I had,
Speaker 1: there was this thing where once a month they would
Speaker 1: give one hundred dollars awards to like ten different people
Speaker 1: in the company for going above and beyond and for
Speaker 1: doing something just of incredible dedication to the company and
Speaker 1: to the company's efforts. And the people who got rewarded
Speaker 1: is like literally just I mean a hundred bucks. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying one hundred bucks is nothing, but it was
Speaker 1: one hundred bucks. And it was oftentimes somebody who came
Speaker 1: in on the weekend who like left their family in
Speaker 1: the lurch to come take care of something at work.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I'm making it my personal goal
Speaker 1: to never win this award because it felt like that
Speaker 1: was asking too much, creating a tie that it didn't
Speaker 1: deserve that sort of stranglehold over my life. And I
Speaker 1: could tell so many people prided themselves I'm being able
Speaker 1: to win this one hundred dollars recognition in front of
Speaker 1: their coworker sort of thing. And I had just the
Speaker 1: opposite stance, and I was like, this is absurd and
Speaker 1: there's no way I ever want to be found up
Speaker 1: on that podium accepting the award because it will have
Speaker 1: meant that I dropped obligations and duties that matter a
Speaker 1: whole lot to me. So I guess that's where I
Speaker 1: want to ask, too, how do we find create a
Speaker 1: proper attachment to work or we are working hard, where
Speaker 1: we're producing good work, where we are a part of
Speaker 1: the organization in a meaningful way without going above and beyond.
Speaker 1: We don't want to be laxa Daisa whole, but we
Speaker 1: also don't want to over exert ourselves and basically inhibit
Speaker 1: the ability for those other identity forming necessities to take place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I love the question. It reminds me
Speaker 4: of office space where to for anistans wearing the vest
Speaker 4: with like flair at the.
Speaker 2: Restaurant pieces of flair exactly.
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, she's wearing what the expectation was set,
Speaker 4: but like the idea is that you shouldn't wear the minimum.
Speaker 4: You should be going above and beyond and wearing the
Speaker 4: most flair you know. And I think, like it's amazing
Speaker 4: how easy sometimes it is to incentivize workers to stay
Speaker 4: late or to work on the weekends. There's sort of
Speaker 4: like the equivalent of like the free T shirt that
Speaker 4: you can get, you know, like, what is about one
Speaker 4: hundred dollars actually costing the company or what is it
Speaker 4: costing you? So in the book, I advocate for a
Speaker 4: more transactional approach to work. And it might sound crass
Speaker 4: to treat a job as a transaction, you know, especially
Speaker 4: because we've been told that jobs are meant to be
Speaker 4: meanings and identities and vocations and callings, not mere paychecks.
Speaker 4: But I think a more transactional approach to work can
Speaker 4: actually benefit both employers and employees. I think it freese
Speaker 4: employers to be able to be straightforward about what the
Speaker 4: expectations for good work looks like, to be clear and
Speaker 4: setting up you know, this is what success would mean,
Speaker 4: and these are the numbers that we're hoping you hit.
Speaker 4: This is the sort of standards that we have here
Speaker 4: as a company. And it frees employeees to you know,
Speaker 4: talk about compensation in a fair way and not think
Speaker 4: that somehow talking about money is undermining the best interest
Speaker 4: of the company. It freese employees to understand what is
Speaker 4: expected of them, and more than anything, it frees employees
Speaker 4: to treat work as part of, but not the entirety,
Speaker 4: of their lives. And you know, we're talking a lot
Speaker 4: about quiet quitting and workers that are sort of phoning
Speaker 4: it in. I don't actually think that is a recipe
Speaker 4: for fulfillment or happiness either, you know, Like, I'm sure
Speaker 4: we can all relate to the workdays where you don't
Speaker 4: have enough work to do and you're sort of just
Speaker 4: twiddling your thumbs and the clock is moving slower than
Speaker 4: you thought was humanly possible. I think treating work as
Speaker 4: like a necessary evil is not necessarily a recipe for
Speaker 4: fulfillment either. But I think why social media was invented
Speaker 4: exactly just to fill all the it's like as it
Speaker 4: fills all the unoccupied space in our days. But you know,
Speaker 4: I think it's it's finding that balance of like, what
Speaker 4: do you want works role to be in your life?
Speaker 4: How does that intersect with the necessities to do a
Speaker 4: good enough job for your company, and how you can
Speaker 4: invest the time and energy that you have in other
Speaker 4: aspects of who you are. What I like about the
Speaker 4: sort of title of the book, The Good Enough Job,
Speaker 4: is that it's intentionally subjective. You know, you get to
Speaker 4: decide what good enough means to you. Maybe it's a
Speaker 4: job that pays a certain amount of money, or maybe
Speaker 4: it's a job that has a certain title or is
Speaker 4: in a certain industry, or maybe it's a job that
Speaker 4: gets off at a certain hour so that you can
Speaker 4: pick up your kids from childcare. But whatever sort of
Speaker 4: your definition of good enough is, I employ you to
Speaker 4: recognize when you have it, because that's what will allow
Speaker 4: you to set better boundaries around when you can say
Speaker 4: the workday is done and not necessarily feel like you're always,
Speaker 4: you know, somehow fallen behind if you're not getting ahead.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, like you said, it's not necessarily a bad thing.
Speaker 2: It's not, and it also shouldn't be your sole focus.
Speaker 2: It's so hard to find that balance. But you've talked
Speaker 2: about setting some of these boundaries here in your book,
Speaker 2: and we're actually going to get to some of the
Speaker 2: practical ways that we can try to help decide for
Speaker 2: ourselves what the good enough job is.
Speaker 3: We'll get to all of that right after this.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back from the break, still talking with
Speaker 1: Cimo stoles Off about doing work that's good enough, and
Speaker 1: I really love that framework, but specifically, how do we
Speaker 1: get there with the day job that we've got going on,
Speaker 1: whether we're self employed or we have, you know, a
Speaker 1: W two job. Let's talk simo for a second about
Speaker 1: drawing better work boundaries, because I love the concept, but
Speaker 1: in practice it seems like it could be a little
Speaker 1: more difficult. How do we make sure that we're working
Speaker 1: the way we want, not being rung dry by our employer,
Speaker 1: and that we still get to keep our job right
Speaker 1: because we still got to pay the mortgage or the
Speaker 1: rents or whatever it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally, I think you know the question with boundaries,
Speaker 4: it is tricky. It can be a fine line, literally,
Speaker 4: and I think sometimes those boundaries are incumbent on the
Speaker 4: worker to draw and sometimes the responsibility should actually lie
Speaker 4: on the employer. My mentor that I mentioned earlier, and
Speaker 4: Helen Peterson, she has this great distinction between the difference
Speaker 4: between boundaries and guardrails. You can think about boundaries as
Speaker 4: sort of like the line and then the all of
Speaker 4: the highway that keeps you from going to from one
Speaker 4: lane to another, whereas guardrails are structural. They're put in
Speaker 4: place by the state they're the metal things on the
Speaker 4: side of the road that keep you from going over.
Speaker 4: And I think, you know, one of the problems with
Speaker 4: individually imposed boundaries is that they inevitably break. You know,
Speaker 4: you can have an intention to work less, but if
Speaker 4: there is a deadline, or it's near the end of
Speaker 4: the quarter and you have a quarterly sales goal, or
Speaker 4: your boss tells you to work more hours, it can
Speaker 4: be hard to raise your hand and be like, actually,
Speaker 4: I have a boundary, you know. I mean, I definitely
Speaker 4: found this in writing the book, you know, the great
Speaker 4: Irony said, I was like working on this book about
Speaker 4: the culture of overwork in America, and in many ways
Speaker 4: I was my own worst manager then. So I would,
Speaker 4: you know, feel crappy on weeks where I didn't hit
Speaker 4: my writing goal and it wouldn't have to open up
Speaker 4: the laptop on the weekend, even though I had a
Speaker 4: quote unquote boundary that I didn't want to do that.
Speaker 4: And so I think, you know, the first point is
Speaker 4: that a lot of the onus to set these boundaries
Speaker 4: actually should rest on the company and on managers and
Speaker 4: creating cultures where it's okay for people to take time off,
Speaker 4: creating plans in place for distributing the workload so that
Speaker 4: there isn't an undue burden placed on any individual, hiring
Speaker 4: enough employees so that there's enough work, enough workers to
Speaker 4: spread out the work, and also creating norms around like
Speaker 4: when you should be on or.
Speaker 3: Off the clock.
Speaker 4: But I also think that individuals also deserve a certain
Speaker 4: level of responsibility that the one step that I always
Speaker 4: come back to is in Japan they have the most
Speaker 4: progressive parental leave and specifically for fathers parntal Leaf policy
Speaker 4: and the world, fathers are entitled to up to a
Speaker 4: year of paid time after they have a kid. The
Speaker 4: last data that I looked at, only five percent of
Speaker 4: Japanese fathers took the entirety of the time that they
Speaker 4: were allotted, And so it sort of points to these
Speaker 4: two necessities. There needs to be the sort of policies
Speaker 4: in place that allow people to do things other than
Speaker 4: work or prioritize things outside of their work life. But
Speaker 4: there also needs to be the cultural will to do so.
Speaker 4: And I think that is what some of this kind
Speaker 4: of deprogramming or having a sufficiency mindset when it comes
Speaker 4: to work can allow us to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's and this is why we love your approach, Cimo.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're finding yourself in the radical middle, because
Speaker 2: I feel like it's easy just to point to one
Speaker 2: end of the spectrum or the other and be like,
Speaker 2: that's the devil if we need to do the or exactly.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you're saying, you know, there is a certain
Speaker 2: degree of responsibility that falls with the actual company, but
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that we're not off the hook. And
Speaker 2: I think in particular, we need a channel our efforts
Speaker 2: in the areas that I think where we can move
Speaker 2: the needle the most for us as individuals. And when
Speaker 2: it came to for you to talk about some of
Speaker 2: the different boundaries that we can draw in our lives,
Speaker 2: like you talk about too, how there are some folks
Speaker 2: who like to have their work to be more integrated
Speaker 2: within their life, right, And so it's not even saying
Speaker 2: that what you should do is have hard boundaries and
Speaker 2: that's going to be how you're going to be able
Speaker 2: to achieve happiness and a successful life. But it seems
Speaker 2: like you're just asking a lot of questions and you
Speaker 2: want individuals to kind of do the hard work, and
Speaker 2: it seems like that that is at the core of
Speaker 2: The problem here is that a lot of individuals they
Speaker 2: are not doing that difficult work. They're not setting goals
Speaker 2: for themselves. You know, they're chasing status. They're chasing after
Speaker 2: rankings or job titles or salaries as opposed to taking
Speaker 2: the time and thinking through what it is that they
Speaker 2: want for themselves. I mean, do you feel like that
Speaker 2: that's accurate?
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally. And you know, I mean the actual form
Speaker 4: out of the book is a chronicle people's stories in
Speaker 4: different industries, and the one that stands out here is
Speaker 4: the story of a Wall Street banker that I tell
Speaker 4: it's perhaps like the most cliche story in the book.
Speaker 4: This guy was a valedictorian and he went to an
Speaker 4: Ivy League college and got a job on Wall Street
Speaker 4: that paid the most, and quickly rose up the ranks
Speaker 4: of the firm and was one of the youngest vps
Speaker 4: in the firm's history. And from his perch at the
Speaker 4: top of the org chart, he realized that he was
Speaker 4: playing a game that he didn't actually want to win, so,
Speaker 4: you know, and he hadn't taken the time to look
Speaker 4: up and ask, what is it that I actually want?
Speaker 4: You know, he was always just chasing what the market valued.
Speaker 4: But I think you know, the wisdom in his story
Speaker 4: is that the other end of the spectrum, where you
Speaker 4: just think about what you want without considering what the
Speaker 4: market wants, is dangerous as well. It's the kind of
Speaker 4: thing that might get you in a situation where you
Speaker 4: assume a lot of student debt to pursue a graduate
Speaker 4: degree that might not actually lead to job on the
Speaker 4: other end, or a situation where you're an artist but
Speaker 4: you're so preoccupied by how you're going to pay rent
Speaker 4: that you can't actually focus on the art that you
Speaker 4: hope to create. And so, you know, it might be
Speaker 4: a little simplistic, but I think it's really important to
Speaker 4: hold both of those incentives in your hand at the
Speaker 4: same time and thinking about, Okay, what is it that
Speaker 4: I value, what is it that the market values, and
Speaker 4: how can I find work that marries the two.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, one of the things I loved about your book
Speaker 1: was that it wasn't some sort of self help ten
Speaker 1: steps to a better relationship with your job, and it
Speaker 1: was more storytelling. But I guess I am also curious
Speaker 1: at the end, like when we talk about having that
Speaker 1: conversation with your boss, with your direct manager, Let's say
Speaker 1: you've been somewhere for years and you feel like, over
Speaker 1: time there's just been this encroachment and so I feel
Speaker 1: like that of your employer on your own personal time,
Speaker 1: and you found it harder to set boundaries, which I
Speaker 1: think probably a lot of people could relate to that.
Speaker 1: What does it look like then, too, I mean you
Speaker 1: might start looking down the road to work somewhere else, right,
Speaker 1: that's potentially one solution. But what if you're like, I
Speaker 1: really like my job, I would just like to have
Speaker 1: a more normal relationship with it. How would you suggest
Speaker 1: starting to have that conversation with your direct supervisor to
Speaker 1: kind of set up boundaries that are going to make
Speaker 1: sense for both of you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you know, there are things that you
Speaker 4: can do within the confines of the workplace, and there
Speaker 4: are things that you can do outside of the workplace.
Speaker 4: When it comes to talking with your manager, I always
Speaker 4: go back to just clarity of expectations. I think one
Speaker 4: thing that drives people to over work is this desire
Speaker 4: to sort of perform that they're doing a good job.
Speaker 4: You know, this in the office world might mean just
Speaker 4: like putting in FaceTime at the office and staying at
Speaker 4: your desk. In the home world, that might be you know,
Speaker 4: just sitting around on Slack or Microsoft teams waiting for
Speaker 4: someone to send you a message. But what we should
Speaker 4: be valuing is the quality of the work itself. And
Speaker 4: so that's where I often start when I advise people
Speaker 4: about talking to their bosses or their managers, having a
Speaker 4: very clear conversation about, Okay, what where are we What
Speaker 4: is the sort of like status of the quality of
Speaker 4: the work that I am producing? Where am I meeting expectations?
Speaker 4: Where am I exceeding expectations? If you want to try
Speaker 4: and get promoted or move to the next level, what
Speaker 4: is the type of work that you are expected to do?
Speaker 4: And just making some of those things clear and so
Speaker 4: you're not just sort of putting in pennies to the
Speaker 4: proverbial work piggybank, hoping to cash out one day, but
Speaker 4: you're actually, you know, working clearly towards what good work
Speaker 4: looks like at your company. When it comes to your
Speaker 4: life outside of work.
Speaker 1: Focusing on the work, I like that, Yeah, yeah, not
Speaker 1: on the other stuff. Hey, oh am I here enough?
Speaker 1: Am I here enough hours? I feel like that. That's presenteeism.
Speaker 1: You start to feel like that's part of the work
Speaker 1: that's required, but that's not.
Speaker 3: The work totally.
Speaker 4: You know, certain industries are just really set up in
Speaker 4: a way that then make this very hard. Like I
Speaker 4: think I'm thinking of like lawyers, for example, who are
Speaker 4: asked to track their billable hours in like six minute
Speaker 4: or fifteen minute increments. And I was talking to a
Speaker 4: few lawyers for the book, and they were saying, you know,
Speaker 4: it is disincentive for me to do efficient work. You
Speaker 4: know that I get no material award for working efficiently
Speaker 4: or doing high quality of work. It's all just about
Speaker 4: the number of hours I spend on the work. And
Speaker 4: that incentive structure is just so backwards, you know. Like
Speaker 4: I understand that lawyers bill hourly, and so there should
Speaker 4: be an expectation that they're you know, doing a certain
Speaker 4: number of hours in order to do the work for
Speaker 4: the firm. But you know, what we should be rewarding
Speaker 4: is the quality of the work itself. And I think
Speaker 4: that can be extended to so many other fields. The
Speaker 4: thing I always advise people for outside of the office
Speaker 4: is you know, I talked a little bit about doing
Speaker 4: things other than work and practice. This means sort of
Speaker 4: like having active forms of leisure. You know, like, if
Speaker 4: you want to conceive of yourself as more than just
Speaker 4: someone who exists on this earth to produce economic value
Speaker 4: or economic returns for a corporation, try and find realms
Speaker 4: of your life where people maybe don't even know what
Speaker 4: you do for work or don't care about your job title.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: And this doesn't necessarily have to be taking up knitting
Speaker 4: or a personal hobby. While I do think there is
Speaker 4: value in being able to do something just for the
Speaker 4: joy of it or just for the fun of it.
Speaker 4: It can mean getting involved in your neighborhood or your
Speaker 4: local community. It can mean finding a community of people
Speaker 4: like a sports team or a book club, that your
Speaker 4: value to that community is not tied to your value
Speaker 4: in the office. It's something where you can show up
Speaker 4: in a different realm and start to kind of cultivate
Speaker 4: those different identities.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Just a recent example, I'm Jewish, and there are there's
Speaker 4: like a dormant Jewish identity somewhere deep inside of me.
Speaker 4: I'm not very not a very active Jew. But you know,
Speaker 4: recently it was Passover and you know, I sat around
Speaker 4: the table with my family and we participated in some
Speaker 4: of the traditions of the religion. And it was through
Speaker 4: that behavior, it was through that activity of actively doing
Speaker 4: something related to Judaism that I felt my identity as
Speaker 4: a Jewish person began to grow. And so you can
Speaker 4: think about that in any realm of your life, whether
Speaker 4: you're a craft beer aficionado, that identity will grow if
Speaker 4: you are actively taking time to learn more about the
Speaker 4: craft beers, are going out drinking with friends.
Speaker 3: Just don't let it grow too much. Tay sober out there, folks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but absolutely, well, Simo, this has been an awesome conversation.
Speaker 2: We really appreciate you taking a time to just talk
Speaker 2: to us about finding that balance. Where is it that
Speaker 2: folks can learn more about you and specific where they
Speaker 2: can find your book?
Speaker 4: Yeah, the best place to go is the good Enough
Speaker 4: job dot com. And this is my first book and
Speaker 4: so every order or pre order really makes a big difference,
Speaker 4: and there you can find all of my socials and
Speaker 4: other information that you might need.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Well, thank you again for joining us here on
Speaker 2: the podcast, Eemo.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me all right, Matt gotta love that
Speaker 1: conversation with Simone. I feel like there is like so
Speaker 1: much of what he has written about and what he
Speaker 1: talks about we've talked about in different ways over the years, exactly,
Speaker 1: not with the eloquence or the precision.
Speaker 2: We certainly have not written a book on it. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just one of the reasons I mean that we
Speaker 2: wanted to have him on because the message that he
Speaker 2: has it's so important, and honestly, the more ways that
Speaker 2: you can talk about it, like the different angles that
Speaker 2: you can take to the same end goal, well, if
Speaker 2: that helps others to find that balance and to find
Speaker 2: that fulfillment and happiness in life, we are all for
Speaker 2: it for sure.
Speaker 3: All right. So what was your big takeaway from this combo?
Speaker 1: Was it that we should all be more chocolate cookies,
Speaker 1: preferably with a little bit of sea salt, That a
Speaker 1: little bit of sea salt really makes them stand down?
Speaker 2: I think I thought you made Yeah. Personally, I like
Speaker 2: a touch of oatmeal in there as well, just say
Speaker 2: it adds a little bit of chew, just not raisins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not raisins.
Speaker 2: You hate on raisins there, Okay, So I think my
Speaker 2: big takeaway is that so many of the things, so
Speaker 2: many of the problems in the different myths that he
Speaker 2: addresses in the book. It's not that they are something
Speaker 2: we should completely avoid, but it's just that we are
Speaker 2: relying on our job to meet those ends more than
Speaker 2: we should. Uh So, for instance, when it comes to
Speaker 2: the job you do, should you be passionate about it? Well,
Speaker 2: maybe we should be less focused on the passion side
Speaker 2: of things and instead, first and foremost, like he said,
Speaker 2: we should be thinking about it like an economic contract. Yes,
Speaker 2: I'm going to exchange my time and my talents for
Speaker 2: a paycheck.
Speaker 3: And if you like the job, that's great to be
Speaker 3: on top exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And how maybe we shouldn't be looking to our
Speaker 2: jobs to find that interpersonal relationship and to the extent
Speaker 2: that we even think of our coworkers as family, but
Speaker 2: instead we should maybe maintain a degre of professionalism. And
Speaker 2: if we think about it from maybe more of that
Speaker 2: transactional framework, Like within that framework, I think it could
Speaker 2: be healthier because honestly, I feel like it kind of
Speaker 2: goes counter to what a lot of folks are saying,
Speaker 2: where they're just like, oh, no, no, no, you know,
Speaker 2: like the whole if you're an employee here, we treat
Speaker 2: you like family.
Speaker 1: And like that whole approach but it benefits from that
Speaker 1: relationship typically the employer, yeah, not you.
Speaker 2: And it leaves the employee in an unhealthy position once
Speaker 2: you get fired or once you leave that job and
Speaker 2: you're trying to and you're rudderless, you're trying to figure
Speaker 2: out what you're going to do next.
Speaker 3: But I thought we were family.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. Yeah, So I just I don't know. It's
Speaker 2: interesting to hear someone take an approach towards your work,
Speaker 2: towards your career that d emphasizes the like the interpersonal
Speaker 2: side of things. It's it's sort of like it's a
Speaker 2: way that he is finding himself in the middle because
Speaker 2: he's not going to the far extreme and saying that like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: we should all be completely disenchanted with our job. We
Speaker 2: should only be thinking about it as a contract.
Speaker 3: But or that you should only do the bare minimum either,
Speaker 3: right exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there's a way to find fulfilling work, and there's
Speaker 2: also a way to find work that's going to pay
Speaker 2: you well, but you don't necessarily have to sell your
Speaker 2: soul in order to achieve that on either end of
Speaker 2: the spectrum.
Speaker 3: Yep, No, I think it's a good way to put it.
Speaker 3: My big take about you though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when he said all of our identities need investments,
Speaker 1: I thought that was great. And he basically talked about
Speaker 1: how they're similar to houseplants, and my thought was, Man,
Speaker 1: a lot of our houseplants, at least in my house,
Speaker 1: are parched, like we're not doing a good enough job
Speaker 1: with them. And I think the same is true for
Speaker 1: a lot of our identities different areas in our life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like when it comes to spouse, when it comes to parent,
Speaker 1: when it comes to community involvement. We talked about that
Speaker 1: Wall Street journal. I can't get that out of my head,
Speaker 1: just that poll about how people value money more than
Speaker 1: they value community, more than they value patriotism, or than
Speaker 1: they value family these days. It speaks so much about
Speaker 1: where we're at as a culture. I think we value
Speaker 1: our careers way more than we value a lot of
Speaker 1: those things too, because our careers are so tied to money,
Speaker 1: and that is a shame. And so we need to
Speaker 1: start to think about how we can start watering, start pruning,
Speaker 1: start taking care of those other identity forming factors in
Speaker 1: our lives, like hobbies, like interpersonal relationships. And I think
Speaker 1: that will in all likelihood mean putting a little bit
Speaker 1: less into work and career, and I think we'll be
Speaker 1: happier for it. So I guess is this where I
Speaker 1: put in my two weeks Notice, Matt, sure, yeah, just kidding.
Speaker 3: But now we are more how to money for folks.
Speaker 3: We try not to overdo it and and that.
Speaker 2: Is all about finding that balance.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason we love it because we're not
Speaker 1: working sixty hours a week doing it. But Matt, let's
Speaker 1: go back to the beer that we had on this episode.
Speaker 1: This is a beer I picked up when I was
Speaker 1: out on the West Coast. It's Ye scrap Alicious by
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Aleworks.
Speaker 3: What are your thoughts on this ipa? The whole scrap
Speaker 3: Alicious thing?
Speaker 2: Is that the name of this cat?
Speaker 3: I think so? Is it like a brewery cat?
Speaker 2: I think it makes me think about when we were
Speaker 2: in Kentucky and we went to Peerless Distillery. They had
Speaker 2: a distillery cat that's right, that hung around there in
Speaker 2: the gift shop. But yeah, man, this was a fantastic
Speaker 2: juicy ipa, as it's written here on the label. Just
Speaker 2: like our conversation with Simone, it strikes the balance between
Speaker 2: being incredibly juicy and having the right amount of sweetness,
Speaker 2: but at the same time, it's got like that sharpness,
Speaker 2: the bitterness that you get from the Hops. It It's
Speaker 2: been a minute since I've said blue cheese as I've
Speaker 2: described an IPA, but this one kind of had some
Speaker 2: of those sharp blue cheese elements, and when you're able
Speaker 2: to strike that perfect balance between the two, you end
Speaker 2: up with an amazing beer.
Speaker 1: I feel like when you describe an IPA, you don't
Speaker 1: typically want to describe it as funky, but occasionally there
Speaker 1: is an IPA.
Speaker 3: And blue cheese is funky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can call it funky and it's a
Speaker 1: good thing. Sometimes if it's funky, it means that it's
Speaker 1: as a bad thing. Yeah, it's like, oh no, this
Speaker 1: is a shelfterd. This was on the shelf from a
Speaker 1: year or two, and so it kind of tastes a
Speaker 1: little funky, but this is like, no, no, no. The
Speaker 1: Hops bring a level of yeah that just some kind
Speaker 1: of unique notes from from the Hop set that they
Speaker 1: put into this IPA, And so I like it. It
Speaker 1: was juicy, a little funky, and overall good vibes from
Speaker 1: this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Specifically, if you're really into the Hops, it's got I've
Speaker 2: never even heard of these first two hops brew one
Speaker 2: Loral and then Sabro. Yeah, I've seen those hops on
Speaker 2: labels it before, but not this first two. So so
Speaker 2: many hot varieties now, it's ridiculous. You know, you just
Speaker 2: gotta go down there one of these days. You want
Speaker 2: to go to a hot farm down to New Zealand.
Speaker 3: Uh, yeah, that sounds pretty cool. Field trip.
Speaker 2: Maybe in like five ten years. But yeah, enough about
Speaker 2: the beer. Be sure to look out for Simone's book.
Speaker 2: It's set to be published here in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: I found it to be incredibly thought provoking and hopefully
Speaker 2: I wonder if this is one of his goals.
Speaker 3: But just for you to be able to.
Speaker 2: Ask yourself a bunch of different questions as you process
Speaker 2: and do the hard work of figuring out what it
Speaker 2: is that you're looking for, not just in your statement,
Speaker 2: yeah exactly, not just in your job, but honestly just
Speaker 2: in life overall. But we'll make sure to have links
Speaker 2: up on the website at how Tomoney dot com and Buddy,
Speaker 2: that's going to be it for this episode until next time.
Speaker 3: Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.
Speaker 4: He don't hope