the stories we tell ourselves about work

First, a little tease. After five years of working as a Software Engineer in Big Tech, I unclipped the shackles, dusted my big boy boots and left. Yesterday was the beginning of my half-year career break. I’ll be resting, travelling, running experiments and exploring other ideas of work. Hit me up if you want to learn more.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

I.

We tell stories to make sense of the world outside and within. For better or worse, we are somewhat squishy bags of flesh with oversized brains that are hungry for rewards. Our glucose-hungry brains can’t entertain themselves so we invented stories to educate, inspire and titillate our minds. Sometimes, we tell stories to move atoms in our favour - a manager trying to make you complete a boring task, or a prospective lover trying to win your affection and attention. Stories are everywhere. Hell, this paragraph is the product of a man trying to tell you a coherent story about stories.

Storytelling is fundamental to humans, and thus to companies. Recruiters tell stories to attract new blood to replace the jolted, jaded and departed. Marketers put red lipstick on a product and tell seductive stories so you open your wallet. Product leaders are secular prophets that receive divine revelations and evangelise their visions so engineers can build them. Interviewing is a competitive storytelling sport where the employee and employer try to out-wit each other - each one taking turns to repeat a carefully manicured and rehearsed narrative.

Then, we have the stories we tell ourselves. We tell persistent stories about who we are and how we want to be seen. We introduce ourselves as our job titles and hope we signal enough credibility so we can be accepted. Slowly but surely, we imbibe the stories of our environments and unconsciously recite them to ourselves. We dream the dreams of others. We become scared of the same damn things. We start shoulding ourselves into oblivion. We should be promoted, we should go to business school, we should be climbing the ladder. We tell stories about what we can and can not do. In moments of strength, we fortify our walls by remembering the times we conquered obstacles - that time you moved across the world solo and figured it out; that time you lost a friend and managed to move on. In times of doubt, we cower in fear and introduce arbitrary limits on ourselves.

Whether we’re aware of it or not - life is a journey of the stories we tell, the stories we reject and the stories we permit ourselves to write.

So what stories do we write? And to whom do we hand the pen?

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II.

I know about six people who enjoy their jobs.

I’m not sure exactly what this says about my friends (or myself). Maybe I picked all my friends from the cynical aisle. Through some stroke of fortune, perhaps I lifted my shopping basket and all the Skeptical Sallies packed themselves neatly in tow. Maybe we threw too many dinner parties where someone ranted ad nauseam about their work disillusionment. Maybe we believed lies that were repeatedly told to us. Maybe we even lied to ourselves.

I’m always shocked whenever I see one of the aforementioned six radiate with joy as they describe their work. And then my brain starts to ask a series of questions: Are jobs supposed to be enjoyed or endured? Where do our expectations about work fulfilment come from? Is ‘fulfilment’ too high a bar? Are we setting ourselves up for failure? Are these generational expectations? How do pandemics affect our ideas about work?

The answers to the these questions become more complicated when you start to decompose the pie - across different cultures, different kingdoms, different centuries - there are vastly different ideas about work and its role in our lives. I would need to do a lot of anthropological jiu-jitsu to comb together convincing answers to these questions. And since nobody has offered me a book deal (yet) to excavate the truth, I’ve resorted to the internet to find some perspective.

Work used to be simple. It was a necessary evil that we did to prevent starvation and hypothermia. We traded time for money which gave us shelter, fat and warmth to survive the winter and feed our kids. Hours were long, jobs were often dangerous and the workers had few rights. It was not glamorous. There was no “day in the life of a factory worker” showreel. But there were workers who fell inside meat grinders to unsavoury ends. Despite the danger and required sacrifice, workers showed up mostly because they needed to survive.

Wind the clock forward towards the early twenty first century and the world looks completely different. Three new work stories are being told:

🥰 Passionification of work
In the 2000s, smart, successful people start telling young people to “do what they love” and “find their purpose”. Everyone from Steve Jobs to Marc Anthony echoes this idea. The “purpose and calling” doctrine becomes embedded in our culture. Your doctor, your manager, your company’s internal transfer manager all reinforce this idea. Numerous books, podcasts, conference talks are created and sold on this notion.

It’s not long before this mantra becomes the default assumption in young employees. To attract them, companies start branding themselves as places where you can fulfil your calling. Work is no longer work. It’s now a means to self-actualize and manifest your values.

🧠 The internet makes everything possible
The internet age brings an explosion of possibility. We read stories about college dropouts building billion dollar companies. We see influencers streaming content and becoming millionaires. We grow up with creators who create digital empires that rival conglomerates. We see people sell makeup, merch and more online. We know people who sell digital courses and have enough time to hug their kids whenever they want. We are sold romanticised ideals about those who travel the world, freelancing and taking work calls in picturesque beaches and infinity pools. We’re tormented and seduced by alluring reels that sell radical ideas of what work could look like.

We have far more options than any other generation. We too have brains. We start to see ourselves in others. Maybe we could try other paths?

⛪️ Self determination ideals
There was a time in Western Europe and North America when people routinely explained their actions with “Because God …”. Then these regions went through The Enlightenment, The Renaissance and The Industrial Age, and people began to construct new models for reasoning and rationalising decisions. As religion declines, people are more interested in self-determination: the idea that “I can and should choose for myself who I am, and what I do. It’s up to me to decide and for me to make it happen. It’s not up to God or anyone else for that matter”.

This ideal is both a gift and a curse. It’s an intoxicating feeling when your work aligns with your values. You feel a sense of purpose, direction and meaning in your days. You might still yearn for the weekend - I mean it’s still work, but at least you don’t dwell in the sunken place. If however, you fail to find this alignment, then you can quite easily spiral into a ditch. Since you believe it’s all up to you, you are to blame for the misalignment. You pressed the wrong button on the life controller. Maybe we’re more disillusioned because we’re in more control?

So what do we do with these stories?

We should probe, strikethrough and eventually rewrite. Some of this stuff is considered accepted wisdom. Should we actually be passionate about our jobs? I’m not so sure. It depends what you’re solving for. It depends which season you’re in. What would it look like to build work around your preferred lifestyle? How much of your identity is rooted in your job? Would you struggle to see yourself as equally worthy if you weren’t person in prestigious job? How would you introduce yourself in a sea of strangers?

I don’t have the answers. But I’m taking the plunge to find out.

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✨ If you have questions or concerns or if you’ve done something like this before, please hit me up in the comments or reply to this email!