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- [00:00]
Host 1
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:04]
Host 2
Life doesn't happen biweekly, so why should Payday the money you earn can be in your hands today with Earn In. Earnin is an app that gives you access to your pay as you work up to $150 per day with a max of $750 between paydays. Just download the Earn in app and verify your paycheck. Then access up to $150 a day as you work and leave an optional tip. Any money you access plus tips are automatically repaid from your next paycheck. Make Earnin a part of your financial ro. Join Earn In's over 4 million customers who say things like when I think about Earn In, I think about financial stability, security. It gives me a lot of peace of mind. Download Earn in today, spelled E A R N I N in the Google Play or Apple App Store. When you download the Earn in app, type in How To Money Under Podcast when you sign up. That's How To Money under Podcast. Earn in is a financial technology company, not a bank. Cashouts are based on your available earnings. Standard cashouts take one to two business days with no mandatory fees option to expedite your transfer for a fee. Tips are voluntary and don't affect the service. The Cash Out User Agreement for details Services not available in all states.
- [01:08]
Joel
Where do you see your career in 10 years? What are you doing now to help you get there? The sooner you start enhancing your skills, the sooner you'll be ready. That's why AARP has reskilling courses in a variety of categories like marketing and management to help your income live as long as you do. That's right.
- [01:24]
Matt
AARP has a bevy of free skill building courses for you to choose from because the steps that you choose to take today will will help you to love what you do in the future. And that's why the younger you are, the more you need AARP. Learn more at aarp.org skills hey, it's.
- [01:40]
Joel
Joel and Matt from how to Money. Matt, you and I, we do a decent amount of traveling. So what's a place that you think lived up to the hype?
- [01:49]
Matt
That one is tough, but immediately what comes to mind is Scotland. The scenery in particular was insane. I'm specifically thinking about when we went and hiked Old Man's Store.
- [01:58]
Joel
Oh yeah.
- [01:58]
Matt
Felt like we were on a completely different planet. It was otherworldly.
- [02:02]
Joel
Sure was. Yeah. Yeah. And our Airbnb on the Isle of Skye, man, it looked straight out this field into the sea. Total tranquility and the castle gardens that we saw, man, it felt straight out of a fairy tale.
- [02:14]
Matt
It's true.
- [02:14]
Host 1
Yeah.
- [02:15]
Matt
That trip showed us how big a difference the right place makes. And if you've got travel plans, don't let your place sit empty. Airbnb's co host feature makes it easy to earn a little cash while someone else manages the day to day.
- [02:26]
Joel
That's right, find a co host@airbnb.com host. Welcome to How2Money. I'm Joel.
- [02:32]
Matt
And I am Matt.
- [02:33]
Joel
And today we're discussing the Good Enough Job with Simone Stolzo.
- [02:57]
Matt
So I'm gonna start today's episode a little differently. Let's start out with a quote. 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 are not working, neither is more noble. This is a quote from Simone Stolzoff's new book, the Good Enough Job, that is set to publish here in a couple weeks. And it's actually made by Simone's favorite writer, who happens to be a poet. And after going through this book, I don't think anything else we could say actually encapsulate Sima's book any better. But we are going to discuss a number of themes from the book. How to basically diversify your identity. We're going to talk about the similarities between work and religion, or maybe the dissimilarities, the false promise of chasing after status. All of this we're going to discuss today and more. Simone Stolzoff, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.
- [03:51]
Host 1
It's a pleasure to be here, guys.
- [03:52]
Joel
We're glad to have you and some of your closest friends call you Simo. So we assume, just based on our five minute chat beforehand, we're allowed to call you that.
- [04:00]
Matt
Is that correct? Switching to sema.
- [04:01]
Host 1
Yeah, well, it's kind of like my cocktail party line, you know, it's like Semo. It's like Nemo with an S, you know.
- [04:08]
Joel
Awesome. So we'll probably refer to you that way through a lot of this episode. But sema, we're excited to chat with you. And the first question we ask every guest who comes on the show is, what is their craft beer equivalent? And what we mean by that is, while you're saving and investing diligently for the future, what is it that you proactively spend money on that some people might think is a little weird? Or you're just thrilled to spend money in a certain way while you're still handling money well?
- [04:31]
Host 1
Yeah. So My craft beer equivalent isn't the most expensive purchase. It might pile up if you do it as frequently as I do. But I am a chocolate chip cookie fiend. I actually ate a chocolate chip cookie every single day for four years of college. And it's like, become a little bit of like. It's like my brand now, you know? Like, my friends, like, know me as like the cookie guy, but I still love him, you know, And I, like, I'm not much of like a chocolate chip cookie snob, you know, I'm a kind of equal opportunist. From the famous Amos to the artisanal, like, $8 cookie that I bought the other day.
- [05:10]
Joel
Are you baking your own ever?
- [05:11]
Host 1
Sometimes, yeah. I don't know. I feel like cookies are kind of like Beatles songs. Like, even the not great ones are still, like, pretty good. And so obviously feel that way.
- [05:22]
Matt
If you're mentioning famous Amos in the same sentence as like an adopt, I mean, come on, who can. Who's actually putting those things down? But I guess you do not discriminate. 1.
- [05:31]
Joel
Do you ever go off brand, like the fake Chips Ahoy or something like that?
- [05:35]
Host 1
Yeah, I'll do it. I don't know. I'm just like, easily pleased. It's maybe not best for like my cultural high brow ness, but I like, enjoy cookies in all of their forms.
- [05:47]
Matt
No, I love it. Okay, one last question about the cookies. Do you have a favorite, for lack of better words, adjunct, like, what's something that you like in chocolate chip cookies that may not necessarily be traditional?
- [05:57]
Joel
And if you say raisins, this interview's over now.
- [06:00]
Host 1
Yeah, I'm a purist. I think I. My, like, hotter take literally is that I like under baked cookies. I like cookies that still feel like a little gooey in the middle. And like, the closer that you can get to the cookie dough spectrum without giving yourself salmonella, the better in my mind.
- [06:17]
Matt
No, I like that respect. Yeah. The ability to fold a cookie in half is better than the ability to.
- [06:22]
Host 1
Get into, like, my Italian roots as well. Yes.
- [06:25]
Matt
Yeah, yeah, I love it. All right, somebody, let's dive into your book. So you say that you're recovering workist in the intro. It almost feels like an AA introduction, honestly. But talk to us about maybe when it dawned on you that you were overvaluing the role of work in your own life. What is it that caused you to reevaluate that?
- [06:49]
Host 1
Yeah, so I think we're all about the same age, kind of smack in the middle of the millennial generation. And I think I was raised on certain scripts. You know, I grew up with lots of opportunity, which I'm grateful for, and also this mentality of, you know, I could sort of do whatever I wanted. And it was just a matter of figuring out what particular career path or what particular job was the best reflection of my unique passion and personality. And I spent my twenties really playing Goldilocks with different jobs. I worked in tech for a few years, and I worked in food for a few, and I worked in journalism for a few years. And it really came to a head at a moment when I was choosing between these two particular jobs. One was to be a staff writer at a digital magazine, and the other was to be a designer at this global design agency. And on one hand, it's like, oh, agony is me. You know, like the plight of deciding between two attractive job offers. But, you know, maybe you guys or some of your listeners have been in a similar crossroads before. You know, for me, it really, really didn't feel like I was choosing between two jobs as much as I was choosing between two versions of me. And this sort of, like, career indecision moment, I was probably 28 or 29, really threw me for an existential loop. And I was wondering, sort of, how did my identity become so entwined with what I did for work, what I did to make money? And that was sort of the first kernel that led to what became the research project that eventually became the book.
- [08:29]
Joel
Nice. Well, and, yeah, I think probably. Well, I don't know, maybe some people have not had that, and they're just nose to the grindstone and they haven't had that moment of reflection. Hopefully this discussion that we're going to have today pushes people to have a little bit of that, at least start to initiate the thought process. Am I putting too much effort or identity into my work? But can you give us a brief history lesson about how we got to the point where careers became so central to our identity, to our existence? It. It seems like it didn't used to be that way. And now careers are kind of all defining in a lot of ways.
- [09:03]
Host 1
Yeah, I mean, there's many different possible ways to answer this question. And maybe if your last name is Miller, you probably can beg to differ. That identity and careers have been tied together for a long time. But I think there is something that is uniquely American about this and also something that is unique to the last sort of 50 years or so. And so I think there are kind of economic arguments, there's political arguments, social arguments, cultural arguments, the historical one is just the fact that the Protestant work ethic and capitalism were really the two strands that entwined to form our country's DNA. From the beginning, being American was synonymous with your ability to be a productive member of society or to be able to work hard. There's also kind of economic arguments. I think this really differs depending on what side of the income spectrum you're looking at. On the sort of lower earning side, wages have been stagnant for the last 40 or 50 years, which means that people have had to work more just to earn the same money. To buy the same loaf of bread has driven a lot of people to work long hours. On the other side, there's the kind of tax structure of our country and the way that employment and health care are often tied together that make the consequences of losing work so dire. And also the ability to consolidate wealth with the more hours that you work, greater abilities to do so. The argument I really focus on in the book is the sort of subjective or the cultural value that Americans place on their jobs. We live in a country that treats CEOs like celebrities and we plaster always do what you love on the walls of our co working space. We parade around our job titles and small talk conversation and on our social media profiles. And there is really this sense that you are what you do. And I think that is unique to a certain extent to this age that we're in right now where work is very much in vogue or maybe in the last three or so years with the pandemic hotly contested about its role in our lives.
- [11:24]
Matt
Sure, yeah. And you say it's becoming something that is turning out to be more global. Like it's essentially become an American export that other countries are now starting to follow in our footsteps. Sort of like Levi's. It's like not only do you get the genes, but you also get our ridiculous work ethic.
- [11:39]
Host 1
But I mean, I think the way that I frame it is like, I think workism, which is a term that was originally coined by the journalist Derek Thompson in the Atlantic. It's the idea of like treating work akin to a religious identity, you know, something that you look to as just a paycheck, but also for a community, a sense of self worth, a sense of purpose in your life. I think it's primarily a phenomenon that is most prevalent among people that have a certain level of privilege, you know, college educated Americans. But that doesn't mean that it exists. It doesn't exist in other countries, it doesn't exist in other sort of class strata. It Just is particularly pronounced for people that have truthfully the privilege to be able to choose what they want to do.
- [12:24]
Matt
Totally. Yeah, absolutely. And you kind of just touched on something I was going to follow up there with, which was religion. Because you see that one of the problems is that more folks are trying to get the meaning out of their job that they used to find in religion. And so does that is the solution? Should we just go to synagogue? Should we just go to church more? Does that solve all of our problems? What is the, I guess the problem or the difficulty in finding or putting our faith within our jobs, within our careers?
- [12:49]
Host 1
Yeah, I mean, the data on the religiosity of Americans is pretty interesting. You know, if you look back to the height of religiosity in the US and sort of the 1950s, it's something like 6 or 7% of Americans weren't religious and everyone else had a pretty strong association with an organized religion. And there's been this precipitous decline in the past 40 years, where today nearly one in three, almost in the latest data, Americans don't have a particular religious affiliation, whether they're agnostic or atheist or just don't believe in anything in particular. And so, you know, when you think about the role that religion plays in people's lives, it is obviously something to believe in, a potential path to transcendence, but it's also a primary community. It's a primary source of your identity. And so with the decline of these organized religions, the need for belonging and for purpose still remains. And the argument that I make in the book is that work for many people has taken on that role. But the problem is that that's not necessarily a burden our jobs are designed to bear. This is particularly visible in the past few years with the pandemic. Some people, whether it was due to layoffs or furloughs, lost their jobs. And if your work is your prim source of identity and meaning and you lose it, what's left?
- [14:21]
Joel
Well, and even for folks who didn't lose their job, maybe they started working from home and that connection to the culture and to the community of work was severed. And so that kind of changed their relationship, how they interacted with their work as well. So it was seen more as like, I do this for a paycheck when I can. And it lost some of its all encompassing nature. You think that's true too?
- [14:44]
Host 1
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think regardless of what type of work you had, it changed in some way in the past three years. And you know, I started reporting this book before the pandemic. I definitely did not anticipate a global pandemic helping everyone sort of reconsider their relationship to their jobs. But it was this, this huge wake up call, I think, for everyone. You know, their, their job wasn't exactly what it used to be. And I think people who were maybe over indexed and looking to work as a source of identity and meaning in their life were rude awakening. And the main sort of argument that I make in the book, when it gets into a little bit more of an editorial section, is about what you said about the value of diversifying your identity and sources of meaning beyond just what you do for work. This isn't just to protect in the case that you get laid off, but I think one of the risks of a work centric existence is that we can neglect other parts of who we are.
- [15:40]
Joel
And one other thing I wanted to follow up. I mentioned how there is a work from home class. I feel like the pandemic kind of, it created a dichotomy, right. And we saw other people incredibly overworked and their relationship with their job changed in a different way. If you worked at a grocery store, my dad, who was stocking shelves in a grocery store at the ripe old age of 68, like that was a different thing. Right. Than what a lot of other people experienced, the laptop class, the work from anywhere class. And so it really was kind of a tale of two Americans in how they relate to work. And everyone was questioning their relationship to work, but for different reasons, I think.
- [16:13]
Host 1
Yeah, I mean, I love harping on that term, essential worker that was thrown around so often during the pandemic. It's like we saw that many of these workers were essential. My partner is an elementary school teacher and maybe similar to your father, her workload and the risk that she had to expose herself to increased astronomically over the course of the pandemic. And yet we still haven't necessarily given these workers that we deem essential the protections and the pay and the benefit to ensure that they can keep doing their job safely for us all.
- [16:46]
Matt
So you mentioned diversifying your identity. Can you share some of the benefits of diversifying your identity? Right. So when it comes to investing your money, you want to make sure that you don't have all of your eggs in one basket. And essentially what you're saying here is that we are putting all of our eggs into this basket of career or job title or whatever it is that we find most attractive about our jobs. What are some of the benefits that you found, when we take a step back and when we look to some other outlets, some other ways that we are able to find our identity.
- [17:17]
Host 1
Totally, yeah. Much as an investor benefits from diversifying the stocks in their portfolio, I think we too really benefit from diversifying the sources of identity and meaning in our lives. And there's some research to back this up. There's studies about what researchers call developing greater self complexity or having different self aspects, which essentially means just investing in different parts of ourselves. We're not just workers, we're also siblings and neighbors and citizens and friends and parents. And these identities, they need investment. One of the main reasons or arguments for doing so is that in the case of it doesn't even have to be a layoff, but any sort of bad news in the work realm, when we have a more diversified identity portfolio, it's less likely to spill over into other aspects of our lives. We're more resilient if we have greater self complexity. There's also a semblance, not just in sort of the bear case of something tragic or bad happening, but in just the value of being able to give our time and attention into other parts of who we are. It's important to keep in mind that identities are sort of like plants, you know, like they need time and intention in order to grow. And I think part of their the risk of living in a life that's so centered around work is that work doesn't just take our best time and often also takes our best energy as well. And so one of the arguments that I make in the book is that in order to diversify your identity beyond what you do for work, you have to do things other than work. Which may seem a little obvious, but for me at least I can definitely relate to the experience of you go to work, you come home, you're exhausted, all you have the energy to do is turn off your brain and turn on Netflix. While that can temporarily be a nice way to recharge or to get lost in another world, if you really want to have other sources of meaning in your life, you need to be actively doing things in the community, doing things with others, investing in your relationships. And so that's what I advocate for.
- [19:40]
Matt
Yes, it's about just being a well rounded individual. And as you were talking about religion a second ago, it made me think through how getting laid off from a job, that's not a. I mean, it's not something that anybody wants to go through, but it's not like it's the equivalent of having your faith Taken from you. And so I see that as being another problem with viewing your job. And, you know, almost to the. To the same extent that you view religion is that faith is such a personal and internal thing. And the ability for somebody outside of you to take that away kind of goes counter to, I think, how a lot of individuals view their faith, how they view their spirituality. And so, yeah, for you to show up one day and all of a sudden it's just like, hey, this thing that you've depended on as much as someone would typically depend on their faith as, oh, it's no longer there, that could be incredibly devastating.
- [20:30]
Joel
We have a more tenuous connection to our work than we think. And some people who, if you put your hope and dreams and faith and future expectations all inside of this one vehicle, which is your career, at some point, so problematic, there's a really good chance that someone can take that away from you.
- [20:44]
Matt
It's like a Jenga tower, and it's like you're down to just like a singular block at the bottom. If you were to pull that one thing, it's like everything else just completely falls apart.
- [20:53]
Host 1
Yeah, I mean, you guys know the writer David Foster Wallace? He has this very iconic speech, this is water. And one of the points that he makes is that there's no such thing as not worshiping. We all worship something, either consciously or unconsciously. And whatever you end up worshiping will probably eat you alive. You know, worship beauty and you'll feel like you're never beautiful enough. Or worship money, and you'll feel like you never have enough of it. And I think the same is true with work. You know, it's what gets us into these systems where people are, you know, chasing carrots their entire lives and never fully feeling full. You know, it's like you can chase all the next rung on the career ladder, the next title or status or salary band. But unlike these sort of material things of the working world, religion is less easily falsifiable. You know, and I don't think we necessarily have to all find whatever, you know, God out there exists for us. That's. That's definitely one means of doing so. But by having other sources of meaning, we're able to just bounce back. If, say, your manager says something disparaging over the course of the workday. If you can show up as a good father that night or show up as a good third baseman for your recreational softball team, or show up as a very present friend to a buddy who is going through something, all of those identities can help soften the inevitable bumps we face along the road of work.
- [22:36]
Joel
Yeah, and the places where work falls short. I'm still gunning for that senior podcast host title that Matt has not bestowed on me yet. But I don't know, maybe soon.
- [22:43]
Matt
Two more years. It's always two more years.
- [22:45]
Joel
Two more years ago. I know you've always like a carrot in front of me that I could never attain, but we've got more questions we want to get to with you, Simo. We specifically want to talk about the role that passion or fulfillment plays in work. Like do we need to divorce it completely? And so we'll get to questions on that and maybe some practical suggestions for how to find to start to remove our identity from mostly being centered around our work. We'll get to some of those those questions that combo right after this.
- [23:15]
Simone Stolzoff
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- [24:58]
Joel
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- [25:19]
Matt
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- [25:55]
Joel
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- [26:44]
Matt
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- [27:13]
Joel
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- [27:23]
Matt
All right, we are back from the break talking to Simo Stolz off about the Good enough job and Seema. Talk to us about meaning. Talk to us about purpose and work because it certainly seems like that there is this push to find like ultimate fulfillment in your career. But how do you think we should think about that role, specifically the role that passion plays in our 9 to 5? Like is the dream job? Is it just a pipe dream at this point?
- [27:49]
Host 1
Yeah, it's a good question. You know, I don't think when you look at the COVID of the book or even read the title, the subtitle is Reclaiming Life from Work. You might assume that my argument is anti work. And this idea of anti work has become a bit of a meme or a trend recently. There's a huge subreddit about anti work and there's a lot of cultural cachet in being able to be anti capitalist or against the man. And yet I don't think that going full on to that end of the spectrum is necessarily helpful or will be a recipe for fulfillment when it comes to passion. I think I have certainly derived a lot of meaning and purpose and passion from my work myself. But I think I rely a lot on this chapter of the research of this woman at Michigan State named Erin Check who wrote this book called the Trouble with Passion. And basically her argument is that not all of us have the same on ramps to be able to translate our passions into our means of making money. And for people who have fewer opportunities, it can actually exacerbate inequality when we tell everyone to follow their passion. But some people don't have as much access to passion jobs as others. And I think a lot of times passion can be a stand in for fair compensation or fair pay. There's this concept in the book I talk about that's called vocational awe, which is the idea that certain industries have a sort of perceived righteousness, like a halo effect. I'm thinking about things like healthcare workers or like Teachers or people that work in the nonprofit sector. And it was a concept that was originally coined by this librarian, this woman named Fobazi Itar. And she observed how this sort of rhetoric around follow your passion or you know, vocational awe, like the idea that you should be in it for something more than the money can actually cover up a lot of the malpractice and exploitation that exists within all of these different fields. You know, I have this mentor, this woman, Anne Helen Peterson, and she says most of the time all passion can get you is the excuse to be paid very little. And so, you know, it's a fine balance. Obviously, you know, we work more than we do just about anything else in our life and you know, how we spend those hours matter. But I think being clear headed about the fact that work is first and foremost an economic contract, it's an exchange of your time and your labor for money, the better. It can certainly be more than those things, but I think the more sort of clear headed we can be about its fundamental purpose, the better off we'll be.
- [30:40]
Joel
Yeah, I like that. Okay. You talked too about how like stagnating wages and we've seen a little bit of that change recently. We've seen kind of, especially at the lower end of the income spectrum, we've seen higher paces in wage growth still not making up for lost lots of decades where that wasn't happening. But I guess so there is that element where for a lot of folks pay hasn't kept up. And so having to work more hours just to make ends meet is a thing for sure. But I guess I want to ask you too. There's a lot of people, Matt and I talk about this all the time. We see stats where people make 200k a year and they're still living paycheck to paycheck. So often for a lot of people it's not just that they're not getting paid enough. So do you think not being a personal finance nerd to the extent of Matt and I like our poor savings habits and that intense reliance on that income from our day job, does that make matters worse that we are basically tied at the hip to our employer, that we don't have enough margin, where if we did lose our job or if we wanted to pursue something else, that we don't really have that ability?
- [31:42]
Host 1
Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think there's sort of like two parts to the question. There's one is like the what we've observed in the pandemic where the just a modicum of kind of social support from the government allowed a lot of people to leave jobs that weren't good enough for them. And so, you know, I think one of the misconceptions about the great resignation was that it was just people kind of dropping out of the labor force and sitting on their couch all day. Whereas in actuality, the majority of people that left jobs during the heart of the pandemic actually just left to find better jobs. So I think that's really important to consider. It's like when we feel like there is a little bit of government support or just a less frayed social safety net, people feel more empowered to find work that works better for them. And then there's kind of the second half of your question, which is thinking about people that were making a lot of money that might not have very much slack in their budget or their spending habits. And I think a lot of that comes back to sort of the consumerism that is so prevalent in America and the pressure to, to always be spending and keeping up with the Joneses and having the nice new thing and sort of foregoing some of the long term benefits that we can get from saving or having just more resiliency built into your budget versus the sort of short term rush of getting something that's shiny and new.
- [33:18]
Joel
Consumerism. I'm not sure what you're talking about. I haven't seen that at play in this country.
- [33:22]
Matt
We talk about that all the time here on the show. So Simo, you were discussing how it's like a chicken or egg situation where we are spending, therefore we have to earn more. Or is it, oh, we don't have the time to dedicate towards developing our identity outside of work because we are working so much. It's this sort of doom loop that we find ourselves stuck in. And I think that's definitely true when it comes to our personal finances and how that's intertwined with our careers as well. One of the other myths that you tackle that you address is that our coworkers, how we should not necessarily view them as family. Oftentimes folks just they believe that line. And I was talking to a buddy of mine and he's after getting laid off, he highlighted the fact that, man, you know, this is a line that I believed. I'm a manager myself, we live by this line. But when the time comes and you get laid off, you quickly realize that your family left. Your co workers are not your family. Why is that such a problem?
- [34:21]
Host 1
Yeah, I think the desire to form close bonds at work isn't misguided and there have been lots of studies to back this up. People that have close friends at work tend to be more fulfilled by the job. They tend to stay at jobs longer. It should come as no surprise that companies, and especially leaders sometimes use the rhetoric of family and the sort of, of bonds that bind us together to try and inspire employees to work for the cause or to stay at their companies for longer. And I think similar to your friend, so many people have seen over the past few years how that rhetoric can be very shallow. You can't fire someone from your company. But even if, if it was true that your workplace could be like your family, I'm not sure that's something that we should aspire to. You know, most of the families that I know are pretty dysfunctional in one way or another. You know, and so in some ways, the question about, like, workplace as family is sort of just a semantic distinction and just about this idea of, like, how much of our relationship should we center in the workplace? And, you know, I think, I think the argument that I make is it's not necessarily a problem to have friends at work, but I think if your workplace is your sole source of community, that is a narrow platform to balance on. You're prone to be blown over by a strong gust of wind, whether that is getting laid off or your family member having to give you some tough love and the sake of furthering the business goals, or even just the sort of negative consequences of the sort of in groups and the cliques that can form at work. There's been research that has found that in more familial workplaces, workers are less likely to speak up about wrongdoing. They're less likely to be transparent. They're less likely to make decisions based on sound business analysis and rigor, as opposed to just sort of like trusting what your buddy says. And so there are actual material consequences of relying too much on social ties as opposed to fundamentally what a professional relationship should be, which is based on your material goals for the company.
- [36:54]
Joel
So it makes me think of the last real job I had. Fortunately, I don't have a real job now. I just podcast. But the last real job I had there was this thing where once a month they would give out hundred dollar awards to like 10 different people in the company for going above and beyond and for doing something just of incredible dedication to the company and to the company's efforts and the people who got rewarded. It's like literally just, I mean, a hundred bucks. I'm not saying 100 bucks is nothing. But it was a hundred bucks. And it was oftentimes somebody who came in on the weekend who, like, left their family in the lurch to come take care of something at work. And I was like, like, I'm making it my personal goal to never win this award because it felt like that was asking too much and it was creating a tie that it didn't deserve that sort of stranglehold over my life. And I could tell so many people prided themselves on being able to win this $100 recognition in front of their coworkers sort of thing. And I had just the opposite stance. And I was like, this is absurd and there's no way I ever want to be found up on that podium accepting the award because it will have meant that I dropped obligations and duties that matter a whole lot to me. So I guess that's where I want to ask too. How do we find create a proper attachment to work where we are working hard, where we're producing good work, where we are a part of the organization in a meaningful way without going above and beyond? We don't want to be lackadaisical, but we also don't want to over, like overexert ourselves and basically inhibit the ability for those other identity forming necessities to take place.
- [38:29]
Host 1
Yeah, I mean, I love the question. It reminds me of Office Space where Jennifer Aniston's wearing the vest with like, flair at the restaurant where she wears.
- [38:37]
Matt
All the pieces of flair.
- [38:38]
Host 1
Yeah, exactly. It's like, you know, she's wearing what the expectation was set, but like, the idea is that you shouldn't wear the minimum. You should be going above and beyond and wearing the most flair, you know, And I think, like, it's amazing how easy sometimes it is to incentivize workers to stay late or to work on the weekends. There's sort of like the equivalent of like the free T shirt that you can get, you know, like, what is that $100 actually costing the company versus what is it costing you? So in the book, I advocate for a more transactional approach to work. And it might sound crass to treat a job as a transaction, you know, especially because we've been told that jobs are meant to be meanings and identities and vocations and callings, not mere paychecks. But I think a more transactional approach to work can actually benefit both employers and employees. I think it frees employers to be able to be straightforward about what the expectations for good work looks like. To be clear, in setting up this is what success would Mean, these are the numbers that we're hoping you hit. This is the sort of standards that we have here as a company. And it frees employees to talk about compensation in a fair way and not think that somehow talking about money is undermining the best interest of the company. It frees employees to understand what is expected of them. And more than anything, it frees employees to treat work as part of, but not the entirety of their lives. And, you know, we're talking a lot about quiet quitting and workers that are sort of phoning it in. I don't actually think that is a recipe for fulfillment or happiness either. You know, like, I'm sure we can all relate to the work days where you don't have enough work to do and you're sort of just twiddling your thumbs and the clock is moving slower than you thought was humanly possible. I think treating work as like a necessary evil is not necessarily a recipe for fulfillment either.
- [40:45]
Joel
But I think that's why social media was invented. Simo, let's be honest.
- [40:48]
Host 1
Yeah, exactly. Just to fill all the. It's like a gas fills all the unoccupied space in our days. But, you know, I think it's finding that balance of, like, what do you want work's role to be in your life? How does that intersect with the necessities to do a good enough job for your company and how you can invest in the time and energy that you have and other aspects of who you are? What I like about the sort of title of the book, the Good Enough Job, is that it's intentionally subjective. You get to decide what good enough means to you. Maybe it's a job that pays a certain amount of money, or maybe it's a job that has a certain title or is in a certain industry. Or maybe it's a job that gets off at a certain hour so that you can pick up your kids from childcare. But whatever sort of your definition of good enough is, I implore you to recognize when you have it, because that's what will allow you to set better boundaries around when you can say the workday is done and not necessarily feel like you're always somehow falling behind if you're not getting ahead.
- [41:55]
Matt
That's right. Yeah. Well, like you said, it's not necessarily a bad thing, and it also shouldn't be your sole focus. It's so hard to find that balance. But you've talked about setting some of these boundaries here in your book, and we're actually going to get to some of the practical ways that we can try to help decide for ourselves what the good enough job is. We'll get to all of that right after this.
- [42:24]
Joel
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Matt
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- [45:49]
Joel
Alright, we're back from the break. Still talking with with Simo Stolzoff about doing work that's good enough and I really love that framework. But specifically how do we get there with the day job that we've got going on, whether we're self employed or we have, you know, a W2 job. Let's, let's talk SEMA for a second about drawing better work boundaries because I love the concept but in practice it seems like it could be a little more difficult. How do we make sure that we're working the way we want, not being wrung dry by our employer and that we still get to keep our job. Right, because we still got to pay the mortgage or the rent or whatever it is.
- [46:26]
Host 1
Yeah, totally. I think the question with boundaries is tricky. It can be a fine line, literally. And I think sometimes those boundaries are incumbent on the worker to draw and sometimes the responsibility should actually lie on the employer. My mentor that I mentioned earlier, Anne Helen Peterson, she has this great distinction between the difference between boundaries and guardrails. You can think about boundaries as sort of like the line in the middle of the highway that keeps you from going from one lane to another. Whereas guardrails are structural. They're put in place by the state. They're the metal things on the side of the road that keep you from going over. And I think one of the problems with individually imposed boundaries is that they inevitably break. You can have an intention to work less, but if there is a deadline or it's near the end of the quarter and you have a quarterly sales goal, or your boss tells you to work more hours, it can be hard to raise your hand and be like, actually, I have a boundary. I mean, I definitely found the. In writing the book. You know, the great irony is that I was, like, working on this book about the culture of overwork in America, and in many ways, I was my own worst manager. And so I would, you know, feel crappy on weeks where I didn't hit my writing goal and it would inevitably open up the laptop on the weekend, even though I had a quote, unquote boundary that I didn't want to do that. And so I think the first point is that a lot of the onus to set these boundaries actually should rest on the company and on managers and creating cultures where it's okay for people to take time off, creating plans in place for distributing the workload so that there isn't an undue burden placed on any individual, hiring enough employees so that there's enough work, enough workers to spread out the word, and also creating norms around, like, when you should be on or off the clock. But I also think that individuals also deserve a certain level of responsibility. The one stat that I always come back to is in Japan, they have the most progressive parental leave, and specifically for fathers, parental leave policy in the world. Fathers are entitled to up to a year of paid time after they have a kid. And the last data that I looked at, only 5% of Japanese fathers took the entirety of the time that they were allotted. And so it sort of points to these two necessities. There needs to be the sort of policies in place that allow people to do things other than work or prioritize things outside of their work life. But there also needs to be the cultural will to do so. And I think that that is what some of this kind of deprogramming or having a sufficiency mindset when it comes to work can allow us to do.
- [49:30]
Matt
Yeah, and this is why we love your Approach, Simo, I mean, you are finding yourself in the radical middle, because I feel like it's easy just to point to one end of the spectrum or the other and be like, that's the devil.
- [49:42]
Joel
If Congress, we need to do the.
- [49:44]
Matt
Exactly. But, yeah, you were saying, you know, there is a certain degree of responsibility that falls with the actual company, but that doesn't mean that we're not off the hook. And I think in particular, we need to channel our efforts in the areas that I think where we can move the needle the most for us as individuals. And when it came to. For you to talk about some of the different boundaries that we can draw in our lives, like, you talk about too, how there are some folks who like to have their work to be more integrated within their life.
- [50:11]
Joel
Right.
- [50:11]
Matt
And so it's not even saying that what you should do is have hard boundaries, and that's going to be how you're going to be able to achieve happiness and a successful life. But it seems like you're just asking a lot of questions and you want individuals to kind of do the hard work. And it seems like that that is at the core of the problem here, is that a lot of individuals, they are not doing that difficult work. They're not setting goals for themselves. You know, they're chasing status, they're chasing after rankings or job titles or salaries, as opposed to taking the time and thinking through what it is that they want for themselves. I mean, do you feel like that that's accurate?
- [50:45]
Host 1
Yeah, totally. And, you know, I mean, the actual format of the book is I chronicle people's stories in different industries, and the one that stands out here is the story of a Wall street banker that I tell. It's perhaps like the most cliche story in the book. This guy was a valedictorian, and he went to an Ivy League college and got a job on Wall street that paid the most and quickly rose up the ranks of the firm and was one of the youngest VPs in the firm's history. And from his perch at the top of the org chart, he realized that he was playing a game that he didn't actually want to win. And he hadn't taken the time to look up and ask, what is it that I actually want? He was always just chasing what the market values. But I think the wisdom in his story is that the other end of the spectrum, where you just think about what you want without considering what the market wants, is dangerous as well. It's the kind of thing that might get you in a Situation where you assume a lot of student debt to pursue a graduate degree that might not actually lead to job prospects on the other end, or a situation where you're an artist but you're so preoccupied by how you're going to pay rent that you can't actually focus on the art that you hope to create. And so it might be a little simplistic, but I think it's really important to hold both of those incentives in your hand at the same time and think about, okay, what is it that I value, what is it that the market values and how can I find work that marries the two?
- [52:23]
Joel
Yeah. One of the things I loved about your book was that it wasn't some sort of self help 10 steps to a better relationship with your job. And it was more storytelling. But I guess I am also curious at the end, like when we talk about having that conversation with your boss, with your direct manager, let's say you've been somewhere for years and you feel like over time there's just been this encroachment. And so I feel like, of your employer on your own personal time, and you found it harder to set boundaries, which I think probably a lot of people could relate to that. What does it look like then to. I mean, you might start looking down the road to work somewhere else. Right. That's potentially one solution. But what if you're like, I really like my job. I would just like to have a more normal relationship with it. How would you suggest starting to have that conversation with your direct supervisor to kind of set up boundaries that are going to make sense for both of you?
- [53:17]
Host 1
Yeah, I think, you know, there are things that you can do within the confines of the workplace and there are things that you can do outside of the workplace. When it comes to talking with your manager, I always go back to just clarity of expectations. I think one thing that drives people to overwork is this desire to sort of perform that they're doing a good job. This in the office world might mean just like putting in FaceTime at the office and staying at your desk in the home world, it might be just sitting around on Slack or Microsoft Teams waiting for someone to send you a message. But what we should be valuing is the quality of the work itself. And so that's where I often start when I advise people about talking to their bosses or their managers, having a very clear conversation about, okay, where are we? What is the sort of like status of the quality of the work that I am producing? Where am I meeting expectations? Where am I exceeding Expectations if you want to try and get promoted or move to the next level. What is the type of work work that you are expected to do and just making some of those things clear. And so you're not just sort of putting in pennies to the proverbial work piggy bank, hoping to cash out one day, but you're actually, you know, working clearly towards what good work looks like at your company when it comes to your life outside of work.
- [54:41]
Joel
Focusing on the work. I like that.
- [54:43]
Host 1
Yeah, yeah.
- [54:43]
Joel
Not on the other stuff. Hey, am I here enough? Am I here enough hours? I feel like that that's presenteeism. You start to feel like that's part of the work that's required, but that's.
- [54:53]
Host 1
Not the work totally. And certain industries are just really set up in a way that make this very hard. I'm thinking of lawyers, for example, who are asked to track their billable hours in 6 minute or 15 minute increments. And I was talking to a few lawyers for the book and they were saying it is disincentive for me to do efficient work, that I get no material award for working efficiently or doing high quality of work. It's all just about the number of hours I spend on the work. And that incentive structure is just so backwards. I understand that lawyers bill hourly and so there should be an expectation that they're doing a certain number of hours in order to do work for the firm. But what we should be rewarding is the quality of the work itself. And I think that can be extended to so many other fields. The thing I always advise people for outside of the office is, you know, I talked a little bit about doing things other than work, but in practice this means sort of like having active forms of leisure. You know, like if you want to conceive of yourself as more than just someone who exists on this earth to produce economic value or economic returns for a corporation, try and find realms of your life where people maybe don't even know what you do for work or don't care about your job title, you know, and this doesn't necessarily have to be taking up knitting or a personal hobby. While I do think there is value in being able to do something just for the joy of it or just for the fun of. Can mean getting involved in your neighborhood or your local community. It can mean finding a community of people like a sports team or a book club, that your value to that community is not tied to your value in the office. It's something where you can show up in a different realm and start to kind of cultivate those different identities. You know, just a recent example, I'm Jewish, and there are. There's like a dormant Jewish identity somewhere deep inside of me. I'm not very pro. Not a very active Jew. But, you know, recently it was Passover, and, you know, I sat around the table with my family, and we participated in some of the traditions of the religion. And it was through that behavior, it was through that activity of actively doing something related to Judaism that I felt my identity as a Jewish person begin to grow. And so you can think about that in any realm of your life, whether you're a craft beer aficionado, that identity will grow. So if you are actively taking time to learn more about the craft beers or going out drinking with friends, just.
- [57:41]
Joel
Don'T let it grow too much. Stay sober out there, folks.
- [57:43]
Matt
Absolutely. Well, Seema, this has been an awesome conversation. We really appreciate you taking the time to just talk to us about finding that balance. Where is it that folks can learn more about you and specifically where they can find your book?
- [57:57]
Host 1
Yeah, the best place to go is thegoodenoughjob.com this is my first book, and so every order or pre order really makes a big difference. And there you can find all of my socials and other information that you might need.
- [58:11]
Matt
Awesome. Well, thank you again for joining us here on the podcast, Simo.
- [58:15]
Host 1
Thanks for having me.
- [58:16]
Joel
All right, Matt. Gotta love that conversation with Simone. I feel like there is, like, so much of what he has written about and what he talks about, we have talked about in different ways over the years.
- [58:26]
Matt
Exactly.
- [58:27]
Joel
Not with the eloquence or the precision.
- [58:29]
Matt
We certainly have not written a book on it. But, I mean, one of the reasons that we wanted to have him on, because the message that he has, it's so important. And honestly, the more ways that you can talk about it, like the different angles that you can take to the same end goal. Well, if that helps others to find that balance and to find that fulfillment and happiness in life, we are all.
- [58:50]
Joel
For it, for sure. All right, so what was your big takeaway from this combo? Was it that we should all be eating more chocolate chip cookies, preferably with a little bit of sea salt? That little bit of sea salt really makes them stand out, I think.
- [58:59]
Matt
I thought you made. Yeah, personally, I like a touch of oatmeal in there as well. Just it adds a little bit of chew.
- [59:04]
Joel
It's not raisins. It's not raisins.
- [59:08]
Matt
You hating on raisins over there? Okay, so I think My big takeaway is that so many of the things, so many of the problems and the different myths that he addresses in the book, it's not that they are something we should completely avoid, but it's just that we are relying on our job to meet those ends more than we should. So, for instance, when it comes to the job you do, should you be passionate about it? Well, maybe we should be less focused on the passion side of things. And instead, first and foremost, like he said, we should be thinking about it like an economic contract.
- [59:37]
Joel
Yes.
- [59:38]
Matt
I'm going to exchange my time and my talents for a paycheck.
- [59:41]
Joel
And if you like the job, that's gravy on top.
- [59:44]
Matt
Exactly. Yeah. And how maybe we shouldn't be looking to our jobs to find that interpersonal relationship, and to the extent that we even think of our coworkers as family, but instead we should maybe maintain a degree of professionalism. And if we think about it from maybe more of that transactional framework, like within that framework, I think it could be healthier because honestly, I feel like it kind of goes counter to what a lot of folks are saying where they're just like, oh, no, no, no. You know, like the whole. If you're an employee here, we treat you like family, like that whole approach.
- [60:12]
Joel
But who benefits from that relationship? Typically, the employer, not you.
- [60:16]
Matt
And it leaves the employee in an unhealthy position once you get fired or once you leave that job and you're trying to. And you're rudderless and you're trying to figure out what you're going to do next.
- [60:24]
Joel
But I thought we were family.
- [60:25]
Matt
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I just. I don't know. It's interesting to hear someone take an approach towards your work, towards your career that de. Emphasizes the, like, the interpersonal side of things. It's sort of like it's a way that he is finding himself in the middle because he's not going to the far extreme and saying that, like, oh, yeah, we should all be completely disenchanted with our job. We should only be thinking about it as a contract, but.
- [60:49]
Joel
Or that you should only do the bare minimum. Either.
- [60:50]
Matt
Right, Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a way to find fulfilling work. Work. And there's also a way to find work that's going to pay you well, but you don't necessarily have to sell your soul in order to achieve that on either end of the spectrum.
- [61:02]
Joel
Yep. No, I think that's a good way to put it. My big take.
- [61:05]
Matt
What about you, though?
- [61:05]
Joel
Yeah. When he said all of our identities need investment. I thought that was great. And he basically talked about how they're similar to house plants. And my thought was, man, a lot of our house plants, at least in my house, are parched. Like we're not doing a good enough job with. And I think the same is true for a lot of our identities.
- [61:22]
Matt
Different areas in our life.
- [61:23]
Joel
Yeah, like when it comes to spouse, when it comes to parent, when it comes to community involvement. We talked about that Wall Street Journal. I can't get that out of my head. Just that, that poll about how people value money more than they value community, more than they value patriotism, more than they value family these days. It. It speaks so much about where we're at as a culture. I think we value our careers way more than we value a lot of those things too, because our careers are so tied to money. And that is a shame. And so we need to start to think about how we can start watering, start pruning, start taking care of those other identity forming factors in our lives, like hobbies, like interpersonal relationships. And I think that will in all likelihood mean putting a little bit less into work and career. And I think we'll be happier for it. So I guess is. Is this where I put in my two weeks notice, Matt?
- [62:09]
Matt
Sure.
- [62:11]
Joel
Just kidding.
- [62:13]
Matt
But now we do more how to.
- [62:14]
Joel
Money for folks, but we try not to overdo it. And that is all about finding that balance. Part of the reason we love it because we're not working 60 hours a week doing it. But Matt, let's go back to the beer that we had on this episode. This is a beer I picked up when I was out on the West Coast. It's Scrapalicious by Los Angeles Ale Works. What are your thoughts on this ipa?
- [62:31]
Matt
What is the whole scrapalicious thing? Is that the name of this cat?
- [62:33]
Joel
I guess. I think so.
- [62:34]
Matt
Is it like a brewery cat?
- [62:36]
Joel
I think so.
- [62:36]
Matt
Makes me think about when we were in Kentucky and we went to Peerless Distillery. They had a distillery cat.
- [62:42]
Joel
That's right.
- [62:43]
Matt
That hung around there in the gift shop. But yeah, man, this was a fantastic, juicy ipa as it's written here on the label. Just like our conversation with Simone. It strikes the balance between being incredibly juicy and having the right amount of sweetness. But at the same time, it's got like that sharpness, the bitterness that you get from the hops. It's been a minute since I've said blue cheese as I've described in ipa, but this one kind of had some of those sharp blue cheese elements. Yeah. And when you're able to strike that perfect balance between the two, you end up with an amazing beer.
- [63:16]
Joel
I feel like when you describe an ipa, you don't typically want to describe it as funky, but occasionally there is an ipa.
- [63:23]
Matt
Hey, Blue Cheese is funky.
- [63:24]
Host 2
Yeah.
- [63:24]
Joel
And you can call it funky. And it's a good thing. Sometimes if it's funky, it means that it's old. It's a bad thing. Yeah. It's like, oh, no, this is a shelf turd. This was on there on the shelf for a year or two, and so it kind of tastes a little funky, but this is like. No, no. The hot hops bring a level of. Yeah, that. That just some kind of unique notes from. From the hop set that they put into this ipa. And so I like it. It was juicy, a little funky, and overall, good vibes from this one.
- [63:49]
Matt
Yeah. Specifically, if you're really into the hops, it's got. I've never even heard of these first two hops. Brew one, Laurel and then Sabro. Sabro. I've seen those hops.
- [63:58]
Joel
Yeah.
- [63:58]
Matt
On labels before, but not those first two.
- [64:00]
Joel
So, so many hop varieties now. It's ridiculous.
- [64:02]
Matt
I know. You just gotta go down there one of these days. You want to go to a hop farm down in New Zealand.
- [64:07]
Joel
Yeah, that sounds pretty cool.
- [64:08]
Matt
Field trip, maybe in like five or ten years, who knows? But yeah, enough about the beer. Be sure to look out for Simone's book. It's set to be published here in a couple weeks. I found it to be incredibly thought provoking, and hopefully, I wonder if this is one of his goals. But just for you to be able to ask yourself a bunch of different questions as you process and do the hard work of figuring out what it is that you're looking for.
- [64:31]
Joel
It's like that mission statement.
- [64:33]
Matt
Yeah, exactly. Not just in your job, but honestly, just in life overall. But we'll make sure to have links up on the website@howtomoney.com and, buddy, that's going to be it for this episode. Until next time, Best friends out. Best friends out. You don't need to be ripped. You just need the right shirt. Epic Fits gives you a clean, confident silhouette. Snug on the arms, soft on the skin, generous where it counts, and with deals like $15 per tee, they won't break the bank. Visit epicfits.com today. Epic fits t shirts that get it.
- [65:20]
Host 1
Lowe's knows July 4th savings are worth celebrating right now. Get up to 40% off select major appliances and get an additional 10% off two or more select major appliances plus get three Scott's Naturescapes 1.5 cubic foot mulch bags for just $10. These deals are coming in Hot Lowes we help you Save. Valid through 7 9. Selection varies by location while supplies last. See lowe's.com for more details. Excludes Alaska and Hawaii.
- [65:49]
Matt
Did it occur to you that he charmed you in any way? Yes, it did.
- [65:55]
Host 1
But he was a charming man. It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story. Because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.
- [66:05]
Matt
I often ask myself now, did I know the true Jan at all? Listen to Hot Agent of chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [66:19]
Host 1
This is an iHeart podcast.