I once met this Chilean guy at a hostal so what do you do I asked him you mean for work he responded as if I had just asked the color of his underwear in the US what do you do is often the first question we ask when we meet someone new this is drilled into us from an early age what do you want to be when you grow up we ask our kids already conflating who we are with what we do as if our jobs and identities were one and the same I think about this
a lot I'm a labor journalist and I wrote a book called The Good Enough job in which I spoke to over a hundred people about the relationship between their work and their identity but before I was a professional writer I was a 22-year-old poetry student trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up it was around this time that I had the opportunity to interview my favorite writer in the entire world the poet anise moani and so I asked him anise how do you feel about the Mantra do what you love
and never work a day in your life and I'll never forget what he told me he said you know Simone I think some people do what they love for work and others do what they have to so they can do what they love when they're not working and neither is more noble I think that last part is key we live in a society that loves to Revere people whose jobs and identities neatly align and here was my idol a professional poet no less telling me that it's okay to have a day job if we want
to develop a healthier relationship to work we can't just think about work life balance in terms of how we spend our time we have to think about how we construct our IDE identity what we do is part of but not the entirety of who we are let me be clear I don't think there's anything wrong with doing what you love for work we work more than we do just about anything else and how we spend those hours matters and yet our current relationship to work isn't quite working a recent study found that 48% of workers
around the globe are burnt out 48% that's half this room actually in this room probably more than half and yet the way that we commonly talk about burnout doesn't address its root cause there's a reason why a onewe vacation doesn't magically cure us there's a reason why our intentions to practice self-care and set better boundaries inevitably break down it's like we're shielding ourselves from the Sun with a cocktail umbrella if we want to actually change our relationship to work we have to go deeper it starts with our identity certainly we are all more than just
workers we're parents and friends and citizens and artists and travelers and neighbors much like an investor benefits from diversifying the sources of stocks in their portfolio we too benefit from diversifying the sources of meaning and identity in our lives but how do you actually go about doing so Rabbi Abraham Joshua Hessel describes Shabbat the weekly Jewish practice of abstaining from work as a sanctuary in time I love this image rather than a physical Sanctuary like a synagogue Shabbat is a Time Sanctuary so the first step to diversifying your identity is to create those time sanctuaries
spaces in your days in your weeks in your life where work is not an option unlike mere intentions to work less or set better boundaries time sanctuaries require infrastructure putting time on the calendar to learn a new language putting your phone in airplane mode while you play with your kids so that work doesn't expand like a gas and fill all of your unoccupied space the second step is to fill those time sanctuaries with activities that reinforce the other identities you hope to cultivate the present father the community Gardener the amateur musician it may sound simple
but if we want to derive meaning from aspects of our life other than work we have to do things other than work now these don't have to be grand gestures in the reporting of my book I spoke to all of these hyper ambitious Workaholics and they'd say things like diversify my identity got it I'm going to read 52 books this year or I'm going to run an ultramarathon we even convert our Leisure into other forms of Labor my advice is to start small how about a weekly walk with your best friend or 10 minutes practice
in the piano after dinner the third step is to reinforce these identities by joining communities who couldn't care less about what you do for work for example I love to play pickup basketball and one of the benefits of my weekly game is that the people I play with don't care how many words I've written or how many books I've sold I care that I show up on time and that I'm a good teammate it's a weekly reminder that I exist on this Earth to do more than just produce economic value the irony is that diversifying
our identity can be great for business too research shows that people with varied interests tend to be more creative problem solvers and more Innovative hobbies are one of the best ways to recharge so that you can be more productive when you're back on the clock and a diverse identity can come in handy in the face of a stressful event like a recession or a layoff I spoke to to all of these folks from my book who treated their work like their family and then were unceremoniously let go during the pandemic if you are what you
do and you lose your job who are you but in addition to the business case there's also the moral case if we want to develop more well-rounded versions of ourselves if we want to build robust relationships and live in robust communities and have a robust Society at large we all must invest in aspects of our lives beyond work we shouldn't just work less because it makes us better workers we should work less because it makes us better people this isn't just about you and me this is about teaching our kids that their self-worth is not
determined by their job title this is about rein enforcing the fact that not all Noble work neatly translates to a line on a resume this is about setting the example that we all have a responsibility to contribute to the world in a Way Beyond contributing to one organization's bottom line so the next time you're at a party instead of asking someone what do you do I encourage you to add two small words to your question instead ask them what do you like to do maybe you like to cook maybe you like to write maybe you
do some of those things for work or maybe you don't but what do you like to do is a question that allows each of us to Define ourselves on our own terms thank you than
