It’s true. . .
You may never get an Answer
if you don’t ask a Question
but it’s just as true
that sometimes the best Answers
require no Questions. . .
Who Cares - What Matters
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Just what is
Q U I E T
Q U I T T I N G
and
ARE WE
Y O U
actually doing it. . .
Is Just Setting Boundaries.
TRUE OR FALSE
Maggie Perkins, a Georgia-based teaching advocate, had been working as a teacher for nearly half a decade before she decided to “quiet quit” her job. The decision didn’t mean she’d leave her position, but rather limit her work to her contract hours. Nothing more, nothing less.
“No matter how much I hustle as a teacher, there isn’t a growth system or recognition incentive,” Perkins told TIME. “If I didn’t quiet quit my teaching job, I would burn out.”
Perkins joins a larger online community of workers who have been sharing their experiences on TikTok, taking a “quiet quitting” mentality—the concept of no longer going above and beyond, and instead doing what their job description requires of them and only that.
The movement comes in the wake of a global pandemic that caused employees to reimagine what work could look like, considering the potentials of extending remote work, not working much on Fridays, or in some cases, amid the Great Resignation, not working at all. Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post and CEO at Thrive, wrote in a viral LinkedIn post, “Quiet quitting isn’t just about quitting on a job, it’s a step toward quitting on life.”
As “quiet quitters” defend their choice to take a step back from work, company executives and workplace experts argue that although doing less might feel good in the short-term, it could harm your career—and your company—in the long run.
With worries of an economic slowdown swirling, productivity levels are a major concern to company executives. U.S. nonfarm worker productivity in the second quarter has fallen 2.5% since the same period last year, its steepest annual drop since 1948, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Companies are now looking at productivity scales as a metric for excellence, with some going as far as moderating employees’ keyboard activity. Major tech companies like Google are signaling that they are slowing hiring and could lay off staff amid concerns about overall productivity.
Johnny C. Taylor Jr., President and CEO of Society for Human Resource Management, the world’s largest HR society, says remote work has caused severe burnout, Zoom fatigue, and made it harder for some workers to take breaks from home. “I don’t know a company in America that is not sensitized to burnout and the need for employees to step away from the workplace for their mental health.”
Taylor, who, as a CEO himself leads a team of over 500 associates, advocates for his employees taking time off when they’re feeling overworked, but he doesn’t see how embracing quiet quitting will be helpful to employees in the long term. “I understand the concept, but the words are off-putting,” he says. “Anyone who tells their business leader they are a quiet quitter is likely not to have a job for very long.” Gergo Vari, CEO of job board platform Lensa, also believes the decision won’t serve employees long-term either. “Anytime that you silence your own voice in an organization, you may be depriving yourself of the opportunity to change that organization,” says his spokesperson.
Employees acting on their dissatisfaction at work isn’t only potentially affecting their job security. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report found that job dissatisfaction is at a staggering all-time high and that unhappy and disengaged workers cost the global economy $7.8 trillion in lost productivity.
The decision to step away from “hustle culture” can cause tension between employees and company executives, and can also cause a rift between fellow colleagues who may have to pick up the slack. “Whether people feel like their coworkers are committed to quality work can affect the performance of the organization and cause friction inside teams and organizations,” says Jim Harter, Chief Scientist for Gallup’s workplace management practice.
There are potential generational differences between the Boomers and Gen-X executives that have subscribed to the hustle ‘rise and grind’ mentality to climb the corporate ladder, versus younger generations that tend to prioritize a better work-life balance, according to Deloitte’s 2022 Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey. The survey also found that among the top concerns of the Gen-Z and millennial generation is finances, with pay being the number one reason workers in the demographic left their roles in the last two years.
Shini Ko, a millennial software developer, acknowledges that she and many of her colleagues are in the industry for the pay, but she too, prioritizes stepping away from work when necessary. She’s not convinced “quiet quitting” is the best term for setting boundaries. “It’s negative and dangerous that we frame a healthy work life balance as quitting,” says Ko. “Can we just call it what it is? It’s just working.”
When Ko isn’t working her nine-to-five, she runs Bao Bao Farm, a small-scale vegetable farm. She acknowledges that she’s got a different mentality when farming. “Because the farm is my passion there is an intrinsic motivation to do more.”
Gallup’s Harter agrees that passion is a big factor in whether people decide to look for a new job, and how much they’re willing to work for. “Pay is usually interpreted in the context of how you feel about your job. If you’re disengaged, you’ll be willing to look for less.”
Vari, CEO of Lensa, has over 200 employees, and has been working hard to not have “quiet quitters” amongst his staff.
Aside from providing his employees remote-work flexibility and on-site perks at the office, he says his workplace lacks quiet quitters because he values employees’ moments of pushback. Making employees comfortable enough to voice their concerns before they get to the stage of “quietly” changing their pace at work is key, according to his spokesperson.
“Employers have to make an effort to enable people to have a say in their own future,” he says. “I want them to stick around, and I’ll stick out my neck to encourage them to do so.”
Vari coins an alternative: ‘loudly persisting,’ the act of employees feeling encouraged enough to vocalize how their organization can better serve their goals. “When you loudly persist you have a sense of belonging and of having a stake in where the company is going.”
Career coach Allison Peck never considered herself a “quiet quitter.” In fact, she credits going above and beyond at her job in the medical device industry as the reason she was able to purchase her first home. But that wasn’t always the case—her first job out of graduate school required her to work 14 hour days for 6 days a week, only for her to be laid off a year into it.
“Choose carefully who you go above and beyond for and determine if it’s worth it. Sometimes it pays off, but sometimes it doesn’t,” says Peck. She views “quiet quitting” as a symptom of employees not connecting to their work or managers. Her career advice for quiet quitters is to consider a bolder move.
“Finding a new job, manager, team, or company that better aligns with you altogether can get you out of this quiet quitting mindset,” says Peck. “That can make you want to jump through hoops.”
SO. . .
ARE YOU A QUIET QUITTER
fearlessly floating away to what you really love
and leaving behind what has always been thought. . . ?
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
it’s probably not one of those questions you have to answer
because most likely
YOU ARE LIVING IT
T H E Y
L I F E
is what you
M A K E
T H E Y
just may be wrong. . .
It just might be
L I F E
is what you
R E A D
When I accepted the challenge to just post 7 books that I love with no explanations, no reviews; just one picture of a cover each day for a week the problem wasn’t the ‘no explanations, no review’ part; it as trying to figure out
THE SEVEN
FULL DISCLOSURE:
I could take up the challenge for the next 52 weeks or the next 30, 52 weeks and I’m still not so sure that I’d
GET IT
right
but
I T
wouldn’t matter. . .
only the reading would!
How does this rate to fit into a video Monday Caring Catalyst blog post?
R E A D I N G
is the number one thing that’s
cleared my land
plowed my field
planted seeds
watered them
cultivated
nurtured
and finally
H A R V E S T E D
a most magnificent crop
of goodness
I could ever hope to
receive
to
GIVE
So. . .
what do you read when you read. . .
The best books I’ve ever read
have ever read me
and that’s not only made all of the difference;
it’s truly made me
DIFFERENT
(f o r e v e r)
Now. . .
for THAT
n e x t
book. . .
Are you The Christoper Columbus in Search of the lost Continent in you. . . ?
I love articles like this
because they imply something magical could happen to you
if you just followed
THE STEPS
THE GUIDELINES
THE MAP
THE PERSONAL GPS
THE. . .THE. . .THE. . .THE. . .THE. . .THE. . .THE. . .
Emily Pidgeon
Whether it was during a career aptitude test or in a heart-to-heart chat after getting laid off, chances are someone has talked to you about how to “find your calling.” It’s one of those phrases people toss about. But StoryCorps founder Dave Isay takes issue with it … specifically, the verb.
“Finding your calling — it’s not passive,” he says. “When people have found their calling, they’ve made tough decisions and sacrifices in order to do the work they were meant to do.”
In other words, you don’t just “find” your calling — you have to fight for it. And it’s worth the fight. “People who’ve found their calling have a fire about them,” says Isay, the winner of the 2015 TED Prize. “They’re the people who are dying to get up in the morning and go do their work.”
Over a decade of listening to StoryCorps interviews, Isay noticed that people often share the story of how they discovered their calling — and now, he’s collected dozens of great stories on the subject into a new book, Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work. Below, he shares 7 takeaways from the hard-won fight to find the work you love.
1. Your calling is at the intersection of a Venn diagram of three things: doing something you’re good at, feeling appreciated, and believing your work is making people’s lives better. “When those three things line up, it’s like lightning,” Isay says. He doesn’t suggest that a person has to be a surgeon saving lives to feel like they have a calling; think of the diner waitress who talks to customers and makes them feel loved. How do you find this overlap? “You have to shut out all the chatter of what your friends are telling you to do, what your parents are telling you to do, what society is telling you to do,” Isay says, “and just go to that quiet place inside you that knows the truth.”
2. Your calling often comes out of difficult experiences. What lurks in that quiet place will be a defining experience — quite possibly a painful one. Isay points to an interview in Callings with 24-year-old teacher Ayodeji Ogunniyi. “He was studying to be a doctor when his father was murdered. He realized that what he was really meant to do was be a teacher,” says Isay. “He says that every time he walks into a classroom, his father is walking in with him.” This theme of people turning their hardest experiences into a new path runs throughout the book. “Having an experience that really shakes you and reminds you of your mortality can be a very clarifying event in people’s lives. Oftentimes, it leads to changes,” he says. “We spend a lot of time working, so it can really change your priorities in terms of work life.”
3. Calling often takes courage and ruffles feathers. Elsewhere in Callings, we hear about Wendell Scott, who became the first African-American NASCAR driver in 1952, and kept on driving despite threats against his life. From scientist Dorothy Warburton who dealt with extreme sexism as she conducted research to break the stigma around miscarriage. From Burnell Cotlon, who opened the first grocery store in the Lower 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina because he wasn’t about to let his old neighborhood’s spirit fade. Calling, says Isay, very often starts with taking a stand against a status quo that simply isn’t acceptable, and then dedicating your work to changing it: “It’s work ignited by hope, love, or defiance — and stoked by purpose and persistence.”
4. Other people often nudge you toward calling. Sharon Long had worked odd jobs most of her life. As Isay tells it, “Her daughter was going to college, and as the bursar was helping them with financial aid forms, she said quietly to herself, ‘I wish I could’ve gone to college.’ The bursar responded, ‘It’s not too late.’” Sharon enrolled in an art program, and on her advisor’s suggestion, took forensic anthropology as her science. “The advisor suggested it for no other reason than he thought it was the easiest science course for the science requirement,” says Isay. “But the minute she sat in that class, it was boom — this is what she was meant to do.” Isay tells this story to illustrate how calling, while very personal, is also relational. “People bump you this way and that way,” he says, often without realizing it. “When people find their callings, they want to honor those people who helped them get there.”
5. What comes after identifying your calling is what really matters. The old ‘finding your calling’ phraseology makes it sound like a calling is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow — you find it, and the story’s over. But Isay stresses that your calling is an ongoing process. “Understanding what your calling is — that’s very different than the blood, sweat and tears of actually doing it,” he says. Pursuing a calling may require going back to school or apprenticing; it may require starting a business. Often, notes Isay, it leads a person into a line of work that’s in service of others. “This book is basically a love letter to nurses, teachers, social workers — the people who don’t often get celebrated for the work they do,” he says.
6. Age is irrelevant. Isay found his calling when he was 21 and interviewed a man who’d been part of the Stonewall riots. “The minute I hit record, I knew that being a journalist and interviewing people was what I was going to do for the rest of my life,” he says. “I feel very lucky that lightning struck when I was very young.” But collecting stories for the book reminded him that a calling can be discovered at any age. The book includes an interview with someone who knew they wanted to be an NBA referee at age 15, and another who worked as an accountant for 30 years before discovering his passion for slicing lox. “Doing the work you’re meant to do is one of the most satisfying, remarkable experiences that a person can have,” says Isay, “so never give up.”
7. Calling often doesn’t come with a big paycheck. Another trend Isay sees in stories of people who find their calling: they often involve leaving a high-paying job for one that’s lower-paying but more satisfying. “The message we send to young people is that you want to do as little work as you can to make as much money as you can — that’s the dream,” says Isay. “But the wisdom in the StoryCorps archive is that there’s another, much more rewarding dream of taking risks and working very hard to live with integrity.” In the end, that’s the lesson he took away from writing this book. “There are no millionaires, no billionaires, no celebrities, nobody with a big Twitter following,” he says. “Just stories can teach us a lot about lives fully lived.”
Even more powerful is this one single, revelation:
The DEBUNKING of one of the worst lies ever told to you,
made even more devastating because it’s told to you by people you love;
People you admire; look up to; respect. . .
YOU HAVE A PURPOSE. . .
(NO YOU DON’T)
YOU HAVE A MEANING. . .
(THAT’S A LIE)
YOU HAVE A DESTINY. . .
(THAT’S A BUNCH OF BUNK)
YOU HAVE A REASON. . .
(THAT’S A CROCK OF SOMETHING STANKY YOU DON’T WANT IN YOUR PANTRY)
T R U T H :
You don’t have a Purpose
You don’t have a Meaning
You don’t have a Destiny
You don’t have a Reason. . .
THEY ARE PLURAL. . .
Not SINGULAR
The Purpose
The Meaning
The Destiny
The Reason
Y O U
had as a infant wasn’t the one you had as a toddler or a pre-schooler or in junior high or when you graduated from high school, college, with your first full time job, when you got married, had kids, got divorced, remarried, more kids, another career, moved, had grandkids, retired. . .
F A C T :
You’ve had more Purposes,
You’ve had more Meanings,
You’ve had more Destinies,
You’ve had more Reasons
slip through your hands than you’ve ever taken advantage;
THEY ARE ENDLESS
and FOREVER CHURNING IN YOU
WHAT’S THE USE(S)
what indeed for
N O W
How. . .
H O W D O Y O U D O I T ?
How do you
B U R N Y O U R C A N D L E ?
Some do it in the most unconventional way. . .
t h e y
actually light their candle
by putting a little dancing flame
on the tip of a small wick
that accepts it gratefully
and in return for the gift,
sputters out some warmth and light. . .
But how do you burn your candle?
One End?
Both Ends?
In the Middle?
You don’t burn your Candle at all. . .
you use it as a Decoration?
There have been countless studies on how to avoid burn out. . .
maybe the greatest way to avoid Burn-Out
is simply never to Light the Candle at all
. . .but who wants to live in that
c o l d d a r k n e s s ?
Apparently. . .
a whole host of folks. . .
Y O U ?
The only true way to
Burn Your Candle
i s
Both Ends and in the Middle
AS LONG AS YOU KNOW
WHERE TO GET THE WAX AND THE WICK
Pssssssssst: We all know where OUR wax and wick are. . .
we just don’t take the time to go and get it!
In fact,
most have the audacity to actually think
it should be delivered to them on time,
without even ordering
or slowing down long enough
to receive the special shipment.
So the next time someone prescribes the ultimate antidote for Burn Out by
FINDING TIME TO DECOMPRESS
TAKING FREQUENT BREAKS THROUGH OUT THE DAY
WATCHING WHAT YOU EAT AND DRINK
EXERCISING. . .EVEN MODERATELY
GETTING PLENTY OF REST AND SLEEP
INVESTING SIGNIFICANTLY IN RELATIONSHIPS
SETTING LIMITS AND NOT CHOOSING TO DIE ON EVERY HILL
PAYING ATTENTION TO HOW YOU REALLY FEEL AND W H Y
Part of not only b e i n g
but by maintaining
the honorable status of a Caring Catalyst
is not just recognizing,
but actually taking just a few mere seconds to
burn a little bit brighter
burn a little bit warmer
by going to get
YOUR WAX
YOUR WICK
to burn the Candle at both ends and in the Middle
W H E R E ?
Simply to that place
that makes your Heart beat differently
that makes your Soul glow
that makes your Spirt soar
Shhhhhhhhhhhh. . .
How long has it been?
Has it even been with what you are currently doing?
Is it just your hobby?
. . .and you want to know the truest reason for Burn-Out?
Ask the Composer
who never put never fingers to keyboard
Ask the Artist
who never dabbed brush to canvas
Ask the Writer
who never put pen to paper
Ask the Sculptor
who never put chisel to marble or hand to clay
. . .the flame never brought to wick. . .
Want to end Burn Out ?
FIND YOURSELF AND
D O
B E
Y O U R
T R U E S T
I T
and experience
a light and a warmth
unrivaled but n o n e:
Y O U R ‘ S
Be more of
Y O U R S T O R Y
and less of
T H E I R S T U F F . . .
Ain’t it grand
Ain’t it majestic
Ain’t it glorious
Ain’t it perpetual ?
Pssssssssst: This is one thing you can bet your life on. . .
or
burn out!
Why be a
G L I M M E R
when you can be a
G L O W
. . . ?