We shame those who do a 9–5 jobs
And we talk less of those who work “less”
“I am overwhelmed with projects and tasks, but I am [insert your noun/slogan], and I got this”
I usually take caution commenting on people’s behaviour regarding their careers. Mostly because I rarely listened to anyone over this for the past 19 years.
The message of “MORE WORK” is not wrong, but how we have been feeding it to the new generation seems to be harmful. We’ve been telling the world how busy we are, meetings, projects, tasks, zoom, flights, uber, work over coffee, work over dinner, workshops, seminars and so forth. We tend to draw a visual that squeezes a 7-hour work of productivity to feel like a 16 hour day of non-stop results and achievements. We tend to shame people who do 9–5 jobs, and we ridicule people who care to leave and clock out on time. We’ve invented words and terms to justify how hard we work and why we work this hard. We’ve been telling the young ones that the only way you can make it: is MORE.
We show up early, and we leave late, we rarely take time off, seldom unplug, and only use the term tired on two occasions:
- When someone else complains that they are tired, we tend to unpack our calendar and schedule in front of them to disqualify their claim of tiredness.
- Or when we want to say, “I am tired, yet I still hit the gym after a 16-hour shift at the office, I got this”
“I got this”, this advice we tell ourselves/others, when used inaccurately…becomes toxic. It was never meant to be used to justify overloading or to push others beyond the limit, or even to excuse lousy time management!
I always like to imagine someone stating how demanding their schedule is on their lives, then throwing I got this as a signal that we noticed this and it needs to be fixed, not celebrated.
We pile up achievements and results and package them in labels such as “inspirations for others.” We push this narrative to the world, and probably in good intentions, sometimes we are just proud of our achievements and want to celebrate it with 3 billion people. It is not the doing itself here that I am concerned about since this is a multilayer topic that I can’t give justice to in one piece. I’m more observant of the unintentional/intentional message of MORE, and how the young ones tend to believe it is the only way to make it.
Maybe it is a sign that people in their mid-30s and 40s are the ones pushing out this narrative, not those in their 60s. We give ourselves this sense of achievement at this age, a feeling that we figured it out, and we are ready and confident to teach it back.
Our parents had their share of this; they called it paid overtime and making ends meet. There was nothing wrong with it at the time. I doubt we will look back with fondness into the new marketplace we’ve helped shape. I am guilty of it; I’ve advocated it, presented it, lived, loved it, and believed in it. I didn’t pay attention; I wasn’t alone, and it is never a one-size-fits-all.
