Tag: work

Workism: my new religion

Graphic by Wednesday LaPlante

How do you separate your identity from your work when you’ve become a workaholic?

Last spring, I wrote an article about the hustle culture affecting my mental health and leading to burnout. A year later, I still struggle to find a healthy balance between work and my personal life.

My problem last year was that I felt a social pressure to overwork myself. I kept comparing myself with other people’s achievements and felt insecure about my work in journalism. At that time, I was even questioning my career choice.

Today, I have a similar problem — but now the pressure is coming from within. Though I finally love what I’m doing and take pleasure in writing articles, I’ve let my work define me and have left no space for other hobbies.

“Who am I apart from being a journalist?” I asked myself a few weeks ago, on the train back home after being out working for 12 hours.

I kept holding back my tears for the entire hour-long train ride. I was exhausted, but refused to be upset about it.

That Saturday was the most emotionally and physically challenging day. I woke up at 7 a.m.,  attended a meeting online for another job, went to a café to work on an article, attended a protest, then headed to the library to write another article on the demonstration.

“You love your work and everything you’re doing. You shouldn’t complain,” I kept whispering to myself as I sat on the train with my eyes half-closed.

This has been my routine and mantra for the past month.

Since February, I’ve been working three jobs. I work my nine-to-five internship during the week, then spend my weekends writing for The Concordian and supervising Concordia’s Arts and Science Federation of Associations (ASFA) winter 2022 elections. My mind is constantly occupied with work.

This may sound exhausting to some, but I love it. I absolutely adore what I’m doing because it makes me feel so fulfilled. I get an adrenaline rush attending protests and knowing that the articles I write matter.

I feel as if I have a purpose. Though only one of the three jobs pays me well, I decided to take on as many jobs to fill my CV and feel accomplished. Yet, I can’t help but think I’ve become chained to my work.

The religion of workism has taken over my life.

“Workism” was defined by Derek Thompson a few years ago in The Atlantic as, “the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work.”

Working three remote jobs made it easier for me to let work define my worth and who I am. With my phone glued to my hand, it’s been challenging to disassociate myself from work. If I’m not working for my internship, I’m constantly looking for story ideas or responding to emails.

I no longer have time for leisure activities like reading, journaling, running… I tried squeezing in a day to ski every Sunday during the winter months. Even then, on the slopes, I was working! I kept checking my phone and worked on the chairlift between the runs.

On top of that, the few times I go out and socialize with my friends, I find myself checking my phone.

A few weeks ago, I was trying to get to know someone at a social event, and my phone kept buzzing. Work messages buzzed in my pockets every few minutes as I profusely apologized for the rudeness.

The worst thing was I didn’t even feel that bad because at that moment, if I’m being honest, I would have rather checked my phone than continued the conversation. I couldn’t enjoy my night until I was sure the work was done and settled.

I have yet to set boundaries to keep a healthy balance between work and my personal life but I can say that I’ve acknowledged that if I don’t change my work-life, I will have another burnout.

 

Graphic by Wendesday Laplante

Categories
Student Life

Girls Who Like Money: Why we’re workaholics

LILY COWPER @lilycowper

Answer: we don’t know

 

Girls Who Like Money is a column written to help you feel less bad about your money habits, plus some advice on how to finance your expensive taste.

What is it about being 22 that makes you realize who you are? Is there some sort of old and wise threshold that you need to pass in order to understand all those parts of you that don’t make sense?

I’ve been a perfectionist for as long as I can remember, and for a long time that was all it was. I have always been artistic, creative, independent, down-to-earth, and a go-getter. However, I am also forgetful, never on time, stubborn, jaded, and chronically depressed and angry.

Everyone’s good traits have a dark side (call it yin and yang). For me, perfectionism manifested into hard-core-BDSM-level workaholism. Some might call it ambition. I call it perfectionism, but often throughout my life it appeared as the exact opposite: carelessness.

I suppose it’s because it’s impossible to be perfect all the time, but my nit-picking has always been selective, and school was last on the list. I took the easy way out with everything that was required, but anything not required had to be executed to perfection.

The other day I started thinking about high school. I don’t remember much from my time spent in class, apart from harsh fluorescent lighting and the constant feeling of wanting to get in and out of it as soon as possible. I was always rushing to school, as two tardies got you detention, and rushing out of school, back to my other life.

My other life, my real life, was work. I’ve always loved learning, but having long-ago realized the arbitrariness of grades, my brain must have logically pushed them to the bottom of my priorities. Schoolwork was just below chores, which were below exercise, which was below friends, which were below family, which, admittedly, was below work.

Work is over everything, and when you’re not working, you’re thinking about more ideas you can execute and whether something needs revision. Somehow, you always create more work.

You hope to surround yourself with other workaholics, so that your priorities don’t get in the way of, but rather support the friendship. So that’s how I’ve always met my best friends — through work. And that’s just one way a workaholic unconsciously creates a life that is centred around their job(s).

But how does a workaholic manage the other aspects of life? A workaholic might respond, “What other aspects?” Family, friends, relationships, and health all take a backseat when there’s work to be done. And there’s always work to be done… even when you’ve finished it all..

A workaholic often stays up late to top things off. Nine-to-five work hours are suggested for other people, but not for us. How does one kick off a budding career with all that time spent sitting around? Answer: one doesn’t. Instead, we use the omnipresent threat of said “budding career” as a reason to push harder.

We often wake up in the middle of the night to write things down, set our alarms for way too early, and end up sleeping in. Our Google Calendar app is where we feel most at home.

Even now as I write this, my partner and I are spending quality time, as we always do, cuddled up next to each other. As usual, he’s sleeping and I’m deep into this semi-necessary extra-curricular task.

We’re both workaholics, and as I explained once to my therapist, “It works out well because we have the same schedule.” She responded, “Yeah, but when do you spend time together?” I painted, for her, a picture of this exact moment: The Office plays in the background, he’s sleeping next to me, and I’m getting through the work I’m still catching up on from the day. That counts, right?

If you’re reading this and you think this may be you, I’m sorry but I haven’t figured out why we’re like this. If this article seems chaotic, that’s because it’s a reflection of me. However, there has been one discovery to come out of this.

As much as I love money, I realize now that money has nothing to do with my workaholism. You know how I know? Because I have three jobs. Two jobs are fun and make me almost nothing. The other job sucks and makes enough to pay rent and then some. Guess which job I do most?

I always thought I loved money so much that all I wanted to do was make more of it. But the truth is, I just want to do stuff. I always want to stay busy, because when I’m not busy, I just have ideas that never come to fruition.

It’s like getting in a metro car that never closes its doors. It just stays still for 20 minutes and you wonder if you should get off. And then another 20 minutes go by and you get off and you have to figure out another way to get to the place you’re going. It’s the same feeling.

People talk about balance, and I wonder how I can do that too. Let me know if you figure it out.

 

With love,

Lily

Categories
Student Life

It’s a sign of the times: how Canadian universities struggle to adapt to changing times

Universities aren’t keeping up with evolving technologies and calls for diversity

Following my graduation from high school, I was very vocal about how the education I received was too workplace-driven, with a small proportion of material geared towards self-improvement and general culture. I felt that the growing societal awareness of our lack of diversity had fallen on my school administration’s deaf ears.

But in the few months preceding my graduation from Concordia, I’m noticing quite the opposite effect. I find that a divide has been growing between the university’s disconnected attempts at promoting diversity and better inclusion, and its ability to properly prepare us for post-graduation life in a rapidly evolving world.

A friend of mine who studies Design at Concordia recently told me about her frustration with the disconnect between the program’s advocacy for a more diverse design industry and its lack of professors of colour. In many of her classes, she also felt the expectations for her work weren’t on par with the demands of the design market, and that it would be difficult to compete in the arts scene with the portfolio she was building through class assignments.

It seems to be a pattern, from hearing other people’s experiences in the arts programs at this school, that the training it provides focuses on a dissociated idea of the knowledge we will need once we enter the job market.

In my three years studying Journalism, some of the most important topics — how to find work as a freelancer, or writing an invoice, for example — have been presented to us under the form of optional extracurricular talks to leave space for mandatory courses about the basics of photography and writing local crime stories. Furthermore, despite being promised a course on Indigenous reporting since our first semester in Journalism, it still hasn’t been offered three years later.

Throughout the past year, many of my peers have anecdotally told me about their struggles with keeping up with the department’s expectations because we’ve never learned to produce quality content without using expensive softwares and equipment or $2,000 iMacs. In fact, using an iPhone camera was grounds for docking marks in pretty much every photography class we had to take; our professors preferring we borrowed the 2008 DSLRs provided by the school.

Don’t get me wrong, I cherish a lot of the information I took away from my time in both programs I’m enrolled in. But the truth is, Concordia, just like many other Canadian universities, falls short when it comes to adapting fast enough to rapidly changing times.

In 2015, McGill’s School of Medicine was put on probation for, in part, failing to provide their students with proper instruction on women’s health and domestic violence issues. This was despite the fact that there were calls to bring the curriculum up to date with the status of social issues in Canada for years prior to the decision. Yet, even after the faculty went off probation in 2017, many reported an ongoing lack of diversity within the program.

Last semester, Concordia Film Production students wrote a statement demanding their department to address the lack of diversity, and to be held accountable for their responsibility to raise the voices of underrepresented groups.

And just this week, the students at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism issued a public letter calling out its failure to “represent and support its students who identify as Black, Indigenous, people of colour (BIPOC) and LGBTQ2IA+,” a letter which led to the resignations of the chair and associate chair of the program, Janice Neil and Lisa Taylor.

It’s not a coincidence, it’s a pattern. Canadian universities aren’t equipped to adapt their teaching to the needs of the modern world, just like they aren’t prepared to make the structural changes required by society’s increased sensibility to diversity and social issues.

It’s unbecoming of our schools, which we so often brag about being among the best in the country, to forget about currency and adaptability as part of their commitment to high quality education. Being unable to compete in a technology-reliant, socially aware society isn’t what we thought we were paying tuition for.

 

Graphic by @the.beta.lab

What does a comedian do without their stage, according to Kate Hammer?

Checking in on your friendly neighbourhood comedian

“I love lying about traffic, for sure. Anything car-related.”

Kate Hammer gives  good advice. At 28, Hammer is a well-known stand-up comic, writer and performer in Montreal, who most notably wrote the sellout show The Peers which ran at Montreal’s 2019 Fringe Festival. Hammer’s been active, of course, until COVID-19 hit last winter. Since then, fans and concerned members of society can’t help but wonder: what have all these comics been doing without a stage and mic?

“My name is Kate Hammer, and it has been seven days since someone last came into my face and screamed ‘It’s Hammer time!’”

Hammer captured an audience last year in New York City with this introduction, followed by some lunging on stage. Clearly, they did theatre as a kid.

Known for their ambition and busy schedule, Hammer has a new perspective on work these days.

“Instead of saying yes to every show or trying to do as many shows as possible, take a step back,” Hammer says. “It’s that mindset of working smarter versus working a lot.”

This change of pace is big for Hammer, who grew up on a Lutheran farm in Stratford, Ontario that preached, “Eat whatever you want. Talk straight to God.” That, compounded with a strict farmer’s work ethic, “You can’t say no if you don’t feel well. Your livelihood depends on it.” Hammer is all about eating pudding, keeping your word, and investing in your dreams.

The “work smarter” attitude serves Hammer in their burgeoning career, as they recount doing three shows in one night during a snowstorm.

It’s like a big sense of just doing it, no matter how you feel.”

On the snowstorm occasion, Hammer leaned on their tried and true excuse for being late: traffic.

These days, Hammer’s beginning a master’s degree in TV Writing at Glasgow Caledonian University, and to that end, has moved and reshaped the direction of their life. Hammer studied Creative Writing at Concordia University, where they ran Concordia’s first comedy journal, The Hindwing Press, and created and hosted a monthly comedy show called INFEMOUS that aimed to create space for non-binary and female-identifying comedians in the stand-up community.

A lot of change came with Hammer’s shift in perspective towards working smart. With a focus on vulnerability, they see the obstacles that come from identifying as an artist, versus not. It can be hard when you haven’t accomplished your big project yet, or when you face scrutiny and constantly feel like you have to prove your chops. This insecurity is commonly known as imposter syndrome, and many artists come head-to-head with it at some point. Hammer’s tackling it head-on: “You’re not like an emerging or aspiring writer,” they continue. “If you’re writing, you’re a writer.”

The comedy scene has also changed recently. Online streaming services are investing a lot in comedy specials, with multi-million-dollar payouts for the first-tier talent, and five-figures for those second-tier comedians. Meanwhile, live comedy is no longer available with COVID-19 measures in place indefinitely. Alone, each of these changes would impact a comedian’s ability to “work smart.” Together, they’ve shifted the comedy world entirely.

Some artists adapted their stand-up structure to accommodate digital sets, like a Zoom game show or a podcast. Others, like Hammer, zeroed in on their writing aspirations.

“I think sussing out where you think your market is going,” Hammer says, “it’s always the smart move.”

Working smart can be difficult to do when your upbringing set the standard for a hard work ethic, like Hammer.

“I think the biggest thing is being forgiving to yourself, because working eight hours is bullshit. No one can work eight hours productively in a day.”

“One thing that can be helpful is to know when you are most efficient and when you need … higher level concentration,” says Montreal-based psychologist, Dr. Jade-Isis Lefebvre. This tactic helps maximize productivity so you don’t have to work too hard, but instead lean on your body’s natural rhythm to guide your workflow. Dr. Lefebvre believes a key determinant for success involves “tailoring your schedule as much as possible to … when you’re at your highest performance, when you’re the most energized.”

Instead of eight hours of unproductive work a day throughout the pandemic, Hammer is doubling down on self-care, and they want everyone to engage in it, too.

“It can just be hard to remember to do good things for yourself,” Hammer says. “I think that’s the biggest weird thing about this kind of collective rut, depression, sense of self-loss, sense of world-loss.”

By going outside a bit, getting into cooking, and taking care of plants, Hammer creates space for “little ways of meditating without actually meditating” with all the extra time left over from working smart.

Dr. Lefebvre agrees. “Creative endeavours are really good for building mindfulness, for expressing yourself, for understanding yourself, and getting more insight.” She wholly endorses the practice as a viable way to manage stress through these difficult times.

But most importantly, Hammer wants to make you laugh, especially as we’re living through a global pandemic. Joking is an important way to process what’s going on personally and collectively. That said, it’s important to consider the impact of your jokes. You have to ask yourself, “Where’s this coming from and what’s your point with it?” says Hammer.

“So what’s funny about the pandemic? Literally nothing,” Hammer says. “But everything around the pandemic, what’s happening with our actions and reactions, this shift in human behaviour and our needs — that’s hilarious.”

 

Feature photo by Jeremy Cabrera

Categories
Opinions

The harsh realities of burnout culture

As I open the 47th window on my computer and prepare myself to fill this blank document with thoughts, opinions and rhetoric I hope you’ll find interesting, to my surprise, my computer shuts down.

A black screen is a daunting thing to see when you have so much to do — 12 articles, 11 soulful yet professional cover letters, 10 tests, nine unread emails and a partridge in a pear tree.

As I trudged through the snow to use a library computer to finish my work, I couldn’t help but think that sometimes I feel like my laptop.

Yes boomers — I just said I feel like my laptop, okay?

I’m the kind of person that doesn’t do well without structure, so when my system feels like it’s about to shut down, I often excuse the emerging breakdown with phrases like, “I thrive when I’m busy,” “The more time I have, the more I waste,” “I’d be bored if I did less” or the classic, “I don’t burnout.”

Listen, no one is above burnout culture. Not Oprah, Elon Musk or even that friend that seems like they are constantly balancing a million internships and projects at once. As a research professor at the University of Houston and a recent public figure, Brené Brown says, “your body keeps score, and always wins.” Brown is alluding to the fact that we need to engage with self-reflection and self-awareness in order to live our best lives, pardon the cliche.

At this point, you might think that this is just another article telling you to slow down, smell the flowers, kiss your dog, go for a run and call your mother — in which case you are absolutely right. Telling people to slow down, live mindfully and engage with their life meaningfully is not new, but at the same time should constantly be part of the conversation.

We are trained as students, as workers and as humans in general, that the only way we have a purpose in this confusing world is through being productive. This philosophy is ingrained in us to function in the cold, fast, capitalistic world we live in. If we are not moving forward, we are moving backwards. If our economies are not getting bigger, faster, stronger, then what’s the point? It’s important that we understand this system, to combat it.

Some public figures are restructuring their philosophy to promote a healthier lifestyle.

Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, has been advocating for the prioritization of sleep for a few years now. In an interview with National Geographic, she explained that we are currently in “a moment of transformation.”

“What stops people from prioritizing sleep is the fear that somehow they’re going to miss out, said Huffington. We have so many phrases that confirm that – “You snooze, you lose,” “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

It’s important to remember we are doing our best. If you need to ask for an extension, miss a class, postpone an interview or what have you, don’t beat yourself up. We are all struggling to grapple with showing up for ourselves, listening to our instincts while also trying to succeed. The reality is, if you are constantly pushing yourself and spreading yourself too thin, then you won’t be able to show up the way you want to in every part of your life. You’ll be tired, you won’t be present, and even if you don’t burnout right away, it will happen.

So in the name of showing up for myself and listening to my body, I’ll end this article here. Quite like my computer, I’m shutting down — or at least on sleep mode. Goodnight. 

 

Photo by Britanny Clarke / Graphic @sundaeghost

Categories
Student Life

Collective intervention is needed

The Rialto Theatre is on Park Ave, near the Outremont metro station. Photo by Alex Hutchins.

Everyone, especially artists, are economic agents for deregulation and gentrification

In a dimly lit basement, at the end of meandering halls beneath the performance hall of the Rialto Theatre, an eclectic group of concerned citizens gathered to openly discuss the nexus of artists, real estate inflation and shifting cultural demographics.

Gentrification: The Role of Artists in Changing Neighbourhoods took place on Saturday, Sept. 29 as part of a collaboration between POP Montreal Symposium and Concordia’s Fine Art Student Alliance (FASA). The array of panelists included both artists and those who work with non-profit social housing organizations and as community organizers in neighbourhoods affected by gentrification.

Cathy Inouye, a musician who has fought against many issues related to housing and poverty for more than 10 years, opened her segment by saying that an important thing to remember when talking about gentrification is that human beings are losing their homes or being evicted from their apartments. Faiz Abhuani, the co-founder of Brique Par Brique, a non-profit organization whose mission is to create affordable living spaces for marginalized people, agreed.

“I think it’s important to start with that baseline,” he said. “The reason why we’re talking about this is because there are real effects on real people.”

Gentrification is a multi-faceted issue that “happens across the city, not just in areas where artists are moving,” Inouye said. Abhuani contextualized the historic development of gentrification with artists and the North American economic shift over the last century from industrial labour services to cultural forms of production.

“People thought: ‘I really need to be around the people I’m like’ … and ‘I need to be close to places where culture is produced,’” Abhuani said. He explained that this economic shift prompted those with sufficient financial means to migrate to urban centres. These ongoing demographic migrations, from a capitalist-marketing standpoint, continue to justify urban development in regions that push people from lower-income brackets out of their homes.

“The people who benefit from these changes and from these large economic forces are the people who have means,” Abhuani said. “And the people who don’t [have financial means] are the ones who end up biting the bullet [and] having to move around.”

In gentrification, the role of artists—in this case, referring to individuals with the social status and capital to make a career from their art—lies in the fact that mass migration to more affordable neighbourhoods creates economic speculation, explained Fred Burrill, a Concordia PhD student who currently works with local non-profit organizations to fight for the right to housing in Place St-Henri.

“[Speculation] is a very intentional, state-driven process of changing the ways that [housing] investment is configured,” Burrill said. Speculation increases the property value in a community, and the demographic shift brought by artists provides local governments with a marketable, discursive framework that justifies their desire for urban development in alleged “up-and-coming” communities.

According to Burrill, the goal of speculation is to “turn the housing market from something that is based on supply and demand to something that is essentially a concrete manifestation of the stock market.” He used Griffintown in Montreal as an example. “[Artists] are all actively part of an ideological apparatus that’s used to justify deregulation.”

Artists often positively frame their contributions to the cultural fabric of a neighbourhood as genuinely representative of that community and reflective of their deep connection to its residents. However, Abhuani said this is a dangerous mentality because artists with social status are able to sell this culturally appropriated art and capitalize on it, while those without esteemed social status cannot. “So, maybe you shouldn’t do that, number one. Number two, why are you [in that neighbourhood]?” asked Abhuani. “You’re not there in a vacuum … You’re not just trying to create. You’re not just trying to survive. You’re trying to get ahead.”

All of the panelists agreed that the presence of artists in low-income neighbourhoods brings systemic gentrification to the community through selective state investment in development projects because cities want to support cultural hubs. Although artists may also be affected by rental increases and have to leave the neighbourhood, Abhuani explained, many of them not only have the social capital to relocate, “but they like doing that; they want to be on the forefront [of living] in certain neighborhoods.”

Inouye shared an observation from when she lived in New Orleans as a tuba player in 2012. “You could really see the mostly white kids from New York or from San Francisco moving in,” she explained. “You could see this hunger that people had to kind of own that beautiful magic that exists in New Orleans, and you could see them really wanting to connect with the community that had been there—the community that had lived through Katrina … You could really see this process unfolding, and it was so similar to colonialism.”

Inouye added that while it isn’t bad to want to connect with a given community, it is necessary to keep in mind how different people occupy the space in that community and how social and physical capital change the way people interact with that space.

Most concerned artists will ask themselves, “What can I do, as an artist, to fight against gentrification?” which, Burrill explained, is the wrong question. Artists and people in general should simply ask what needs to be done, without placing the individual at the epicentre of change. While the panelists agreed that gentrification can be throttled through the acquisition of real estate and income disparity can be bridged by wealth redistribution, concrete plans to combat these systemic issues still aren’t being enacted.

Despite some differences of opinion between the panelists, they all seemed to agree that one of the first steps to combating gentrification is community mobilization. Burrill explained that there tends to be an element of individualism when talking about the housing market and gentrification, with arguments such as encouraging better knowledge of tenant rights to avoid eviction and to fairly rent out living spaces.

“What actually needs to happen is that we need to intervene collectively in the [housing] market,” Burrill said. This would entail the city buying empty lots, removing them from the realm of speculation and reserving them for social housing projects, he explained. That, or artists can literally make their neighbourhoods more ugly, he said as a joke. “Beautification of neighborhoods without collective intervention in the housing market is simply a tool of development.”

Main photo by Alex Hutchins

Categories
Opinions

Why it’s time to ditch your ‘dead-trend’ job

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth.

Certain ‘jobs’ should be left behind in order to pursue more meaningful work

From off-the-cuff table talk to buttoned-down meet and greets, employees of all collars usually ask: Where do you work? Rarely, if ever, do you hear: What’s your job? The answer is simple—nobody dares to leave a bad impression.
We perceive this risk because ‘job’ doesn’t have the most exemplary connotation in our vernacular. In my opinion, a job is something we must endure for 40-plus hours a week to earn some pay. Gradually, this became the norm, and an onslaught of punch-in-punch-out jobs erupted—although that may not be the case today.

This issue is all but simple. There are dead-end jobs, and there are “dead-trend jobs.” The latter, I believe, are lifeless from the start. Dead-end jobs are jeopardized by disruptive innovation, whereas dead-trend jobs temporarily pop in and out of the market.

At least with dead-end jobs, purpose is a matter of perspective. Take the story of the three labourers found smashing boulders with iron hammers. When asked what they were doing, the first one replied, “Breaking big rocks into smaller rocks.” The second said, “Feeding my family.” The last one said, “Building a cathedral,” which was in reference to the Cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris, the capstone of which was laid in 1345—182 years after the initial work began.

This means the first generation of labourers may have spent every waking moment breaking rocks and, in turn, their backs. For posterity’s sake, the third labourer left no stone unturned. He was driven by the day his grandchildren would revel in the artistry of the cathedral, which would stand tall and proud for decades to come.

In my view, the same cannot be said of dead-trend jobs. With dead-trend jobs such as “chief visionary officer,” “influencer” and “brand warrior,” employees in our post-industrial economy are swinging their iron hammers into thin air.

Globally, a growing number of workers believe their jobs are pointless. In a 2013 survey of 12,000 professionals by the Harvard Business Review, nearly a half claimed their job had no “meaningful significance.” In fact, the same number of workers admitted they could not relate to the company’s mission.

Another poll, conducted by Gallup, the Washington, D.C. based polling organization, showed that of 230,000 employees across 142 nations, only 13 per cent of workers actually liked their job. A 2015 poll conducted by the market research company YouGov showed that 37 per cent of British respondents thought their jobs were invariably futile.

I believe this futility emerged out of a systematic failure of how jobs have been conceived. It’s little wonder that “job” was originally ascribed to demeaning wage work during the industrialization of 18th century England. Driven from their traditional work on the land and in crafts, these labourers were reduced to cogs in a lean, mean, profit-maximizing machine.

For a century, these cogs were kept churning by economist Adam Smith’s tenet that people were naturally lazy and worked only for pay, according to The Atlantic. Smith’s “division of labour” concept meant that workers would perform repetitive tasks while being responsible for a small contribution of the product. Unlike craftsman of the past, several labourers working this systemized line increased efficiency, as described in the International Encyclopedia of Ergonomics and Human Factors.

As such, I believe manufacturing systems became less reliant on meticulous skill and attention—competencies that otherwise wage-hungry labourers lacked altogether. Ever since then, work has been cast down as a mere money-making, GDP-generating, chore-like exertion.

The remnants of this history continues to shape our working lives. Take, for example, the teacher who aspires to educate young students, but realizes that only scores on standardized tests matter. Take the financial advisor who seeks to counsel sensible advice, yet recommends riskier investments to meet commission quotas. You won’t find any shortage of these examples in our labour force.

Nevertheless, there’s good reason to be optimistic. Researchers and managers of international corporations have shifted their focus to meaningful work. Recently, Globoforce and IBM released their most recent report based on a global survey of 22,000 workers. Findings showed that out of the six human workplace practices examined, meaningful work topped the list. Meaningful work contributed the most to employees’ positive workplace experiences.

We shouldn’t try to continue “dead-trend” jobs. There’s no possibility of advancement from these jobs, nor can any level of technology save them. Let’s bury the dead for good.

All views are my own and not that of my employer.

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth 

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