Author’s note: This post was written before the CDC data takedown over the weekend. Like many of you, I believe that deserves focused attention, and as a result, I almost didn’t publish this piece. But I’m sharing it now because, in dark times, there is always a glimmer of light. Perhaps the call to connect with one another is what we need amidst today’s divisive status quo. For more on the public health data situation, you can see my take here. Now, onto the topic of today’s post.
Americans are obsessed with work. And it’s harming (even killing) us. As Adam Chandler highlights in his book 99% Perspiration, most Americans define themselves by their jobs. And perhaps unsurprisingly, that doesn’t lead to a fulfilling life.
Chandler calls out that even as we put more of ourselves into our work, work doesn’t love us back. In brief, he articulates that work’s inability to get us where we seek to be drives “distrust of institutions, xenophobia, and extremism.” And none of this is improving our collective health or well-being.
Our jobs won’t ever love us back, and the negative externalities of our obsession harm individual health and society as a whole.
But what does love us back (hopefully, most of the time)? People.
And what do decades of research highlight leads to fulfilling lives? Relationships…with people.
So, if we want to improve our collective health, easing off the work grindstone and instead increasing our investments in relationships with real humans could be a good place to begin. Just as Dr. Murthy said in his last piece as Surgeon General, “My Parting Prescription for America,” we must cultivate community for our individual and collective well-being.
To heed his recommendation, we could devote less time to our jobs and more to our relationships. That’s not to say we should stop working altogether or that relationships are easy to cultivate. Relationships take work. And as Murthy highlights, the challenge is especially great in today’s society due to a lack of community institutions that promote connection:
“The decline of civic institutions has made knowing where to go for community harder. And underneath these trends, the pendulum of self-reliance has swung so far to one end that needing others is seen as a sign of weakness, leading to a vicious cycle of stress, isolation, and more stress.”
He later adds:
“With every conversation, I saw the stakes more clearly: the fracturing of community in America is driving a deeper spiritual crisis that threatens our fundamental well-being. It is fueling not only illness and despair on an individual level, but also pessimism and distrust across society which have all made it painfully difficult to rise together in response to common challenges.”
This is a grave picture of our current state. If Americans are obsessed with work—and we seek both better health and fulfillment from our lives—what would happen if we changed what we worked on?
Notably, there is a chicken and egg problem here. Part of the reason we’re obsessed with our jobs is due to our capitalist society and the supporting policies and culture that uphold it. To be able to devote less time to our careers and more time to relationships is a privilege, and it’s far from a given in today’s society. Perhaps most discouragingly, those likely to benefit most from such a shift are also those least likely to be able to pursue it. But as noted later, collective action has the power to change culture.
So how might we create that collective action?
Our love of work can be channeled towards connection for better outcomes
Clearly, our obsession with work is impacting how we connect with others—or increasingly, don’t. In Derek Thompson’s recent piece for The Atlantic, “The Anti-social Century,” he highlights our current societal disconnection and what’s led to our reality. Expanding on many points that Chandler brings about, Thompson highlights that our approach to life as a whole has led to such grave disconnection.
At one point, he calls out, “The way we spend our minutes is the way we spend our decades.” It might sound obvious, but if we hope to change the way we spend our lives, it starts by changing the way we spend each day, which is influenced by how we spend our hours and minutes.
Thompson also highlights, “Our smallest actions create norms. Our norms create values. Our values drive behavior. And our behaviors cascade. The anti-social century is the result of one such cascade, of chosen solitude, accelerated by digital-world progress and physical-world regress. But if one cascade brought us into an anti-social century, another can bring about a social century.”
Combining Thompson’s, Murthy’s, and Chandler’s observations about our current state, a few things become clear:
- Where we currently devote most of our time (our careers) isn’t fulfilling.
- Career obsession is also leading to greater cultural divides and fewer personal connections.
- Fewer connections are bad for our health—both individually and collectively.
- More connections lead to more fulfillment and better health.
- What got us here won’t get us there: Self-focused behaviors and the resulting disconnection require a course correction if we want fulfillment and belonging.
It’s time we started spending fewer minutes chasing individual success and more of our minutes connecting with those around us. In doing so, we just might create a cascade toward more fulfillment by “working” on what matters most—deep, lasting relationships.
Our jobs will never love us back nor provide the fulfillment we all deeply seek.
That’s because, as Dr. Murthy’s final prescription also calls out, “The triad of success is focused on the individual. The triad of fulfillment connects us with something bigger than the individual. The triad of success may earn us praise and possessions. The triad of fulfillment gives us meaning and belonging.”
Given what the research says about creating a fulfilling life and the recent harms to our well-being from the anti-social century, will we continue to chase ever-illusive, individual-focused success? Or will we choose something bigger than ourselves that leads to fulfillment?
Your future self—and those around you—will thank you if you choose the latter.
