Changing the way we think about work

The secret to success is quit climbing and start digging, says best-selling author Bruce Feiler

He says so much human potential has been squandered by the idea that there is one dream job and you have to keep climbing to get it.

By collecting work stories from people of all backgrounds in his new book, The Search: Discovering Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World, Feiler shows the way to throw out the idea of a career and begin writing your own script.

The millennial generation in particular are questioning the whole notion of work, he says.

“In these work conversations, I would say to people, what's the most important value of work you've learned from your parents and three quarters of people said, the value of hard work, people still want to work hard.

“But when I asked the downsides, you know what they said? Overwork, followed by strain on the family, followed by unhappiness, and that's the big change. People want to work hard, but they are no longer prepared to be miserable.”

Finding meaning through work is the key and yet so difficult to achieve, he says.

“We gotta get off the should train, and we gotta get on the want train.

“And we don't really know how to do that. And that's what I've tried to do in The Search.”

His book is structured around “three lies and the truth about work,” he says.

“The first lie is that you have a career, you don't have a career. That's an artificial idea that was invented 100 years ago, you can change your jobs whenever you want, half the people who change jobs, change occupations.

“The second lie is that you have a path, there is no path, it's wandering, two steps forward, one step back, when there is no path, there's no penalty to get off the path.”

The third lie is that we have jobs at all, he says.

“Most people don't have one job anymore, they have multiple jobs. We might have a main job, though, frankly, only half of us even have one of those anymore, a side job.

“There's what I call a hope job - 89 percent of us have a job that we hope leads to something else, like selling pickles at the farmers market, or writing a screenplay or starting a podcast.

“And then 93 percent of us have what I call a ghost job. And a ghost job is essentially an invisible time-suck. That feels like a job. Battling self-doubt, or impostor syndrome, or battling discrimination or not having financial literacy.”

These different jobs, he says, serve different purposes.

“Maybe we do our main job because we need the benefits or the salary. And maybe we do our side job because it gives us meaning. Or maybe we want to venture out on our own and do something entrepreneurial, and we do something on the side to make some money.

“We arbitrage, we divide our time, because everybody wants to work for meaning. And if we can't get it in one thing, we want to try to get it in something else.”

 The very idea of a job is a modern concept, he says.

“If you go back 500 years, the word job was still the second definition in most dictionaries, it's something that you do, a task or responsibility.”

It was only as we moved from an agrarian to an industrial society that the definition of a job changed, he says.

“If you go back in the agricultural world that most of human history was in, most people, they farmed, and they made their candles, and they educated their young and took care of the old and everybody did everything.”

One of the hardest things for people to do is to not chase someone else's expectations, but your own, he says. Everyone has the right to make an “unright” decision that works for the individual.

So, what does success look like?

“Success is not climbing, success is digging. The story is not higher floor, bigger office, better view, greater salary, more benefits. It's digging, it's what do I want right now, it might be that or it might be making the planet better, or it might be self-expression or it might be independence and being an entrepreneur or starting a non-profit. Success is not climbing, success is digging.”

Secondly, success is collective, he says.

“Success is not just about me, it's what's best for my family. It's what's best for my community.

“And finally, success is not status, success is story.”

The advice to chase your passion is the worst advice you can get, he says.

“The problem with chase your passion is when I ask people did you did you follow your passion? Discover your passion or make your passion? Only one in 10 said they followed their passion.

“Why? Because passions change, because circumstances evolve. Because you can't know at 20 what you're going to know at 30 or 40.

“I did a podcast earlier today called AI in the future of work, who among us even three years ago, believed that AI was going to have as much transformative ability on all of our lives as it is? You cannot know what's coming ahead.”

Better advice is focus on what you want to do now, he says.

“If you can follow your passion, great. But if not, don't worry, you have many chances to revisit it, and you can follow a new passion that you haven't even learned yet.

“You can't wait for the dream job for the job that will give you meaning for the job you've secretly longed for, for months, or years or decades to come to you, is not going to come to you. You've got to go out and get it, you have to take the agency, you have to take control over your life.”