Stop Looking for the Perfect Job

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of the first things we learn about people is what they do for a living. But the link between work and identify has moved far beyond that, especially in certain industries, geographies, and cultures. Many of us put everything we have into our jobs, expecting our careers to fulfill us. Author Simone Stolzoff argues for a different approach. He wants us to find work that keeps us engaged and gives us the security we need, while still allowing us to define ourselves in other ways. Drawing on research and real-life stories, he explains what it means to have a "good enough" job, and why this shift in thinking could be good not just for individuals but also for teams and organizations. Stolzoff is the author of The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you want to go deeper on business strategy?
0:03.8	I want to suggest HBR's new podcast feed, HBR on Strategy.
0:08.4	HBR editors like me hand select the best strategy case studies and conversations from
0:13.6	across HBR's podcasts, videos, and beyond.
0:17.1	Listen for free to HBR on Strategy wherever you get your podcasts, new episodes every Wednesday.
0:30.0	Welcome to the HBR idea cast from Harvard Business Review.
0:40.8	I'm Allison Beard.
0:43.8	Okay, everyone out there raise your hand if you identify pretty strongly with the job
0:54.3	you do.
0:55.5	You can't see, but my hand is up because if you ask me who I am, I think the first
0:59.8	thing I'd say is a journalist, editor, and podcast host.
1:03.4	Of course I'm also a mom and a wife, a Celtics fan, a cat lady, but my career is a big
1:08.6	part of my identity.
1:10.2	I suspect that a lot of you out there feel the same way.
1:13.5	You put effort into your jobs and careers, you care about professional success, and you
1:18.4	often measure yourself by those accomplishments.
1:21.4	Is that healthy though?
1:23.0	Lots of people argue that a job should be just that, a job, and that the really meaningful
1:27.8	parts of life should have an outside of it.
1:30.3	Work to live, don't live to work, and I guess I understand that perspective too, but it's
1:34.9	hard to not care about something we spend so much time doing.
1:39.1	So the older I get, the more I want to find a middle ground, and that's why I was so keen
	...

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