Why You Hate Work Right Now

Hint: it has nothing to do with the actual work

In a world where our differences traditionally divide us, for the first time in a long time, we all agree on something – work deeply sucks right now. 

I’ve had hundreds of conversations about this over the last year and as far as I can tell, pretty much everyone, everywhere is over it. From Gen Z to Gen X, across race and gender, in coastal cities and midwestern towns, we are generally not very happy with the modern workplace. It feels like a foreign object in our collective body that we are all rejecting.

The most common responses to this rejection are things like taking more walks, doing more yoga, and setting up a better home office. But those are like scotch tape on a broken glass. One thing you’ll learn about me is that I don’t like to talk about things on the surface and I don’t like solving for symptoms. It’s a waste of time and it doesn’t change anything except create more frustration and allow a vicious cycle to continue spiraling its way down. I try to be the person who’s observing and asking, pushing even, to the hard question: “what’s really going on? What is the real why?” We like root causes over here and we believe the truth always sets us free.

That, if you’re new, is what this substack is all about. While the conversation around work and our fucked-up relationship to it has become one of the biggest and loudest in media, culture and our day-to-day lives, we are missing key context and proper framing that will actually allow us to do something about it.

Culture talks about the symptoms a lot. We coin terms like The Great Exhaustion, The Great Resignation, quiet quitting, bare minimum Mondays, and so on.  This is important because it gives us language to speak and understand our pain. They are true and they are hurting us. But these are all results of a deeper issue and root cause. 

Work is more than a transaction.

I think what’s happening here is that, for the first time in human history, we are recognizing that work is not something we do, it’s a relationship that we’re in. And as is the case with any relationship, both parties have needs. We are realizing our needs have not ever been met and are nowhere close to being met. 

Most of us were taught work is an obligation, something you deal with and you take whatever you get – go get a good job, make good money, shut up and keep your head down. There’s many reasons for this, which I won’t cover here but it’s the mindset that’s been passed down to us.

But when you start to see work as a relationship – a covenant between two people where each person's interests, desires and needs are respected and met to a reasonable degree – we begin to realize how abusive, neglectful and unhealthy the relationship is and has always been.  There are things we experience at work that we would never accept in any other kind of relationship.  And to be clear, being paid to work — even being paid very well — is not a perk or a justification for bad behavior. It is your basic human right to be paid for the work you do, otherwise you would be in bondage and you would be a slave. But that’s just the beginning. The transaction around work for pay may be the starting point of the social contract we have with our workplaces, but it doesn’t explain the entirety of the relationship.

If work is a relationship, then what we should be talking about is relationship burnout — the phenomenon where one person ends up giving more in the relationship and receiving little in return. In my breakup letter to work, I emphasize how important this relationship is to our lives. We spend nearly 70% of our lives in this relationship. It’s not something we always want to admit, but we have to be honest if we’re going to improve it. 

By definition, your relationship with work is one of the most (if not the singular) important relationships in your life. What you experience and receive here shows up in every other part of your life – how much energy you have, how healthy you are, how you treat our partners and kids. Who we are at work often determines how we see ourselves and how fulfilled we are. Some have responded to this with a demand to separate our identities from work. I think it’s a good thing to know who you are as a whole person, but the idea that you can or should cleave off your identity from the thing you spend most of your time doing is neither realistic nor particularly appealing to me. I’d rather find a way to align who I am with the way I spend my time.

So what happens when you keep giving to a relationship that doesn’t give back to you?  These are the most common characteristics in other types of relationship of what happens when your needs aren’t met for an extended period of time. Notice the parallels between the trends we’re experiencing with work….

You feel unmotivated.

Today only 15% of employees feel motivated in their workplace, which points to a motivational crisis for the global workforce and is costing companies $550 billion dollars every year.

You feel hopeless.

Hopelessness is at epidemic levels and taking a toll on people and organizations. Nearly half of Americans reported feeling “down, depressed or hopeless” at least several days a week.

You feel disconnected. 

Employee engagement fell at a rate 10 times faster than in the previous three years.  Globally, 6 in 10 employees report disengagement, costing the global economy $8.8 trillion.

You lose patience. 

Tech industry workers rack up millions of views on vlogs documenting their workdays, especially with young workers starting to film their firings, like this viral TikTok. Additionally, unions and labor dispute were the highest they’ve ever been in recent years since the 1960s.

You start looking outside the relationship.

More than 80% of employees are thinking of quitting jobs for other opportunities and nearly every other kind of work is on the rise – entrepreneurship, gig, creator economy, part-time and freelance. 

You break down.

75% of employees cite their boss as the number cause of stress in their lives and number one reason for leaving a job. The workplace overall is the leading cause of stress in our lives and the 5th leading cause of death in the US. 

You break up and leave. 

What economists call the quit rate, the number of people who quit their jobs every month, has risen every year except one for two decades.

Our relationship is broken and this is what burn out is really about. The good news is, you are not alone. It’s affecting all of us.  It’s unlikely that the workplace will drop everything and figure out how to improve it.  It’s on each of us individually to raise our standards of the relationship, clearly communicate our needs and lower our tolerance for toxic and unhealthy behavior in order for anything to change.  

We have to learn our needs. 

This understanding is what birthed a study group I’ve been running over the past few weeks with some friends and fellow seekers. Our purpose is to help each other find the best work of our lives through a mix of theory, coaching, and group discussion. 

Because most of us were never taught to think of our work as a relationship, we don’t even know what we deserve. We created this space so we could start to unpack, evaluate and understand what we need in our relationship with work.  In my research and experience there are 7 core needs we have in order to have a thriving, healthy relationship with work – the need for meaning, agency and space, psychological safety, self-expression, respect and dignity, supportive collaboration, and a rhythm of rest.

In four nights, each study group cohort undertakes an introspective journey to create a clear, actionable blueprint that will begin to improve this deeply important and consequential relationship. By the end, we each come away with a definition and plan of what it means to do the best work of your life — at a philosophical level and in the details of your daily conditions. It’s been thrilling and affirming to hear the impact it has had on our community:

“I feel like I've been literally parched, clawing my way through a desert of confusion and dissonance, until someone bottled up all of the affirmation I've needed throughout my career and doused me with the water I've so desperately needed.”

“It was a satisfying drink in a desert where humanity in corporations is in question.”

“Immediately a perspective shift. It feels like an answer to a prayer. It’s an answer to a question that many people don’t even know how to ask.”

We’re doing it again starting Monday, February 26 through Thursday, February, 29th at 8p est. 

We only have 100 spots, but I promise in 4 nights we will put you back on the path to rebuilding a healthy relationship with work.  

Spots are filling up, so sign up and register here. 

I will repeat this forever – if you don’t love your work, it’s nearly impossible to love your life. 

And you deserve to love it all. 

m