How COVID-19 Could Help Us Rediscover What Matters

As schools shut down and employees are being encouraged to work from home and self-isolate if sick, is COVID-19 the crisis we didn’t know we needed to fix how our society thinks about work?

Let me start off by clarifying that I am not making light of the current worldwide pandemic. As a public health professional, I recognize the gravity of the situation. I am only shedding light on the North American work culture, and what happens when that culture is disrupted to the core.

Sara’s tweet went viral a few weeks ago. Why?

As I was heading home to start my two weeks of self-isolating, I was contemplating what this break meant for my work. The realization that everything could wait was bittersweet. Nothing was that urgent. All of my deadlines were self-imposed and superficial in order to create an illusion of meaning and progression in my work. Granted, I don’t work for emergency, vital or core services — I’m a government officer. Is this a reflection of the nature of public service, or does this speak to our work culture as a whole?

Measuring Effort, Not Progress

As technology solved a lot of problems, including the lack of access to information, work should have gotten easier. Our time, in the 21st century, should have been shaped by our leisure — hobbies, family and friends. Instead, “workism” has taken over — work became easier, so we are cramming as much of it as we can. Work became a source of meaning and satisfaction. Our identities are rooted in what we do. So what happens when what we do is put on hold? What happens when “priorities,” “deadlines,” and “fires” disappear? What happens when what you worship goes up in (temporary, 2–4 week) smoke? An identity crisis.

I understand how work can be rewarding — I understand the satisfaction of delivering an awesome presentation, or a polished report, or hitting your sales goal out of the park. I also long for praise from my boss, and adoration (jealousy?) of my co-workers. I used to strive off of good effort — progress didn’t matter, the grand scheme of things was less important. Excellence in things that I do is the bedrock of my identify. But work may be the wrong altar to kneel at.

What is Wrong With Being Obsessed With Work?

Imagine being let down by the person who was supposed to be your rock. They were supposed to have your back, and they didn’t. And then it turns out they didn’t really care that much about you in the first place. You’ll feel bitter. Disappointed. Abandoned. Lost. You’ll experience loss. Denial. Anger.

Worshiping the Church of Work is tricky business — Work is a god that asks for a lot (your time, your best years, ideas, energy) and doesn’t always deliver. Primarily because the god of Work knows that each of its worshipers is ultimately replaceable. We don’t like to think of ourselves as replaceable, especially when meaning and purpose are on the table.

So we burn out instead. We give everything to the carrot being dangled in front of us until there is nothing left. We’ve fabricated the idea that finding the meaning of life should come from work. Find you calling, your passion, your love. Or else. We hype expectations, sticking out our faces for reality’s very bitter b*tch slap. And as we brood somewhere in the canyon between expectations and reality, we find misery. Workism violates a core principle of religion, echoed by Descartes, Malebranche and countless others before them, dating back to the prophets: god is perfect; unfaltering. Much less can be said about work, about the market. The invisible hand hires, but it also fires.

A 2019 Gallup study of nearly 7,500 full-time employees found that 23% reported feeling burnt out at work very often or always, while an additional 44% reported feeling burnt out sometimes. So more than half of us are feeling some kind of mental and sometimes physical burden from our work lives. Yet we refuse, or are unable to acknowledge the destructive side effects. It’s unfashionable. It’s socialist. It’s lazy.

The modern, middle-class life map of a childhood of self-optimization followed by a lifetime of self-actualization behind a desk is dangerous, maybe even toxic. This journey lacks something inherently human, it leaves no room for self-reflection — just projection of our identity onto a title. A job is just a job, convince me otherwise. But instead, we celebrate burnout as a culture, we hustle as hard as we can (we can always get a therapist later). We love what we do, and love means you stick with something even when it’s hard. But even if it kills you? We lose sleep, we move less, we get fatter, drink more.

Enter COVID-19

Where am I going with this? I am asking that we take this public health crisis as a prompt to reflect on our lives. Allow ourselves to relax a little bit, to step back from glorifying “always working” and look around at all the things we are missing.

Take the time to connect with your friends, to truly listen to someone (over the phone or FaceTime if you can). Appreciate your family. Spend some time with your parents. Get to know your kids. Go outside. Cook three meals a day. Stretch. Take a long shower, moisturize. The little pleasures that let you connect with who you are, to separate what you do from who you are.

Crises have a silver lining in that they push the unnecessary into the foreground. So take a look at what’s left, and ask yourself if that’s enough. It is is, you’re among the lucky minority who really do have it all. But if it’s not, I implore you to think about what’s missing.

Work should buy free time. We need to not be afraid of being left alone with ourselves. We need to stop banking joy. We need to start living. And please, wash your damn hands.

Thank you for reading. I’m happy to answer questions in the comments, and would love to know what you thought!