Pocket Change: “I do not dream of labor”
Pocket Change is a monthly series of notes on disruption, authored by 18 Coffees co-founder Caleb Gardner. Be the first to read Pocket Change — subscribe to the email newsletter here.
“What is your dream job?” asks a popular TikTok user, who responds to himself: “I have no dream job. I do not dream of labor.” The original sound has been used to create more than 40,000 other videos.
The origin of the phrase “I do not dream of labor,” which has become a rallying cry of the new Anti-Work Movement, can be traced back to tweets and YouTube videos from 2020 – just as the pandemic was beginning to show us how fragile our relationship to work had become, ahead of one of the biggest mass exoduses in employment in history.
Writing in The Atlantic in 2019, Derek Thompson declared “workism” the new American religion, “promising transcendence and community, but failing to deliver.” The curtain has been pulled back on hustle culture, and Gen Z is increasingly walking away from it.
Each year, the 18 Coffees team picks a theme that we believe will define the coming year. In 2020, it was democracy, as the world focused on the incredibly important U.S. elections. In 2021, our guidepost was change. This year, we’re talking about sustainability: how do we build enduring relationships with our environment, but also with our democratic institutions, with our families, with our communities, and importantly, with our work?
How to create a sustainable work environment needs to be a key focus of every company leader, now that we’re going into the third year of a global crisis that shows no signs of slowing down. We have to do better than wellness programs and benefits that so obviously aim to help workers tolerate stressful work environments, rather than fix the working conditions themselves.
Maybe we can start by modeling what healthier, more holistic dreams look like. If the narrative of the “dream job” is becoming a thing of the past, the next generation of leaders need to be the ones who model living full, happy lives that contextualize hustle, rather than idolize it.
Keeping an eye on:
WORK PERFORMANCES — One concrete way workers can rebel against hustle culture while working from home? Pretending to work from home. (Have you shaken your mouse lately?)
JERK BOSSES — Why work for terrible people when you can not work at all? Our tolerance for working for jerks is at an all-time low.
ATTENTION THIEVES — This excerpt from Johann Hari’s book, Stolen Focus, is a must read for anyone who cares about being able to concentrate in our digital media—squirrel!
ORGANIZATIONAL TRAUMAS — Fascinating and important research by dscout and HmntyCntrd on how corporate environments can be traumatizing, and how companies try to address it (or don’t).
USELESS FUTURES — Are we destined for a future that is dumb and expensive? Dan Brooks thinks so. Important – if not a bit dystopian – long read from Gawker.
DIVERSITY TOKENS — Fun read from McSweeney’s that as always sheds light on an important truth: we’re not doing enough to actually model diversity in our companies.
