Thought-provoking Things Worth Sharing - Issue #91
Who are you when there's no answer to the "what do you do" question?
Welcome to this week’s collection of thought-provoking things. I write this weekly newsletter so subscribers can see some of the things I’m writing and sharing without depending on social media algorithms to show them to you. Each week I’ll share information about careers and workplace culture, mental health in the workplace, talent development, and important information about privacy, security, and legal tech.
You can find out all about me here - Mike McBride Online.
Recently we spent some time at a graduation party, and as you do at parties, I met some people I didn’t know. You can probably guess the first three topics of discussion, right?
Name
“How do you know the graduate?”
“What do you do?”
My response to that final question was the truth. I’ve recently been laid off so, technically, I don’t do anything.
The conversation moved in another direction, my wife’s work. Later, during a larger conversation, I said something about the details of things I’ve done at work before and that was met by this same woman who had been talking to me earlier turning to me, almost relieved, to say “Oh, you work in technology”.
I realized that my response, while true, had broken the social contract and she might have been feeling incomplete until she could define what I did for a living. (It was like Sheldon Cooper not getting to knock and say “Penny” three times.)
Given that, I think it’s appropriate to talk about why our identities are so tied up in our jobs. I was lucky enough to catch two podcast interviews with Simone Stolzoff (author of The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work)
In both of them, this discussion about how we define ourselves is a central part of why we struggle so much with work-life balance, job dissatisfaction, and areas of our life outside of work. We’ve been indoctrinated to “Find your passion and you’ll never work a day in your life”, which is bullshit. If it wasn’t work you wouldn’t be looking for a paycheck. It is work, it is done in exchange for getting paid, and it is only part of who we are as human beings.
Instead of finding what Simone calls our job “soulmate”, what if we made our own decisions about what is valuable to us? Is being a lawyer important to you? Great, go dedicate yourself to being a lawyer. Is being able to raise a family and be part of your community more important to you? Find a job that allows you to do that.
I’m going through this practice now, reconsidering where work fits into the overall picture of my values. Do I want to jump right back into a full-time job that requires a large chunk of my life, or would I rather work short-term contracts and spend more time focusing on some other side projects that interest me more but maybe aren’t at the point where I could make a living doing them?
The one thing I am getting much more comfortable with is not defining myself by my job. I’m so much more than that.
I contain multitudes. Why limit the definition of who I am to my job?
How are you rethinking work’s role in your self-identity?
Careers and the Workplace
As I said, it's not that being a remote worker means we won't have any friends. We just have to be more intentional about it. We have to find ways to interact socially with our current friends and be in spaces, physical and virtual, where we can meet new people.
You'll read plenty of hot takes about remote work. Whether it be how difficult it is to build any culture or connect with your team, you'll get lonely, you won't get promoted, or mentored, etc. It's not that the authors of these posts are lying to you, but they are also unlikely to point out that none of these things have to be the way they are. They can all be overcome when someone decides to act with intention.
The Cost Of Corporate Inflexibility: Reshma Saujani On The Risks To Working Mothers
"Flexibility isn’t a nice to have for working parents, it’s a must have, and that’s especially true for working moms who we know are responsible for an outsize share of the unpaid labor at home"
There’s a lot of talk about gender and race when it comes to DEI, but what about this?
Your Workforce Includes People with Disabilities. Does Your People Strategy?
Training and Development
New to Managing? - Get Trained - It would be great if workplaces made training new managers on how to be a manager a priority. Many of them don’t, but you can do it yourself.
Speaking of things new managers should learn - How to Talk to Your Team About Their Career Development
The Necessity of Life-Long Learning - What you studied in college won’t get you through until retirement.
Mental Health in the Workplace
Things change in our businesses all the time. That’s become normal but have we stopped to consider the emotional and mental workload being forced on everyone, especially when we don’t do a good job with change management? - Employees Are Losing Patience with Change Initiatives
Also some reading on mental health at work:
Privacy, Security, and Legal Tech
Police Auctioned Mobile Devices - Complete with Illegal Data!
You would think that before auctioning off these devices with illegally-gotten and dangerous information on them, the various agencies would have wiped them clean, no?
According to the University of Maryland, you'd be completely wrong.
Have you ever wondered why your data being breached matters? This might help you understand it more - What Do Hackers Actually Do With Your Data?
That’s all folks. If you found something interesting in this week’s newsletter, please share it with your friends. It’s the best way to help support the effort I put in each week to share this with you.