Discovering the Good Enough Job: with author Simone Stolzoff

In this episode of the Sparky Live podcast, host Lia Lamela speaks with author Simone Stolzoff about his book "The Good Enough Job." They discuss the concept of finding meaning outside of work and the observations Simone has made about blue collar and white collar workers.

Simone shares his perspective on work, emphasizing that it shouldn't be the sole measure of self-worth. He explores the idea of a "good enough job" and contrasts it with a dream job, highlighting the importance of recognizing when a job supports the life one wants to lead.

Connect with our guest Simone Stolzoff Links: https://www.simonestolzoff.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/thepizza_bagel/
Amazon Link to book: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Enough-Job-Reclaiming-Life/dp/059353896X

Connect with us: @sparkylifeoflia

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Transcript

Lia: Welcome to the Sparky Life podcast. I'm your host, Lia Lamela, and here we create the sparks in our lives. Join me on this electrical journey where I highlight skilled trade tales and construction career opportunities with those I've met along the way. Thank you for joining for Trade Tales continued. Today on the Sparky Life, we have a very special guest. He has been featured on The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic. He writes a monthly column called The Seesaw on Work Life and also teaches a course, Designing Your Next Career Steps. Simone Stolzoff, the author of The Good Enough Job. I came across him when I saw a post from Vanessa Van Edwards. Now being as though Vanessa Van Edwards sits at the round table in my mind - if you don't know that reference, check out the book, Thinking Grew Rich by Napoleon Hill. So I was immediately interested in reading his book. As I began to read The Good Enough Job, I felt feelings of obstinance. I had subscribed to a mindset about career and work that the book's perspective was challenging. And I've learned in life that when I come across something that's challenging, it's an opportunity for growth and expansion. Simone's calm presence is a reflection of his philosophy on work and the tools he uses every day. What we do shouldn't be the “end all, be all” measure of our self-worth. In today's episode, we dive into his book, The Good Enough Job, which sparks questions and ideas like, what else brings meaning into your life other than work? What exists outside of your career that motivates you? He talks about observations between blue collar and white collar workers, and Simone’s warmth and intellect creates an environment of awe and thought provoking ideas. He's a true poet, philosopher, journalist and writer. My favorite takeaway that Simone gifted was his perspective on decision making, quote: “We often have more capacity to course correct then we give ourselves credit for.” It's a lightness both with the decisions I make and the way I move through the world. So welcome with me this very special guest, Simone Stolzoff.

Simone: Hello.

Lia: Welcome to the Sparky Life, Simone.

Simone: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Congrats on getting my name right on the first try.

Lia: Do you know how many times I practiced that? Yeah, like, for real. It's a beautiful name.

Simone: Thank you.

Lia: I'm ecstatic for you to be here. I am so thrilled. First of all, I want to congratulate you. Mazel tov on the wedding. Congratulations on the book, The Good Enough Job, and the new book.

Simone: To be named, to be determined.

Lia: We are so going to talk about that. But first. I love in your book that you give us a little bit of a background of who you are and your original belief system regarding careers. How did the way that you grew up and your family's belief in work and careers evolve? Like, where did you start and then how did it move?

Simone: Yeah, I think there's a few ways in. One is my family is multicultural. My mother is Italian and my dad's American. And so, I think part of some of the early insight was this cross-cultural comparison of seeing how work-centric American society was compared to my uncles and aunts and cousins who still live in southern Italy, where it seemed like work was important, but it was not their identity, not the most important thing in their life. And the second is, I'm reminded of the quote that my grandfather was in the military, so that my father could be an engineer, so that I could be a poet. And that was very much the case for me. You know, quite literally, I was a poetry major in college, but I think there was a certain level of privilege that I grew up with. And so in my early youth, I was often told that I could do or be whoever I wanted to be. And that was an amazing opportunity, and also kind of daunting when thinking about all the opportunities or all the possibilities ahead of me.

Lia: Yes, you talk about that in your book, this idea that you should follow your passion, but not everyone is in the position, depending on what career you're passionate about, that could walk necessarily that path to get there. I found that really enlightening. I was connected to that, as somebody who grew up the same way. And I think I told you this when I reached out to you. Your book is life-changing. And the reason it is, and the very few books do this, but when they do, it's a pow. I felt obstinance, because it challenged my core belief system in what careers are and how that connects to our life. And when that happens, it's such a growth opportunity. I want to know when you started this journey, when you're like, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to write this book. Did you find that intent to be from the beginning, or is that something that transformed?

Simone: Well, the old cliche is that you, you write the book that you need to read. And that was definitely the case for me. And I think I was wrestling with what role work should or ought to play in my life. As I mentioned in the book, I said my 20s, really searching for that dream job, trying out a different industry, different career on for size. And, you know, I think with the best nonfiction books, they help you think a little bit differently. They buck conventional wisdom in some way. And so for me, I very much subscribe to the idea that, you know, how we live our days is how we live our lives, and therefore our chosen profession is the most consequential decision that we make. And I, like many of the people I profiled in the book and many people in the last two years had sort of a disillusionment moment where the sort of veil of perfect jobs was lifted. And I saw jobs for what they were, which was, you know, a means to pay for material existence. But maybe the passion and loyalty and love that workers put into their work is not always met by their employers. And so I think even going into the book, I had maybe a little bit more of a progressive or a hot take, thinking, you know, work is bad. We do it too much. Our whole world is centered around it. And I think over the course of reporting, it tempered into something a little bit more lukewarm or mild, which is to say that, you know, work is important. Certainly we do it more than we do just about anything else. But then the question becomes, how do you balance the pursuit of meaningful work, without letting work take over your life, without letting work subsume who you are, without letting it be the only thing that defines you?

Lia: Yes. Yes. And you mentioned that you decided to focus on white collar careers as opposed to blue collar. And do you explain that you felt that white collar careers tended to identify or whenever they're asked, what do you do? That's kind of like the first thing out of their mouth. And in some ways I agree and in some ways I disagree. Speaking to majority of skilled trades, electricians, older generations in particular, I've heard them say things like, If I'm not an electrician, what am I?

Simone: Yeah, especially if that's reinforced with your community or the union that you're part of. Yeah, I think the question about white collar and blue collar is really interesting and something that I spent a lot of time harping on in my research. And on one hand, people with options are the same people that are choosing to invest so much of that subjective value into their work. If you look across cultures, people who are college educated and who are high earners tend to mention their job as a source of meaning at over twice the rate of people who didn't go to college or people who earn less money. But that isn't to say that people that have more blue collar service or hourly work are absolved from this culture of workism that is so pervasive in this country. I think one thing that people in more blue collar jobs understand that maybe people in the knowledge economy could learn from is people in blue collar jobs tend to have more sources of meaning in their life, whether it is faith or organized religion or a sports fandom or a connection to their local community. It's something that gets crowded out when white collar workers in particular, one, always on and don't have barriers between when they're on and off the clock and two, are trying to look to work for self actualization and thinking that unless they found their dream job, something is inherently wrong with them and they should just keep searching. And so I think it's with any sort of social phenomenon, it's hard to say that this only applies to certain people and it doesn't apply to other people. But I think primarily workism, as I define it in the book, is primarily an affliction of, of knowledge workers, of people who are, tend to be college educated, high earning white collar workers. But that isn't to say that there are people that don't fit that demographic that also give too much of themselves to work. I also argue that it's a particularly American phenomenon, but it definitely exists in other places as well.

Lia: Yeah, I completely resonate with that. And the title of your book is so intriguing. The Good Enough Job; prior me, perfectionist, everything had to be exactly right. When I think of good enough, I immediately trigger to not enough. What's your definition of good enough?

Simone: Yeah, You know, you just read the title of the book and you might think it's this, like slacker manifesto, like, Oh, I'm just going to do a good enough job. It's like a, you know, excuse to sit on your couch more. But, you know, and I think like there's kind of two origins of the title. One is good enough job relative to the dream job. And so in the book, I define a good enough job as a job that allows you to be the type of person that you want to be in your life, which is sufficiently vague. But I like it because it's subjective. Maybe for one person, it's a job that earns a certain amount of money for someone else. It might be a job in a certain industry for a third person, might be a job that lets them get off at a certain hour so they can go on their afternoon bike ride or pick up their kids from elementary school. I think where it differs from a dream job is that once people recognize that their job is good enough, their job supports the life that they want to lead, they can stop spending all of their energy questioning whether they're in the absolute perfect position or if they're really extending their creative, unique personality through their vocation. And the second is a reference to this theory that was devised by this British pediatrician named Donald Winnicott. And Winnicott was this, you know, doctor in England in the mid 20th century. And he was observing how there was this growing idolization of parenting where these parents thought that they had to be the perfect parent and they wanted to shield their kid from experiencing any sort of negative emotion or harm. And then when the kid inevitably felt frustrated or sad or angry, the parents took it extremely personally. They thought it was a reflection of their own shortcomings. And then Winnicott argued that actually an approach that valued sufficiency as opposed to perfection would benefit both the kid and the parent. The kid would learn how to self-soothe and take care of some of their own problems, and then the parent would learn to not lose themselves in their children's emotions. So obviously I'm making sort of a direct parallel to the working world and the ways in which idolizing or looking for the perfect job can make it an unrealistic expectation. I think a lot of the disappointment people feel with work is that difference between their expectations and the reality. When you are just looking for perfection, it can create a lot of room for disappointment underneath that. But I think there's another few risks. One is, we mentioned earlier that your job might not always be there. If your job is your soul means of self-actualization or community and you lose your job, you're left asking, what's left. And then the third argument is maybe a little bit more of a humanistic argument, which is that when we give all of our best time and energy into our jobs, that can neglect other parts of who we are, certainly we are more than just workers. We are neighbors and friends and parents and citizens and community members, and thinking that our job defines us or our job as our sole means of making a difference in this world, kind of allows us to under invest in those other parts of who we are.

Lia: Wow. Yeah. And the characters that you introduce in the book, do, you do such an excellent job of showing that. The different approaches to career and work and what that could look like in different settings. I want to know, what was the most challenging about this journey, like, was there any point where you're like, I don't know what the fuck I'm being like. What the fuck? 

Simone: Yeah. Tons of it. I mean, you know, one thing that people that work for themselves can probably relate to is there were a lot of moments where I felt like I was like, on my own, you know, like one of the benefits of working with colleagues or working for a company is there are other people to shoulder the burden of producing whatever you're trying to create. Whereas when you're writing a book and it's just your name on the cover, you, it's sort of the best and worst thing about it. You know, you, it's like being an independent worker. It's like you rise with all of your wins and you fall with all of your losses and you have no one else to blame it on.

Lia: Hey, I'm just popping in to let you know, if you're a fan of the Sparky Life and would like to support us, we do have a Patreon page. You can check the link in the show notes below. Okay, back to the episode.

Simone: The second is, you know, like with any sort of personal narrative book where you're really asking people to share their life stories with you, It's a lot of responsibility, you know. It's a lot of responsibility to get it right, to do their story justice, to build trust with the sources so that they feel comfortable sharing with you. And so, you know, obviously, we as journalists do the best we can to try and convey the truth and try and be honest. But it's also a big responsibility. And we don't show the pre published copy with sources. And so there's a desire to, to want to get it right. And then I think there was a lot of just questioning my own place as a, as a journalist. I think one of the benefits of being a journalist, as opposed to say, an expert, is, you're sort of like a movie director. You're sort of like pointing the camera at different people to shed light and truth on an issue as opposed to having to supply all the answers themselves. But, you know, here I was, writing this book in my early 30s, and there were moments of saying like, who am I to make sweeping statements about the state of work in America or to make recommendations for how our culture ought to be better. And so, yeah, I think a little bit of imposter syndrome, a little bit of the just solitary nature of the work and also just the stakes of, of putting something in print and hopefully representing things accurately are some of the things that I struggled with along the way.

Lia: How did you work through that? What was your process in getting through those types of challenges?

Simone: Yeah, I think, you know, I relied a lot on systems of support I had. So my editor, my partner, trying to make it less of a solo endeavor. I think a lot of it is just done through reporting and research and work and trying to be able to stand by what you have to say. And the third is, you know, it's sort of like getting a tattoo. It's sort of a snapshot of me in a certain period of time, a certain, you know, perspective on the world. And hopefully, you know, a book has a little bit longer of a shelf life than, say, an article or a tweet. But I'm doing my best. And I think what I tried to show in the book is a humility that I don't have all the answers, and I am still wrestling with some of these questions myself. And work life balance isn't this like, static state that once you find it, you sort of float above the ground and lotus pose five feet in the air? You know, it's this constant wobble, this struggle to try and figure out how to place work's role in our life. But I do think it's through the struggle, it's through the inquiry, through the questioning, that we are able to just be more intentional instead of sort of passive recipients of our jobs.

Lia: As a reader, you definitely accomplished that goal. And I love the analogy of the tat being tatted. Totally connect to that. I love to ask guests, with all your life experience, with everything you've learned along the way thus far, what tool is in your tool belt? What's something you carry with you in the back of your mind that really has helped you go to the places you've wanted to go?

Simone: Hmm. I like that question. I think I do a good job of lowering the stakes of any particular decision I make in terms of the course of my life. I very much try and treat my life like an experiment and hold on to the idea that even if I make a choice that doesn't work out or I later realize what wasn't the right, right choice for me, we often have more capacity to course correct than we give ourselves credit for. I think when I was younger, I really sort of like white knuckled every decision that I made and thought, Oh my God, like my first job out of college, this is such an important decision, and it'll dictate the rest of my life, or who I choose to date is so important and spend so much time with them. But I think it's through that living, through the actual actions of our lives, that we figure out what we want. And I think a younger version of myself really thought it was all just like, you had to work it out between your two ears, and everything was sort of a thought experiment, and went from there. So I think that's like a tool that I try and keep is just a lightness, both with the decisions that I make and the way in which I try and move through the world.

Lia: That's fantastic, that is fantastic. That's the first tool I've heard of thus far. I have yet to hear that. I love that. That's something that I would like to implement.

Simone: Thanks for sharing.

Lia: What about the new book?

Simone: Yeah, I mean, it's very much the early days, but in short, the topic is about uncertainty and doubt. And I think they're both I don't really know what to call them yet, feelings, you know, phenomena that get kind of a bad rap. You know, we think that in order to make a decision, in order to commit to something, we ought to be free from doubt. Uncertainty is sort of something that people have learned to fear, to be the cause of lots of anxiety. And in this next book, you know, it's going to take a similar narrative or approach where each chapter is sort of following a different person and dealing with uncertainty or doubt in their life. And I think the argument is going to be about the value of uncertainty or doubt. To help us clarify what we believe in, to allow us to be able to persist in spite of uncertainty and in spite of doubt. I think our world is only becoming more and more uncertain with AI and climate change and all the polarization and politics. There are so many open questions right now. I think being able to develop an ability to manage our own doubt and uncertainty is going to be one of the most important skills of the next few decades. And so, you know, I think I'm going into the book writing process this time with some questions of how do we make decisions in spite of doubt, of what is the sort of developmental value of learning how to deal with uncertainty and doubt. And then the benefit of being a journalist is hopefully the reporting will elucidate more insight and truth along the way.

Lia: Is there anything you're going to do differently with this approach to this book as opposed to The Good Enough Job?

Simone: Yeah, I think one of the big questions coming out of The Good Enough Job was my first book. And so one of the big questions was, am I going to be like a work writer and just write about careers and people as professional lives, or am I going to expand my aperture and write about whatever is holding my curiosity or my interest? And I made the decision to go the latter route to pursue my curiosity and sort of broader topics rather than just thinking about work in our professional lives. Even though uncertainty definitely shows up in professional decisions and in our professional paths. And so I think from a forum standpoint, it's going to be similar in terms of like trying to really tell people's stories in a compelling narrative way. But from a topic, it's pretty different. You know, it's an idea book, it's something that is I don't know how prescriptive it's going to be, how much like advice, or how to kind of elements there will be to it. But mostly I'm trying to approach it with an open mind and then hopefully the people I talk to and the research that I do will shed more light on exactly what I'm trying to say.

Lia: I love that. I'm so excited. I can't wait for it to come out.

Simone: Thank you. 

Lia: Gonna get my hands on it. And I think you do that very well in The Good Enough Job. The aspect of presenting ideas so that one can do, like introspection. You're not telling people what to do. You're helping them change viewpoints and investigate. And that is tantalizing. That's, that is special. So if, if this book creates an environment like that, it's going to be another stellar book.

Simone: I hope so. You know, I may think like there is an inclination to want to give prescriptive advice or to say, you know, one size fits all, this is what people should do. But first of all, I don't know you, the reader, you know, like everyone is coming to these issues from a different perspective. And I, I always appreciated the types of books that ask more questions and then give answers. And I think that's especially with these big questions like, what should we do for work? Or how do I manage doubt in my life? There, there isn't a one easy solution. There aren't three quick tips that can help you deal with it. They are the big questions of life, and hopefully my writing can help people gain more context or perspective on how to think about things. But ultimately, the work on your own choices is something that only you can do.

Lia: Where would you like to see your career path go with all that you've kind of discovered?

Simone: Yeah, I've thought about this a little bit recently. I think, you know, before I wrote the book, I imagined that maybe I would write the book and then go back and join some company or newsroom and continue to, to work my way up some, some different organization. And now I think I have a different Northstar, which is that I want to write books. And I think that I really enjoyed the process and I really enjoyed being able to sink my teeth into something over a longer period of time. And so, you know, I think we'll see about the economic viability of that. But in the short term, the goal that I'm looking towards is if I take sort of the pie chart of how I spend my time professionally, hopefully a greater and greater slice of it can be working on something like a book. And so, yeah, not exactly sure, trying to hold space for the ambiguity, but that's sort of my best guess. If you were to ask me right now.

Lia: I'm thrilled with that, because I think your writing is fantastic. So I can't wait to see what you create. You have a course, Design Your Career's Next Step.

Simone: Yeah, exactly. Designing Your Next Career Step.

Lia: Yes. Designing Your Next Career Step. What does that course look like? I am intrigued. I want to hear about it.

Simone: Yeah. So I think one of the things that I learned through the reporting process is that the people that tended to have the most healthy relationship to work that I interviewed all had a keen sense of who they were outside of their work. And so the goal with the course is to help people connect with their values, really understand intentionally what they care about. I think so often in our careers we just earned this a go go, go mentality. We rarely have the chance to take a step back and reflect on what is it, what is it that we actually want. And, and so the first part of the course is about figuring out what you care about, what matters to you uniquely. The second part is about canvassing all the different paths, you know, thinking expansively about what are the different options ahead of you as opposed to kind of closing our minds to thinking, you know, what is most accessible, or what makes the most money, really giving space to thinking, oh, I could do something drastically different and become an elementary school teacher, or I could go back to school and study X, Y or Z. And so holding space for some of that exploration. And then there's a kind of convergence or narrowing process where we think about, okay, what are the different paths that feel most exciting to you that you want to explore? How can you design some experiments around trying to figure out whether they actually work for you? And then the last part of the course is about planning and thinking about what are the next steps to take to either get more clarity on what it is you want or make progress towards your goal.

Lia: That sounds extremely valuable. Where can people find this course?

Simone: Yeah, I mean, everything you can find at Thegoodenoughjob dot come, you can find my socials and the book and the course and yeah, if you're interested in learning more, I'm always, always happy to chat or connect.

Lia: For those of us who have yet to step into a career, what would you recommend for someone like that? The youth?

Simone: Yeah, I think similar to what I said earlier about lowering the stakes, I think it's important to keep in mind that your first job does not have to be your last job, and it's often through the doing, through the trying something out that we figure out what we want. I think there's this writer I look up to a lot and Colin Newport, and he wrote this book called So Good They Can't Ignore You. And the sort of main argument of the book is that passion is often the result of hard work, not the precursor to hard work. So often people think you need to be passionate about things or know what you're passionate about so you can choose the right job. But what Colin argues, which I completely agree with, is more than trying to make the right decision, we have the ability to make that decision right. And so it's through working, through trying something out that we actually figure out what we're passionate about. And passion tends to be the result of expertise and getting better and investing in things as opposed to something that you should have figured out all the way. So my advice would be to, you know, do your best guess and try something out. And it's through the process of gaining some skills that you'll learn what you actually care about.

Lia: And then what about those of us who started a career, feel stuck in that career, because they've invested so much time or education and they don't know how to pivot?

Simone: Yeah. And I think there's a few different ways to think about that. One, there's this study that I quote in the book about janitors at a hospital, and the researchers went into this hospital, and we're wondering sort of why is there such big variation in how happy people are with a job if they have the same job? And so they interviewed all of these janitors and they found that the janitors roughly broke up into two groups. The first group didn't think their job was particularly high skill. They didn't go out of their way to interact with people that they were working with. And overall, they were pretty unhappy or unfulfilled by their work. Second group thought their job was a little bit higher skill. They did more interacting with the patients and their colleagues. But the big third aspect of the job was that they saw themselves as part of this health care system whose job was to heal the sick. They saw themselves as healers, and it was by attaching themselves to this reason of why they were doing the work that allowed them to get through some of the more tedious or menial aspects that existed in any part of work. And so the researchers coined this term called “job crafting,” which is basically the ability that we have to turn the job, that we have more into the job that we want. So I'd say step one is to think about, are there ways that you can either have a mindset shift or actually change the actual activities of your job to be more in line with the type of work that you want to be doing? So that's option one. Option two is to, you know, not fall victim to what's called the sunk cost fallacy, not fall victim to thinking that if you've already put in some time or invested X amount of money, that it's too late to change. You know, in many ways, the time that you've invested, it's already done. You've already spent it. You've already spent the money or the time to get you to where you want to go. And knowing that our lives are long, if you really feel like you want to make a change, think about, you know, rationally how you might be able to, to do so and maybe in smaller incremental steps.

Lia: Maybe check out your course.

Simone: Maybe check out that course.

Lia: Yeah. Simone, thank you so, so much for coming on to the Sparky life. This is an absolute pleasure. I cannot wait for your next book. I'm, like chomping at the bit. It's gonna be good.

Simone: I appreciate you. And thanks for having me on.

Lia: Yes, pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. If you felt a spark in today's episode, I invite you to write a review. I'd love to hear what lit you up. Take what resonates with you, and if you'd like to hear more of the Sparky Life, please subscribe, like, follow and share. Until next time, create the sparks in your life.