Happy Thursday, First name / friend!
In the corporate world, promotions, bonuses and raises are often tied to performance. Companies promise that they’ll reward hard work and loyalty. So, you start your career and you hustle hard. In some professions, like law and accounting, you’re working 60 to 100 hour weeks for a full-time salary (which is commonly understood to be 40 hours). But, you do it to pay your dues, and hope you’ll get promoted early and your salary and bonuses will reflect your hard work and the hours you put in.
But something millennials and Gen Z started realizing is that in some firms and companies, your efforts don’t always align with your compensation. For example, if a company ranks employees as “below expectations,” “meets expectations”, and “exceeds expectations” (or whatever measure is used to “rank” employees), and you strive to get the highest ranking, you expect to get something out of it.
But, if the difference between “meets expectations” and “exceeds expectations” is 1%, you start to reconsider if it’s worth it to “exceed expectations.” Especially if “exceeding expectations” means working 60-80 hour weeks versus your co-workers who “meet expectations” and work only 40-50 hours a week. Is that extra 10-30 hours per week that you’re working worth 1% of your salary?
Now, this is not meant to encourage “quiet quitting,” but when I ask women what their biggest struggles are as working women, one of the top responses is boundaries with work. Because today, especially with the rise in remote work and if you work in law or accounting, you often feel like you’re always “on” between busy seasons, checking emails outside of work, travel, and keeping up with client workloads.
The truth is, when I started out my career and I was single, I didn’t mind the 60-80 work weeks and being available 24/7. But now that I have a family, every hour dedicated to work beyond 40 hours means one less hour away from my family. Suddenly, those “extra” hours begin to “cost” me more and more, and I have to evaluate if the compensation is worth the cost.
So, what does this mean? Should you start “quiet quitting?”
As Christians, we are called to work diligently - with our whole being - not as for man, but as for God (Colossians 3:23). That means we do give our wholehearted effort to our jobs, but it does not mean we live to work or give our entire lives to work. Psalm 127:2 says that “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for He gives to His beloved sleep.”
This means we not only work hard, but we work smart. Learn about how to do your job more efficiently - to provide more value in less time. To prioritize well, so your work gets done better and faster.
Practice drawing boundaries and how to pick the better thing when it comes to a decision between time spent with family (or what you prioritize in life) versus work. Actually use your paid time off.
Learn the corporate “game” (i.e., what metrics and goals your organization values) and focus on moving the needle on what matters.
Quiet quitting is not the smart way to draw work life boundaries, but we can certainly learn something from this trend to help us work smarter, advance in our careers, and not sacrifice what matters most to us like our families on the altar of work.
