This feels like a small hand being raised in the corner of a deafening room, trying to point out the obvious. We’re only human. We need a break. That unsettled feeling you get every day at work might not be imposter syndrome or everyday stress, but the sheer exhaustion of knowing that you can never pause and focus on getting work done. The skills and knowledge you have now will be worthless tomorrow.
I would suggest that another partial explanation is that many jobs and businesses don’t involve work that feels purposeful because the work has no purpose. Too many jobs exist solely to make more money for CEOs and investors. They don’t sell anything that helps society. Employees don’t benefit directly from business improvements, and those same CEOs justify all of the efforts by talking about how much the stock price went up. That seems to be the entire point of the organization. That’s the purpose.
It’s not easy to feel like your work has a purpose when the real purpose is to make some number go up. It’s hard to be engaged with that.
I think we might need a variation of the Dunning-Kruger effect to describe the people who weren’t smart enough to realize the AI was wrong when it told them their ideas were brilliant.
Why would we trust the same leaders who never overcame proximity bias when it came to people who spent more time in the office versus those who got work done to figure out how much flexibility employees should have? They’re not good at any of this.
Juliet has written an entire book on the subject, so you should at least read the full article above. As mentioned in the paragraph I quoted above, though, what you’ll find are the things that would allow the American workplace to allow for translating the increased productivity in to fewer hours worked; universal healthcare, overtime pay, loss of unions, and income ineqaulity, are the same things that powerful corporate interests will convince politicians, and voters, are bad for society.
You may notice how frequently the words “intentional” or “on purpose” appear. With remote teams, nothing is left to chance encounters, because there aren’t chance encounters.