An Alternative to Quiet Quitting
These days many people seem to be disillusioned with work. And I get it because I feel the same way too. It’s hard not to feel disillusioned when your company gets bought out by a soulless Private Equity firm, when valued staff members are culled on apparent whims, when standards and quality is reduced to save a short-term buck, when the leadership can’t lead, when your salary gets decimated year on year by inflation, when your income gets taxed at source, at destination and anywhere else in between, when your skills are not respected, when you become a box-ticker.
The idea of quiet quitting was born out of this disillusionment with work. Maybe quiet quitting has always been there. Like a lot of ‘new’ concepts, they are simply the packaging, labelling, rebranding of old concepts. Let’s face it every workplace has always had its slackers. Were they quiet quitters? Perhaps they were ahead of their time.
Quiet quitting is the idea of doing just enough at work to get by. Just enough so that you don’t get too much grief or get fired. And in some ways it makes sense. A company will typically pay you just enough so that you will do the job. So, it stands to reason that you might do just enough to keep your job.
The problem I have with quiet quitting is that if feels weak, flaccid, beta.
There’s something about quiet quitting that doesn’t quite sit right with me. It feels too passive-aggressive, it feels a bit whiny, and in some ways it feels self-defeating. It feels as though we are diminished by behaving in this way.
I feel that the more you quiet quit, the more isolated, uninspired and frankly bored you will feel. For me work is much more enjoyable when I am involved, engaged and focussed. Positively engaging in work is more likely to develop your character, knowledge and skill to enable you to get a better job. Of course, if you are adverse to the idea of work per se then this will not be much of an incentive.
I think there is an alternative approach to quiet quitting which is much more pro-active, and empowering. It might not be available to everyone, but it will be an option for many people that work from home. I’m a software developer working from home. As with many companies, the company I work for use the Agile methodology to schedule work. Every two weeks we have a sprint planning meeting in which my work for the next fortnight is scheduled. The beauty of this to me is that I’m now being paid for the work that I produce, not for the hours that I put in. It is now in my interest to be the best, most disciplined, focused, productive employee I can be. The more productive I am, that is the more efficiently I can do my work, the more time I can reclaim for myself. The four hour working week might be a stretch, but the four hour working day becomes a distinct possibility.
Productivity is one of the greatest skills we can develop. I never really used to see the point of it. I would see videos describing various productivity methods and think what’s the point. That’s because I never valued the product (whatever the company I was working for at the time produced), nor saw enough increased value (income) in being productive. Learning to be productive is enjoyable in itself. Being focused, disciplined and productive feels good. Being lazy and feckless, watching the clock, feels terrible. And now that I am working from home, I get the real value of increased productivity, I get more time back. With more time and better productivity skills I can successfully pursue my own goals of fitness, family-time and side-hustles.