“Quiet-Quitting” is a term that went viral recently on social media platforms, and different parties have taken the term out of context and interpreted it as something bad.
The “quitting” part does not mean you want to quit your job, but just do EXACTLY what you are paid to do within the job hours. That means not going “above and beyond” and working extra hours to “help out”.
Most employees are a small cog of a big corporation with many tiers of managers, partners, and customers. There is always a deadline, and we feel compelled to overexert ourselves to meet those deadlines.
Management and CEOs are not too happy about Quiet-Quitting because their employees are not giving them extra hours of their lives to make more profits for the company. Most employees get little to nothing when companies make “record-breaking” profits.
Quiet-Quitting is one of the many attempts to escape the “rat race”, a term to describe our society where people are unhappy with their lives, working hard at jobs they hate in order to compete with others for money, power, and status.
Similar to Quiet-Quitting, the rat race is often misinterpreted and diluted down to just having a 9-5 job. And in order to combat the rat race, came the rise of the “hustle culture” aka the “opposite” of working 8 hours a day, you choose to work 12-18 hours instead.
To survive the rat race, you now must work all day every day to achieve professional goals. This comes at the expense of your own health and personal relationships with loved ones.
As a regular joe, I aspired to be just enough. Work just enough to make a livable salary and focus on my personal well-being and my friends and family.
After working for 2 years as a full-time employee of big corporations. I have learned that having a 9-5 is not the end of the world as most millennials and Gen Zs would think.
The job is stable and the hours are mostly (90% of the time 🙂 ) fixed. The chance of having real emergencies in a workplace that requires you to drop your life to respond to them is very slim. As long as you do what is required during the work hours and let management know that you will not be working overtime nor be on-call, your work days will be a breeze.
It is called quiet quitting, not being-a-menace-to-society, or a jack-a** to other employees who are also trying to make ends meet.
Your job does not have to be a passion project, save that for your hobby. So that way you can enjoy working on your passion for a long time and not burn out after 6 months.
So find a job that you don’t hate and enjoy the work, that pays enough (that rent is 30% or less of your income), and that requires just enough daily energy to work so you can focus on your hobbies and things that make you happy 🙂