What if the way we think about work is broken?
I never used to question the way we work. I was too busy working.
During my four years working at an early-stage tech startup, my life was full to the point of bursting.
I was juggling what felt like four full-time roles at my job, while also trying to be a present partner, a good friend, a family member who showed up, an active social being, a yogi, a traveler and a functioning adult taking care of life’s endless logistics. There were many moments I caught myself asking: How the hell is this supposed to be sustainable? How do people make this work long-term?
And I wasn’t alone. I saw this exact same pressure in my circle of friends. Everyone trying to fit every meaningful aspect of life into the 24 hours we all get. And yet, something always had to give.
For me, what completely got sacrificed were the things I wanted to care about:
Time to engage with climate action
Time to volunteer or contribute to something bigger than myself
Time to invest in personal growth to stay mentally and emotionally well
And if this setup was already pushing me to my limits, how the hell were parents doing it? Or people caring for someone? Or anyone without the privilege of flexibility or support?
Finally someone said it
Shortly after I quit my job, I stumbled across Work Shift by Elly Oldenbourg.
It was one of the first books I read post-resignation and it was like someone had taken everything I had intuitively felt over the years and laid it out clearly.
Elly advocates for a holistic understanding of work that integrates value creation with relationships, care, and community. In her view, work apart from what earns us money, should also be:
Caring for others
Nurturing our relationships
Investing in personal growth
Contributing to society
Currently, all of these dimensions are systematically excluded from what we call ‘work’ and as a society, we’ve deeply internalized a very narrow definition of it which is namely, paid employment.
Why this matters
If the only way to survive is to monetize every waking hour, what happens to everything that doesn’t pay?
If all our time is consumed by ‘wage work’, we no longer have time to be mindful citizens. No time to walk instead of taking the car, to eat consciously, or to participate in democracy. No time to be engaged in the very world we live in.
Elly asks:
Why do we have to choose between economic security and our well-being?
Why are we expected to pour all our talents into a single direction: the economy?
And who exactly is this equation working for? Because it sure isn’t the individuals.
This mindset is exhausting and it undervalues everything we do that keeps society alive, connected, and compassionate.
Rethinking work at the system level
In Work Shift, Elly Oldenbourg looks at how we can collectively reshape the systems that define work.
She proposes 22 practical ideas aimed at governments, organizations, and society as a whole, focusing on systemic change across four key areas: time, collaboration, diversity, and metrics.
She calls for greater time sovereignty, through models like job sharing and part-time leadership, to help align work around life and not the other way around. She advocates for inclusive, collaborative work cultures that embrace diverse backgrounds and non-linear paths. She highlights the need to recognize and value care work and personal growth as integral contributions to society. And she challenges companies and leaders to rethink our current KPIs urging them to go beyond profits and productivity and instead measure well-being, learning, and social and environmental impact.
Personal agency
Reading Work Shift helped me to understand that I wasn’t crazy, or weak, or lazy for questioning the conventional work treadmill.
I used to think that I might be the problem and I’m just not disciplined enough, not efficient enough, not strong enough. But Work Shift helped me realize that maybe the system is actually the problem. That what we define as ‘work’ is overdue for a massive reframe, for one that makes room for the full human experience: care, creativity, purpose and joy.
It was a call to action to rethink my own role in the world of work and beyond. It helped me see that breaking away wasn’t failure but it was agency.
The book was a starting point for me to question the traditional work setup and to set out on the quest to design a new one for myself. Only way later did I learn there’s a name out there for what I was beginning to build:
Portfolio career: a mix of different income streams and activities that collectively make up my version of work. Some that earn money. Some that fulfill me. Some that contribute to the world.
And as I continue to explore what my very own version of work looks like, we’re in the middle of AI profoundly disrupting the world of work. Hopefully not by making us ‘more productive’ but by giving us new options. It could help finally change the role of ‘paid employment’ in our lives by freeing up time, empowering individuals, enabling entirely new work models and maybe at a later stage even removing the concept of ‘paid work’ altogether.
I’ll explore that in a future piece but first, I wanted to ground this conversation in the bigger picture.
Thanks for sharing Iwana. Inspiring and relatable! I love these goals: "A year to focus on myself (= reduced focus on work) and enjoy life. Explore alternative ways of working and financing life".
I've recently left tech too, with no plan - and connect with your desire to contribute meaningfully to environmental and social issues. But it's not easy is it! So far for me it looks like working for 1-2 days a week on a day rate using my previous skillset (to survive £), and doing a bunch of community gardening and horticulture qualifications to heal from all the years inside an office and excavate my true human self (as opposed to my...robot-capitalism-worker self!) . But not knowing what the next 12 months or even 6 months looks like sometimes makes me feel like a crazy person. V nice to hear from more people doing the same.
P.S. I can only find Work Shift written in German so also appreciate your summary!!
Great post. We all have the potential to design and build a way of making a living that gives us autonomy, so we can do work that is personally meaningful—whether that's making a specific impact or following our curiosity wherever it leads, and doing work that feels like play.
My perspective is that this should actually be a business. Jobs and portfolio careers are just specific business model, after all. But the semantics don't matter. The point is that how we make a living should serve us, not the other way around. And the first step is to start.
Good luck!