"His straight-shooting style makes for a blistering takedown of American corporate culture. Workaholics would do well to check this out." ― Publishers Weekly "If you are struggling with the oversized place that work occupies in your life ― and how much of your identity it takes up, then this refreshingly different book is a good place to start." ― The Financial Times “A journalist makes a timely, compelling case for designing work around our lives instead of squeezing our lives into the space around work. It’s a wakeup call for people who feel overworked and leaders who have lost sight of their humanity.” ― Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife “Superb. A fascinating and deeply reported challenge to the idea that our work should―or ever could―be the only center of meaning, self-worth, or community in our lives. The real-life stories fill the reader with the liberating sense that we absolutely could put work back in its place―and that the result would be both richer lives and more effective work.” ― Oliver Burkeman, New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks “The Good Enough Job is an incredibly propulsive read, filled with characters whose stories will be at once familiar and astonishing―and it will absolutely challenge you to change the way you think about work.” ― Anne Helen Petersen, author of Can’t Even and coauthor of Out of Office “The Good Enough Job is a super-helpful guide for anyone looking to renegotiate their relationship with work and to better fit their career goals into a happier, more fulfilling life.” ― Laurie Santos, Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology at Yale University and host of The Happiness Lab podcast “Simone Stolzoff provides an important corrective to the modern impulse to either villainize or lionize our jobs, arguing that it’s okay for our work to be just one element among many that contribute to a life well-lived.” ― Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism and Deep Work “I couldn’t stop reading The Good Enough Job. It’s packed with sharp analysis about modern work culture and vivid, page-turning stories of people who have sought to detach their sense of meaning from their productivity as workers. I was startled to recognize myself. You will be, too.” ― Vauhini Vara, author of The Immortal King Rao “The Good Enough Job is a thorough, insightful, and much-needed reminder that we are not what we do at work. Stolzoff reveals why the modern world makes it so easy to fall under workism’s spell―and how we can finally disentangle ourselves from its clutches.” ― Liz Fosslien, bestselling coauthor and illustrator of Big Feelings and No Hard Feelings “Read this and give yourself permission to design a great life with a good job in it.” ― Bill Burnett, executive director of the Life Design Lab at Stanford University “In a dazzling mix of reportage, research, and cultural critique, Stolzoff explores the many ways in which our jobs have overtaken our identities, and offers a path toward restoring a more sane and humane work-life balance. I devoured The Good Enough Job, and it has changed me, for the better.” ― Steve Almond, author of All the Secrets of the World

Chapter Page Introduction xi 1. For What It's Worth 1 2. The Religion of Workism 21 3. The Love of Labor 41 4. Lose Yourself 61 5. Working Relationships 85 6. Off the Clock 111 7. Work Hard, Go Home 137 8. The Status Game 157 9. A World with Less Work 179 Epilogue 199 Acknowledgments 207 Notes 211

1 For What It's Worth On the myth that we are what we do Sufficiency isn't two steps up from poverty or one step short of abundance. It isn't a measure of barely enough or more than enough. Sufficiency isn't an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough. Brene Brown Divya Singh was sitting in her college dorm room when her roommate's boyfriend said something that changed her life: "You couldn't get an internship at The Restaurant even if you tried." Divya was a nineteen-year-old Indian American culinary school student with sleek bangs and a single pronounced dimple under her left cheek. She was studying to become a nutritionist. Her dream was to design recipes for a glossy food magazine like Bon Appetit or Saveur, but that comment changed things. Cody, the boyfriend, was a tall, confident Midwesterner on the fine-dining track. Even as a student, he assumed the bravado common among male chefs. Little did he know, Divya was the wrong person to be told what she couldn't accomplish. Every year, one student from the culinary school Divya and Cody attended was awarded an internship at The Restaurant, which was widely considered to be one of the best in America. It had just received three Michelin stars, another accolade for its famed chef, Stephen Fischer, whose home adjoined The Restaurant's kitchen. The internship would be awarded by Randy Garcia, a faculty member at Divya's culinary school who used to work at The Restaurant. Garcia evaluated prospective students on their knife skills, solicited feedback from places where they had worked, and conducted interviews with each applicant. Divya had never worked in fine dining. But after she set her sights on The Restaurant, she spent the rest of her nights and weekends of the school year working in high-end kitchens. At the end of the year, Divya and Cody both applied for The Restaurant's internship. Divya got it. Garcia told me she was the most prepared student he had ever recommended for the role. Even after securing the position, Divya continued to go to Garcia's classroom to practice chopping onions, carrots, and celery in anticipation of the summer ahead. The Restaurant is a picture of culinary sophistication. The rustic stone building was a turn-of-the-century saloon before becoming a restaurant in the 1970s. When Fischer remodeled the kitchen, he told the architects that he wanted The Restaurant to resemble the Louvre-a mix of the historic and the contemporary. Every detail-from the cerulean front door to the "Sense of Urgency" sign that hangs below the kitchen's Vacheron Constantin clock-carries Fischer's fingerprint. The nine-course prix-fixe menu is $350 dollars a head. Most fine-dining kitchens are organized by the so-called brigade system, made popular by a nineteenth-century French chef who based it on the hierarchy of European military kitchens. The head chef barks orders that the rest of the kitchen staff dutifully follow. Fischer, whose father was a Marine, implemented the brigade system at all his restaurants. As a commis, or junior chef, Divya was at the bottom of the pyramid. Everything in her first six months was "yes, Chef" or "no, Chef." Divya's days passed in a blur of minced tarragon leaves and diced chanterelles. The chefs routinely examined the symmetry of the commis's cuts, and if they weren't up to their standards, the food would be thrown away. Working as a cook at The Restaurant was like working as an animator at Pixar or a cellist at the Vienna Philharmonic-being among the best of the best was intoxicating. But the work was grueling. "Your time there is the equivalent of dog years," a former general manager told me. "For every year you're there, it's seven years off your life." At the end of the internship, Divya was invited to stay on, but she wasn't excited by the monotony of cooking on the line and wanted to graduate from school. So, she went back to finish her studies and devised a plan to return to The Restaurant on her own terms. In the mid-aughts, molecular gastronomy was all the rage. Divya read about European restaurants with their own research and development kitchens, which used food science and chemistry to develop novel cooking techniques. Because The Restaurant changed its menu every day, the chefs often didn't have time to experiment with the most cutting-edge methods. So during her senior year of culinary school, Divya wrote her own job description and, at twenty-two, was hired as The Restaurant's first ever R&D chef. A few months after graduation, she was back at The Restaurant, experimenting with how to make seawater sorbet and turn bechamel sauce into foam. One of Divya's responsibilities as the R&D chef was to create menu items for people with dietary restrictions. She spent months developing recipes for dairy-free alternatives to The Restaurant's signature tapioca pudding and leek souffle. The R&D kitchen was housed in a separate building from the main dining room, but occasionally The Restaurant guests would ask to meet the wizard behind their dairy-free delights. One time, a woman who hadn't eaten dairy in seven years broke down crying in front of Divya while describing what it felt like to bite into her dairy-free brie. Divya knew she was onto something. Divya saw a business opportunity to bring what she had learned in The Restaurant's R&D kitchen to home chefs. Most dairy-free alternatives require home chefs to substantially alter their favorite family recipes. Divya's idea was to create a line of dairy-free products that home chefs could substitute into almost any recipe. She decided to call it Prameer-a play on paneer, the Hindi word for cheese. Since Divya was still on staff at The Restaurant, she didn't want her project to be seen as a conflict of interest. She set up a meeting with Chef Fischer to ask for his permission to start Prameer as an independent venture. On the day of the meeting, Divya wore her starched white chef's coat, her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Divya and Fischer had never met one-on-one. Her heart was pounding as she sat on the picnic bench outside Fischer's office while she waited for him to emerge. A twenty-four-year-old recent culinary grad, Divya was about to meet with one of the top chefs in the world. Who am I for Stephen Fischer to even care about? she thought. Just like she'd done for her internship, Divya overprepared. She brought research on trends in dairy-free baking and charts analyzing the competitive landscape. But when broad-shouldered Fischer stepped outside to meet her, he greeted her with the disarming charm of a college professor. "No need to be nervous," he said, flashing a smile. "It's just me." After her pitch, Fischer didn't just give Divya the green light-he did one better. "What if I help you?" he asked. Divya was shocked. She had been grateful for just a half hour of his time, but now Stephen Fischer wanted to help her. "I don't need anything, but I'm just compelled to help you because you seem like a very driven, ambitious woman," he said. "Why don't we partner on this?" Divya came into the meeting with an idea and left with a business partner. They agreed to a fifty-fifty ownership split. Over the next few years, Fischer took Divya under his wing. Despite being a notoriously busy man who ran several other restaurants with a constellation of Michelin stars, Fischer went out of his way to make himself available to Divya. They met regularly to talk about the future of the business. They appeared together in the glossy magazines where Divya had once dreamed of working. Divya ran the day-to-day operations of Prameer, but Fischer, who had no kids of his own, offered her advice and guidance. "This was the first time I ever had a mentor," Divya told me. "Like a father figure." One day, Divya was feeling particularly anxious about the business, so she went to Fischer's office, which is a gar