The trend that blew up and set off so SO many opinions
By now you may have heard of the newest take on work-life balance, widely referred to as “quiet-quitting.” While it’s gained quite a bit of popularity on TikTok over the last couple of months, it really has nothing to do with the app and a whole lot more to do with the epidemic of pandemic-related burnout that no one seems to want to talk about.
The video creator Zaid Khan has been credited with introducing the topic to the TikTok community, as his video on quiet-quitting has reached over 3.5 million views since it was published in late August. His narration explains that quiet-quitters are “still performing [their] duties but [they’re] no longer subscribing to the hustle-culture mentality that work has to be [their] life.” As word spreads, the concept of quiet-quitting has obviously taken on many forms. For some, it means a new approach to prioritizing their home life, while for others it’s caused their workplace dynamic to take a turn for the worst.
So what is it? The general principle behind quiet-quitting is to meet your job requirements and only your job requirements. It preaches that there’s no need to go above and beyond if you’re not being compensated for it. To become a quiet-quitter, you really just need to set some boundaries—you can take it to any extreme that you want. Some examples of implementing quiet-quitting look like taking a full hour of lunch break, refraining from answering your work phone outside of work hours, leaving your laptop at home during vacation and only committing to projects you have time to complete during your work hours.
While it’s true that it’s received a lot of attention online, it’s time to address where it really came from. The pandemic caused many people to unintentionally merge their work and home lives together, as their home suddenly became their work environment. Employees were pushed to their limits, working overtime to compensate for their colleagues that were laid off as a result of business shutdowns and pandemic-related losses in company revenue. As the pandemic dragged on, employees started putting in hours all around the clock because there wasn’t much else to do at home, and because they were physically in their workspace all the time. While I won’t declare the pandemic to be officially “over” (although apparently President Biden did, which is neither here nor there), a majority of the companies in the U.S. have reestablished at least a semblance of pre-pandemic work normalcy and a lot of employees have returned to work in the office. This means that we’re starting to see how mindsets in the workplace may have been affected by remote work. And for many people, this looks like QUIET-QUITTING!
Some people (many people, in my humble opinion) associate quiet-quitting with laziness, selfishness, or some kind of “holier-than-thou” attitude. You’ll find that several specific demographics of people think that quiet-quitting is some sort of outlandish behavior that will lead our economy and our society’s work ethic straight into the ground. The reality, however, is a lot less dramatic. Quiet-quitting is just a different way to perceive how your job fits into the rest of your life. Not everyone strives to be a workaholic; not everyone is interested in becoming a cog in this 9-to-5 machine. And that is okay. While it’s wonderful to have people that are truly passionate about what they do for a living, we don’t all need to be. We need to acknowledge that there are people who aspire to be parents, to travel the world, to host big dinner parties with all of their friends; and these people quietly-quit because the purpose of their job is just to furnish the other pieces of their lives that they really, TRULY, enjoy.
If you are someone who wakes up every morning feeling excited to go to work, that is wonderful. And if you’re not, quiet-quitting may be for you. It may be worth your while to explore other career opportunities if you’re not thrilled with where you are, but it’s also worth considering putting less emphasis on your job and more emphasis on what makes you thrive! We are all victims to the hustle-culture mentality, which can be motivating for some but suffocating for others. The bottom line is you deserve a life that supports your happiness, regardless of whether or not you’re in love with your chosen career.
Sources:
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/the-peterborough-examiner/20220906/281818582661014
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/08/21/quiet-quitting-what-to-know/