کاری را بکن که دوست داری

by Miya Tokumitsu, آرش رضاپور (Translator)

از نظر بسیاری از ما کار ایدئال کاری است که از آن لذت ببریم و درآمد کسب کنیم؛ و البته پیامبران موفقیت و کامیابی نیز همیشه گفته‌اند که موفقیت باید از درون ما زاده شود، از پیدا کردن کاری که به آن عشق می‌ورزیم: وقتی می‌شود «کار رؤیایی‌مان» را انجام دهیم و از این راه ثروتمند هم شویم، دیگر چرا باید به وام سی‌ساله با سود ثابت تن دهیم؟ اما میا توکومیتسو، برخلاف این تصویر از «کار با عشق»، نشان می‌دهد که امروزه شکافی عمیق میان آن خیال‌پردازی‌های عوامانه و واقعیت طاقت‌فرسای کار وجود دارد؛ کارگران کار بیشتری می‌کنند و دستمزد کمتری می‌گیرند. توکومیتسو می‌گوید وقت آن رسیده که شعار «کاری را بکن که دوست داری» را کنار بگذاریم: باید نشان دهیم که این شعار چگونه همیشه به سود کارفرمایان بوده است و چطور ما با رضایت کامل تن به این بهره‌کشی داده‌ایم؛ این نخستین قدم برای رسیدن به کار ایدئال است.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Self Help, Politics, Economics, Business, Essays

176 pages, Paperback

First published August 11, 2015

Reviews

[Roy Lotz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe anybody can do what he or she loves, but only the wealthy can avoid going into debt to pay for it.

I first heard of Tokumitsu when an essay of hers was being circulating among some friends on Facebook. I was struck by how well she articulated some half-formed thoughts that had lately been kicking around my head, so I immediately got her book. Then, I immediately put off reading it, until now.

Tokumitsu’s thesis is that the cultural ideal of doing what you love (DYWL) is, in practice, often exploitative and nefarious. She gives many reasons for this. First, DWYL glorifies certain types of work—almost all white collar—and ignores others. Only certain jobs are believably lovable; other types of work are unglamorous, and thus ignored. Steve Jobs gave a famous commencement speech in which he encouraged the young graduates to follow their dreams; but Apple would be impossible without the thousands of people toiling in factories, cafeterias, and warehouses supporting the visionaries.

Another way that DWYL can be exploitative is when it is used to underpay workers. Any musician can tell you that they are often expected to play for free, because they’re doing it out of love and not for money. Unpaid internships have grown in popularity; and academics nowadays often find themselves in underpaid adjunct work, because they’re supposed to be passionate about their subject. These purgatory periods are characterized as paying your dues; and yet studies have shown that, more often than not, unpaid internships and adjunct work don’t lead to full-time positions.

I find the situation in academia especially ironic. As a group, academics are some of the most politically conscious, leftist people out there. And yet in academia the pressure to do underpaid work, to personally identify with your job, and to work long hours can be intense. All this is justified with the notion that academic work is more noble than the grubby capitalism of the non-academic world. In the process, however, academics become ideal capitalist workers, doing enormous amounts of work for little compensation. This is “hope labor” at its purest: badly paid work performed in the hope of breaking through to the next tier.

In many ways, the DWYL ethic is not so different from the Protestant Work Ethic identified by Weber over 100 years ago. The major shift is that the Protestant Ethic viewed work as a duty, while DWYL sees work as love. Duty isn’t trendy anymore, but self expression is, which is what DWYL is all about. In any case, although the virtues we choose to emphasize have changed, the basic logic of an individualistic, competitive system remain. When you’re living in a supposed meritocracy, the poor can be dismissed as deserving their poverty, and the rich congratulated for deserving their wealth. DWYL just puts a different spin on this. One hundred years ago we might have chosen to emphasize Steve Job’s force of will, penuriousness, or his abstemiousness; but now we talk about his passion, vision, and his courage.

Another consequence of DWYL, in Tokumitsu’s opinion, is the culture of overwork. Employers want their employees to be passionate; and the easiest way to demonstrate dedication is to work long hours. This mentality is certainly common in both New York and Madrid; and it is rather strange when you consider that people become generally worse employees when they work longer hours. When you don’t sleep enough, it takes a toll on your health, not to mention makes you sluggish and slow-witted.

One of Tokumitsu’s most valuable observations, in my opinion, is that the DWYL mindset seems to devalue sources of pleasure, pride, and love that are not work-related. Under DWYL, finding love in a non-work activity, like a hobby, a relationship, or just relaxing, is frivolous. If you were serious and passionate, you would be paying your dues and working as an intern. Tokumitsu illustrates this with her discussion of the documentary Finding Vivian Maier, in which the interviewees express astonishment and mild disapproval that Maier, who worked her whole life as a nanny, could have been such a dedicated, talented photographer and have not sought recognition.

The book ends with a call to make free time legitimate. In order to enjoy free time, we need to be paid decently and to work reasonable hours. We shouldn’t be seen as lazy or insufficiently passionate if we want to be fairly compensated for artistic, academic, or even menial work; and we should have the leisure to pursue interests outside work, since for most of us having a wonderful job isn’t realistic. To accomplish this, Tokumitsu envisions labor movements.

These are some of the Tokumitsu’s observations I have found most valuable. For that reason, I think the book is worth reading. But I must admit that, even when I was in agreement, I often found this book exasperating. Without looking at her biography, I could tell Tokumitsu was a recovering academic. The formal writing style, the many quotations and citations, the Marxist bent, and especially the topic of the book—everything belied a recently minted PhD who had felt the pain of the academic job market.

There’s nothing wrong with having a PhD, of course. But there is something wrong with writing a book like this in an academic style. The book's subject is accessible and relevant, and Tokumitsu's aim is to spur labor movements. Yet its orientation and tone severely restrict its audience. Her first chapter, for example, is an analysis of two television shows and the way that they portray the DWYL mentality. The analysis was well done, but why on earth would you lead with that?

The prose was also a problem for me. I admit I’m especially sensitive to this sort of thing, since I spent a bad year in a PhD program. And I also admit that Tokumitsu is certainly a better writer than the vast majority of her peers in academe. (I’m talking about the humanities, specifically.) I also think that Tokumitsu has great potential.

Even so, there are many sentences like this one: “Attending the theatrical performance of one’s child faces long odds against the obligations of capitalist production.”

The sentence is irritating in many ways. It is about something intimate, but uses formal language. It is about something concrete, and yet uses abstractions. It turns something personal into something coldly impersonal. Here’s an example of a rewrite: "Making time for your daughter's school play is hard when your boss can email you at any hour of the day.”

The Marxist perspective was also unfortunate, in my opinion, because it will further limit her audience. The DWYL mentality afflicts people of all political persuasions; and I think you can see serious flaws in the mentality without being opposed to capitalism itself. Wanting shorter hours and higher pay is pretty uncontroversial, after all.

I could go on with this complaining, but I’d better stop. Really, the book is a worthy read. Certainly it will be hard for me to forget Tokumitsu’s insights. And even if the style isn’t terribly accessible, the book compensates by being short. So stop doing what you love, and read this book.

[Monique · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book the day it came out, about five seconds after reading an excerpt on Jacobin Mag. It's a relatively short book, but enjoyable and relevant. As a PhD candidate who, until quite recently, wanted to try the academic job market, I became increasingly disillusioned with the abysmal working conditions and exhortations from professors that it didn't matter what we were paid, because we "do what we love." This book poses the important question, who benefits from this hope labor, and how can we change the culture to provide less work and more leisure for all?

[محمد یوسفی‌شیرازی · Rating 2 out of 5]

نویسنده‌ی این کتاب در مسیری خلاف جهتِ غالب گام نهاده و کوشیده است با حرف‌های خوش‌رنگ‌ولعابی که روان‌شناسان انگیزشی و دارودسته‌ی خوش‌خیالانِ بعضاً فریب‌کار درباره‌ی زندگی و آینده و کسب‌وکار می‌زنند، با قاطعیت مخالفت کند. جان کلام او این است که برخلاف آنچه از سرمایه‌دارانی مانند استیو جابز و بیل گیتس گفته‌اند، شمار بسیار زیادی از انسان‌ها در دنیای سرمایه‌دارانه‌ی امروز به‌هیچ‌وجه نمی‌توانند در پی خواسته‌های اصیل خود بروند و کاری را بکنند که به‌راستی دوست می‌دارند و در آن راه توفیق یابند. درواقع، بخش بزرگی از انسان‌ها در زندگی مدرن، به‌معنی واقعی کلمه استثمار می‌شوند و مجالی برای بروز خلاقیت‌ها و استعدادهایشان و نیز پیگیری علاقه‌هایشان پیدا نمی‌کنند. درنتیجه، با نوعی دل‌زدگی و فرسودگی همه‌گیر روبه‌روییم که آدمی را از اصل و هدف زندگی سخت دور می‌کند. نویسنده چاره‌ی این وضع را برانداختن نظم موجود و درپیش‌گرفتن راهی نو می‌داند؛ راهی که در آن انصاف و عدالتی در کار باشد و مجالی برای انسان‌بودن باقی بماند.

کتاب از حشو و زوائد خالی نیست و مکررگویی‌ها در جاهایی مخاطب را خسته می‌کند. ترجمه‌ی فارسی آن نیز چندان خوب و هموار صورت نگرفته است. به‌علاوه، در چندین جا خطاهای ریز و درشتِ املایی و ویرایشی و نگارشی، چشم را می‌آزارد.

[Tirdad · Rating 4 out of 5]

این کتاب شاید حرف دل آن افرادی را بزند که هرچند معیارها و اولویت‌های مختلفی درزندگی‌شان دارند، اما در یک چیز مشترک‌اند: شغل نزدشان چیزی فراتر از منبع کسب درآمد و اجباری برای گذران زندگی نیست. ازخودبیگانگی‌ای که بسیاری از انسان‌ها در رابطه با شغلشان تجربه می‌کنند، اتفاق جدیدی در تاریخ بشریت نیست. با این حال دوران کنونی از حیث میزان شیوع و عادی‌سازی این بیماری بی‌نظیر است. حاکمیت مکانیزم بازار در تمامی ابعاد زندگی انسان به فاجعه‌ای ختم شده که از خودبیگانگی شغلی و تالی‌های فاسدش تنها یکی از مصیب‌های آن به شمار می‌رود.
سخن تنها برسر میزان دست‌مزد و ساعات کاری نیست، به نظرم مسئله «زندگی» را باید در کلیتِ آن حل کرد. رسیدن به زندگی‌ قرین سعادت‌ در گرو بازتعریف رابطهٔ بین شغل و زندگی است. این نگاه در بخش جمع‌بندی کتاب که به نظرم بسیار درخشان است به چشم می‌خورد. در کل کتاب آگاهی‌بخشی است. خصوصاً اگر درگیر مسئله از خودبیگانگی شغلی استید، شاید کمک کند تا کمتر احساس تنهایی کنید.

[KamRun]

مقاله ای درباره کتاب در سایت ترجمان خوندم و بخاطر هم‌نظری با نویسنده، مشتاق شدم کتاب رو کامل بخونم، ولی هنوز نتونستم نسخه الکترونیکش رو پیدا کنم

لینک مقاله: استثمار به شیوه استیو جابز

[Neil R. Coulter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has the same tone and some of the same information as The Adjunct Underclass, by Herb Childress, which I also enjoyed a lot. In fact, I first heard about Do What You Love in a TEDx Talk by Karen Kelsky of The Professor Is In. Do What You Love is a quick, engaging read that makes excellent points about the major problems in our society’s current concept of “work,” explored through unpacking happy-happy catchphrases such as the title of the book. Miya Tokumitsu demonstrates that the idea that we should “follow our bliss” and do the work we’re most passionate about is only another way of widening the gap between the wealthy who can afford to take those chances, and the underclass who are allowed to intern, adjunct, or temp near those people who are making a living doing what they love, but who will never be able to achieve that status.

Each chapter explores a specific topic. Chapter one looks at the issue of “visibility,” explaining that “do what you love” is tied to the public visibility that certain prestige occupations bring—but it pushes the unseen, unpleasant jobs further into invisibility. And when “do what you love” means that what you do must be visible and must be within a narrow range of job titles, then what you give in exchange for doing what you love is any sense of personal life, true freedom, the pleasures of life outside of work.

Chapter two considers the increasing loss of autonomy that we accept in the name of following our bliss. Our society has told us that we need more and more managers and administrators, to the point that many people are doing only “make-work”—office jobs that really don’t accomplish anything except perpetuating more meetings and more meaningless office jobs. The result is that most workers are surveilled more than ever before, even outside of work hours, and so again, the result is loss of true freedom and joy in life, simply because of the system we’ve been conditioned to accept.

In chapter three, Tokumitsu explains tiered work systems, where jobs that used to be professional have been more and more de-skilled, and underneath those jobs are layers of adjunct, intern, and temp jobs that do the same work but for less security and compensation. What keeps that system going is hope—the idea that if I just work hard enough, and stay positive and happy (“I love my data-entry temp job in the basement!”), then surely eventually someone will hire me to be full-time in a job that I feel truly passionate about. It won’t ever happen, of course, and yet there’s nothing anyone can really do to resist when all doors remain closed.

Chapter four demythologizes the idea that really passionate workers are so in love with their jobs that they can work 100+ hour work weeks and forego sleep and recreation. Why do we idealize this? And how many people can really live this way? Tokumitsu also presents evidence from studies showing that overwork actually hinders productivity and health generally.

These arguments were not new to me—I am in higher ed, after all, so I spend a lot of time thinking about the ridiculousness of the labor system that I’m sort of part of—so what I was most curious about was the solutions Tokumitsu would provide in the conclusion. Predictably, there’s not much hope. All we can do is somehow try to make our voices heard and not stand for the system as it exists now. Easy to say, but how does that actually work in real life? I have no idea how to change the system we’re stuck with for now, though I agree that it needs to change radically. I guess part of the solution is for more and more people to read this book and others like it, so that we start seeing the world and its possibilities in a similar way. So I recommend that you check out Do What You Love, share it with others, and start talking about solutions. Perhaps with enough people thinking in the same direction, we will start to see positive changes.

[Peter Geyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across the title of this book whilst reading an online article; curiously enough, the person referring to it doesn't seem to have read it, or at least understood its contents.

I couldn't resist buying it, partly because Marsha Sinetar's Do What What You Love And The Money Will Follow had come out around the time I had begun working as a human resources consultant. My work experience prior to that, including relevant studies, went back a further 20 years or more, and had given me quite a different perspective of what work was, and what people thought about it: doing the job without being "passionate" is one way of describing it.

I ended up testing out Sinetar's dubious proposition as an independent consultant and found that, with very few exceptions, people were doing what they loved, but not accumulating funds because of that.

This is one of the threads of Miya Tokumitsu's slim and very readable book. She writes about the lack of employment, even for college (university) educated people, the casualisation of academia, the exploitation of young people in the insidious (to me) practice of internship, the people who have to work several jobs but still can't make ends meet, the people who work long hours (proudly so in the case of some organisational icons) notwithstanding decades-long data that says that doing so isn't exactly a smart thing to do, for employer or employee.

There's also the growing surveillance of workers at any level, linked in with the-long discredited but still popular presumption that hours worked is a reliable guide to productivity. Some time is spent on the surveillance of and assessment of teachers, a process that hasn't anything to do with learning unless you think it's simply a factory operation and everything is inputs-outputs.

Obviously (to me and to this author, anyway) working long hours means you're paid much less than you think, not much more than someone handing out coffees at a Starbucks. Anybody I worked with in organisations could have told you that, of course. One thing peripherally dealt with here is the fear of having your services terminated because you're not doing the long hours, or you're on holidays, or ill. Interestingly enough, there's a suggestion that all these long hours or processes don't have an aim of being efficient, if you're looking at people's needs, such as dealing with banks, telcos, or government instrumentalities.

One might think here of Edward Bernays, the founder of public relations, recently profiled in the English magazine History Today. For Bernays, selling the idea or the product was the aim and words and events were accordingly set up to encourage that, whatever the truth, or even dangerousness of the product. The language of spokespeople for any kind of organisation essentially follows this trend, even if only to obfuscate.

Tokumitsu's references are excellent, from the popular field of TV programs like The Good Wife (which I haven't seen) to Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and The Rise of Capitalism, Keynes, Marx, The New Deal, the unduly influential Benjamin Franklin, continental thinkers like Guattari and Deleuze (who actually make some sense here) and several other astute references and critiques of growth-oriented capitalism, consumerism (this being the only area where there may be actual freedom – of choosing whatever product there is for you to select).

I began this book waiting in a lecture theatre for a talk by David Stuckler from Oxford University, the title of which was The Body Economic; Why Austerity Kills, also the title of a co-authored book. He provided evidence on what seemed intuitively obvious (to me) – that cuts to health and education funding are counterproductive in many ways (these two areas have a return on investment of 1.7, so therefore a multiplier, whereas the usual practices don't even get close to parity). Stuckler also pointed out that austerity measures leas to a rise in suicides and other social problems, which makes you wonder why people inflict these things on the citizenry. Perhaps the social contract is broken, who knows?

Anyway, this is a very worthwhile book, one of several around at the moment, it seems that point out how the economic, political and social emperor has no clothes, apart from places like Finland, and other European countries. It focuses on the US because that's the way of the world in publishing, it seems, but the astute citizen can easily relate what's being said to their country and others; certainly that was what I was able to do.

[Kaia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tokumitsu argues that the "Do What You Love" approach to work is actually pretty harmful (think about different motivational slogans--"do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life!"). First, it is only generally applied to privileged groups of people and values white collar/creative work above all others. Second, it can actually be used to undermine workers. Your job isn't just a way to provide for yourself and your family, but needs to connect to a higher purpose. It can be used to underpay and undervalue employees and demand more work out of them (if you truly love it, you'll accept this pay/check your email at home/work 65 hours this week/freelance...and you'll be thankful for it). It can also lead to dissatisfaction--don't love your job or can't figure out what you're passionate about? Now it feels like some sort of failing, if you work identity isn't tied up in some grander sense of self.

One of the most interesting concepts was that of "hope labor." In a profession, there may be a small number of well-paid, stable, interesting jobs, and then a large pool of people doing very similar work in less stable and lower paying conditions, with the hope that if they put in their time, they'll make it into one of those golden positions. Think about tenured professors versus adjuncts or unpaid interns, willing to do the work and asked to act happy and grateful about it because they have hope that one day they'll move ahead.

For what it's worth, Librarianship is definitely a "Do What You Love" profession. I'd love to have more conversations about what this means for the profession and how we talk about our work.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

overall i really liked this- it’s getting me to think of lots of new things inc what a “post work society” could look like, both for myself and in general. especially interesting as someone who does get to “do what i love” as a dancer, even while working 4 jobs (not exaggerating).

i think on first thought, it makes me just want to not work and be lazy or do a shitty job of working, but that’s not really what i want, so how do these concepts come into play in my personal life then? still thinking, and i guess that (personal avoidance of working) isn’t even the point of the book, but if the biggest hurdle to a post work society is culture, how can i begin to change this culture in my own life and surroundings?

main critique is i wish it had more stats, less anecdotes. kinda useless to pull out anecdotes when describing the arguments of this book to another person. that said, would love to talk ab these concepts more w friends.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 day workweek let’s get it

I feel lucky that my first job out of college doesn’t have a culture of work becoming my identity. I can sign off at 5 without being seen as lazy. This book pairs well with the book I just read “Seek Boundaries, Find Peace,” which has a whole section about boundaries in the workplace. Tokumitsu’s message, that overwork/undersleep and corporate pressure to be passionate about your job all the time are both forms of social control, is very timely.


But something I do see at work is how more extroverted, bubbly people get promoted way more than introverts. This ties into the concept of “monetizing your identity” at work that Tokumitsu mentions. I want to be careful about taking advantage of how bubbly I am, and also about lifting up introverted people without forcing them to become someone who they are not.

[Jacqueline · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was thought-provoking, but the Jacobin essay would have sufficed.

[Sarah left GR]

Interview with the author:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/a...

[Max Darling · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was deceived by the title, which feels very self-helpy, but this turns out to be a serious essay on the perniciousness of the firmly ingrained "do what you love" mantra in US work culture today.

Made me think a lot. I realized how ignorant I am still of the reality of working class life in America. The picture painted by Tokumitsu is damn dismal. I'm more convinced than ever before of the centrality of class struggle in...the entirety of human civilization?! Politicians pandering about identity politics or making petty accusations of their opponents? Fuck that noise. Let us voters in 2024 refuse the cheap ideological validation our respective bipartisan candidates have been serving up and instead demand something actually of substance: more jobs, fair wages, reasonable work hours, healthcare, education, etc. (The prospect seems daunting - all the more reason to study the labor unions of last century and before. Damn, they must've been pretty badass.)

As a last note: despite my very limited knowledge, I've always characterized capitalism as "pragmatic" and "efficient" compared to loftier, more abstract, often romanticized alternatives. But I was shocked (yes, I'm naive, I'm working on it) by Tokumitsu's brief mentions of waste created under capitalism: phones carefully designed to be replaced every 5 years, dumpsters behind retail stores full of never-opened sundries like shampoo and Christmas lights, rich municipalities paying to transport food waste to landfills, etc. According to Tokumitsu, "The resources exist to provide most of humanity with humane living conditions". This is vague enough to be inarguable. But I wonder how much of humanity we could really furnish. 80%? 90%? More? It's probably the engineer in me, but hearing about dumpsters full of unused products and phones designed to fail sooner than they otherwise would while 9.2% of the population lives on less than $1.90 a day as of 2019 feels unconscionably wasteful. Evil, basically. Why aren't companies working with charities to ship off their excess stock to those in poverty? If it costs $5 to ship a box of shampoo to Africa, perhaps it's better to buy a malaria net for the same price instead. I could see that, I guess. But I suspect in some cases the truth is more perverse: the material conditions of millions of people on the other side of the world could be improved for little cost, but these efforts are foregone for risk of dampening consumer activity and negatively affecting the bottom line. Really curious about this last point, even specifics about the cost of allocating goods. Tons more to learn, excited!

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Graeber's Bullshit Jobs, I found this to be a cathartic read. Post-work theory is where I'm at.

As the title implies Tokumitsu strongly critiques the "do what you love" ethos. Whereas the original protestant work ethic understood work to be hard and unpleasant but ultimately rewarded in the afterlife, the neoliberal DWYL discourse has rebranded work as something that we are supposed to love. Tokumitsu charts the rise of this discourse and the harms that it does, both to middle-class workers who spend tens of thousands on their educations only to work in unpaid internships, temp jobs, adjunctships, freelance/gig economy, or positions for which they are overqualified, sometimes indefinitely, and to working-class workers who toil in sleep deprived obscurity without even meeting their basic needs, not receiving the recognition that middle-class workers do for their "work ethic" and job title.

I agree with Tokumitsu wholeheartedly in challenging the ideas that our lives, identities, and system of social recognition should be structured around work, and that work we are "passionate" about is a reward in and of itself. Work should serve life, and not the reverse. Her analysis of the ways contemporary structures of work are not serving us had me underlining furiously and appreciatively.

I don't agree with her on a number of other things, however.

Although I agree that social media, for some of us, is commodifying our free time, acting as a space where we must produce an image of ourselves as a professional for 24/7 consumption, that isn't the only thing it's doing. Yes, the market increasingly demands this self-branding, and we increasingly comply or even volunteer to do it above and beyond the market demand. But social media is also a space where people document their day to day joys and struggles, cultivate relationships with family and friends, speak truth to power and organize politically, and engage in enjoyable time theft - a type of resistance to our cultures of work.

Tokumitsu sees this self-branding and the DWYL ethos emerging out of the "me movements" of the 70s - self-help, psychoalysis, Eastern religions, psychedelic experiences of self-discovery - where the new spiritual side of the work ethic is self-actualization rather than the Protestant reward-in-afterlife. Sure, these movements led to some navel gazing, but also to questioning and protesting the status quo, 'dropping out' of cultures of work, a whole movement of western Buddhism, establishing communes etc., so they're also more complex and less individualistic than she explores.

Graeber's book fills in a piece that I think Tokumitsu's misses. Tokumitsu's solution to the problem of work is primarily ameliorating working conditions, which unsurprisingly given she is a Marxist, she sees happening though union organizing. But working conditions can be good - middle class salary, benefits, flexible schedule, paid vacation, extended health benefits, etc. - and still lack meaning and purpose. Although I agree we don't need to love work, doing meaningless work is its own kind of misery. Tokumitsu does acknowledge this, especially in her discussion of management positions in Chapter 2 - "The Labour of Managing" but she doesn't loop back around to what unionizing for better working conditions would mean for those types of positions where working conditions are "good" but the work is bad. While I am wholeheartedly in favour of shorter work days/weeks - doing something mind-numbingly meaningless for 6 hours a day instead of 8 is still doing the mind-numbing thing. (Getting to leave work when you're done the work to be done for the day would be the best option she mentions, IMO.) There are some jobs that are boring to most of us but someone has to do--things like cleaning--which would be considerably improved by shorter hours and being well-compensated, but other jobs could probably just be eliminated, as Graeber points out. I don't know that Tokumitsu would necessarily disagree with this, but her focus in her concluding chapters is more on what people with poor working conditions could do (unionize), and how we could work less rather than eliminate work as a necessity.

I found the conclusion of the book a disappointing, insufferable anti-consumerist screed. It seemed a bit at odds with the rest of the book. Tokumitsu seems to be arguing if we just wanted fewer bobbles, we wouldn't need to work so much. We could redistribute work - all work less, make less money, buy fewer things. But couldn't we work less *and* have nice things? How much is "enough" is so subjective. I'm not saying I need a diamond-encrusted yacht here, but the anti-stuff/degrowthist thing on the left kills me. Let me have my frivolities in peace.

[Siel Ju · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Maybe anyone can do what he or she loves, but only the wealthy can avoid going into debt to pay for it,” she quips in this incisive book-length diatribe against DWYL.

Miya charts the rise of intern, temp, and adjunct work — which has millions laboring for free or poverty wages in the hopes that one day they’ll be rewarded with a decent job. She points out that for some to do what they love, many others have to take on supporting jobs they don’t love — e.g. cleaning other people’s toilets. And she repudiates the DWYL ethic that discourages workers — especially women and people of color — from pushing for better pay or benefits. After all, don’t you love your work — so much so that you’re willing to do it for free? This quick read is an eye-opening counternarrative against the capitalism-is-awesome-for-all type messages we’re inundated with day in and day out. Read it if you like getting angry — in a fired up to bring about change kind of way.

[Vivian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book explores the concept of Do What You Love, which sadly can only be lived by people of better economic statuses. For the majority of the people, they would be constantly trapped in the rat race of working endlessly in the illusion of attaining a better life. At the end of the day, no one really wins.

[David Rankin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Get it for Christmas for all the twenty-somethings in your life.

[Romany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eminently readable critical text. Work is a scam.

[Allys Dierker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decades ago, a friend was struggling in a problematic situation and was offered an entry-level office job with great benefits by a friend who wanted to help her escape the situation. She declined to even investigate the job, averring, "I couldn't work in an office job. That would just crush my soul."

It made me uncomfortable. Mostly because I was working (and continued to work) office jobs that didn't exactly set my soul singing. And because the "problematic situation" seemed more of a soul-crushing experience than the relative liberation a job with salary and benefits could provide. And because the problematic situation provided certain physical--though distinctly not psychic--comforts that not everyone has access to. Every once in a while, I chew over that formula: that pursuing an existence in which you provide for yourself should somehow not carry with it "soul-crushing" elements.

And another friend loved animals, and managed to land a high-level job directing an animal welfare organization. "What are you passionate about?" she asked me (again--decades ago), when I was worrying about direction and income and career. She was passionate about animals. I felt inferior, because I couldn't (A) call to mind something without which I would wither away and (B) figure out how to turn into a career that ineffable thing that surely I had inside me but just couldn't call to mind in answer to the question, "What are you passionate about?".

I had another person tell me, while I was knee-deep in two intolerable jobs, "I don't know what to tell you: no job is perfect. Just quit." Which was so much simpler to say than it was for me to do: so deeply ingrained is my belief that one pays one's own way in life and is financially responsible to family and builds a retirement account and a rainy-day fund and saves for retirement and saves for a house. That's what an adult does before taking vacations, building wardrobes, paying for spa treatments, and spending on the indulgence du jour.

After all, we get paid to do work because it's, you know, WORK. If it were fun, they'd charge us and call it vacation.

But as a ruminator, I find it all too easy to look within for the inherent flaw in me that sees work as work, that causes me to roll my eyes when people prattle on about how "passionate" they are about their jobs, when people quit stable jobs to chase a dream all the while opining about how they just want to "live their passions."

And then along comes Tokumitsu. Hers is not a paradigm-shifting book. I'm not going to start a worldwide anti-DWYL [Do What You Love] movement. But it is food for thought:

Work, argues Tokumitsu, as morality is inherently American (think Benjamin Franklin) and earnings reflect the character of an individual. This ingrained ethic has been used effectively and powerfully to work for the benefit of corporations, but maybe to the disadvantage of individuals. [I freely admit that I'm neurotic about money--not to keep up with the Joneses, but because I don't want to eat cat food when I'm 85. And the way you get money is to work. And work. And work. It's taken me a long time to realize that this is not the only guiding principle, and that this principle of mine is driven by fear. But now at least I know where I get it.]

The late '70s saw a shift in a search for an "authentic" self, which focuses responsibility on the individual and individual choices. Invective, then, is easily directed at a single person for being poor, rather than the conditions that lead to the chronic poor. As strongly as I feel that people should be held responsible for their choices, I'm increasingly seeing the gray area that limits what choices some people can make, what resources they have access to. It's a pernicious argument that everyone has equal access to opportunity.

Middle-class credentials require debt, which becomes a form of social control according to Tokumitsu. For example, to climb into or remain in the "middle class," one generally needs an undergraduate degree, which means ever increasing amounts of student-loan debt. While an undergraduate degree does pay off in higher lifetime earnings, it becomes a debt which requires ongoing participation in the 'rat race' to pay off (and moreso with laws that prevent student loan debt from being discharged with bankruptcy). College and advanced degrees aren't the only way to build a secure future--everyone has the anecdote about Person X who built his company out of nothing and now hangs with fitness models in the Seychelles--but chances are better with than without.

Class becomes the unspoken politics underlying the notion of "finding what you're passionate about": class boundaries mostly define who can have what kind of job (and even, realistically, who has access to what kind of training as an entry-point to a career), and the imperative to do what you love serves as a "rhetorical sleight of hand achieved by conceits of work-for-love [which] is the elision of wages--and, hence, class--from discourses of labor" (63).

Tokumitsu also raises some interesting notions about tiered systems of labor (adjuncts, temporary workers, interns) as being powered by "hope labor," that dangle an often unfulfilled promise. Adjuncts, interns, and temp works all work in proximity to their "dream" of full-time employment theoretically doing something they love. However, those gigs rarely turn into permanent employment. While I was pursuing a PhD in English in the '90s, academia was undergoing a sea change, shifting from full-time, full professor positions toward adjunct staffing, especially for the service courses (freshman comp, lab sciences, intro courses)--I watched smart, hard working, fellow classmates chase after just a few available tenure-track positions each year at MLA. I still hear of colleagues some 20 or 30 years later trying to make a life off of contract work. And I remember the rhetoric of the full professors who were supposed to be our mentors, chiding us for being concerned about our working conditions, pay, and future prospects.

Anecdotally, at least, I've watched academia do this to itself, through a combination of greed, and laziness, and lack of concern for those who are supposed to be entering the field: as long as you've got your tenure-track position, why look too closely at what the junior members of your field are concerned about? Until, of course, you yourself want to move to another university or negotiate for more money or resist unfavorable conditions (surveillance, increased class load, unfavorable evaluation criteria), or (as happened locally) when "financial exigencies" render the concept of tenure meaningless--only then does it become clear how disempowered even those in that "first tier" might actually be. Because they're not actually a "first tier." They're somewhere above "second tier" adjuncts, but also somewhere below the actual first tier of multiplying levels of administration that hold the purse strings. Which is an undercurrent of Do What You Love....: focus on the individual, and individual competition, and getting what's yours, decreases solidarity and collectivism that may serve the needs of the masses better than a top-down agenda of constant production and consumption.

Tokumitsu hits a nerve in her "No Rest" section, about a culture of overwork: spending long hours on work or in the office becomes a bragging point, even though those long hours lead to unproductive and sometimes dangerous conditions. But you don't need to look too far to see examples of her claim that overwork is based on insecurities that are embedded in the notion of individual competition, an anxiety that works well as a form of social control, wielded subtly by a system that benefits from having more workers stick around longer, even when those hours aren't reflected in salaries.

Many of Tokumitsu's sources are fellow Jacobin contributors--I might have liked a broader array of sources. And her conclusion falls flat: she relies on some literary notions, a la Woolf and Whitman, that seem to be not terribly directive or helpful. But maybe because there's not a terribly easy way out of a culture that finds fault with the individual if the individual simply wants a job that pays a living wage and benefits, that offers a weekend, and that doesn't demand rhetoric of "passion."

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Why is work, income aside, more worthy of a person's limited time on Earth than other pursuits?"

I’m taking a class this semester that basically this book summarizes. It was a quick read on how harmful the “do what you love” attitude has been in creating a workforce that exploits and overworks people. As someone who struggles with not feeling passionate enough about any one career I think this book clears the fog around that, outing this as an ideology created by our capitalist society. I do wish the suggestions were a bit more concrete for what the individual can do about this, other than basically demand change. But if that sounds like an interest topic to you I would definitely recommend this book!

[E. Rickert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hate when depressing, conspiratorial thoughts are proven accurate. Is that all there is?

[John G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A profoundly important and the rarest of all books to find, an academic who can write clearly, emotionally and uses their keen powers of observation not in service to their masters, but for the common good. This book validated many of the experiences I’ve encountered working and helped illuminate the hidden reasons for their real purposes and functions. Others have commented on the academic writing style, but I didn’t encounter any of the impenetrable exoteric gibberish of most academics here at all. This book was a real eye opener for me. Hard to find people willing to speak the truth about our economic enslavement and the base character and sinister motives of the captains of industry.

[Bruno Brissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and very depressing 👍 kinda hoped for a proposition on how to view work/jobs more healthily to make them potentially less destructive, anyways, thank god I‘m unemployed

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is short, which is both a major problem and a strength. The organization of the book is noticeably weak. Tokumitsu presents many examples of how much damage the ideal of "do what you love" (DWYL) is doing, and it's not always clear how her various points relate to each other. (Chapter Two, "The Mirage of Autonomy," is interesting, but feels particularly scattered.) The author covers a lot of territory in less than 300 pages: the pressure to continually craft a public identity through a job that you are constantly passionate about, the increased "de-skilling" of professional positions, the growth of a two-tiered labor system in which the bottom tier (unpaid interns, adjunct professors, temp workers, etc.) is distracted by hope of promotion to the top tier from advocating for themselves, and more. Although she includes plenty of notes and references for readers who want to pursue this further, I wished she'd taken the time to go into some of her arguments more deeply.

Still, brevity works for this book. With so many points to make in comparatively little space, Tokumitsu rarely lets her writing bog down. Because it's so short and the arguments are so concise, it's a quick read and a good starting challenge to the near-unquestioned acceptance of the DWYL mantra. I won't try to summarize Tokumitsu's points any more than I already have—the book description does a decent job of that. But despite its flaws, I want to run around telling most of my friends to at least start reading this—even if you don't agree with Tokumitsu, she's made many points worth considering.

[Kareem Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I once flew from Los Angeles to Singapore to give a speech. While there, I was having horrible jet lag, and had a hard time getting up to speed. This led to me staying in my hotel room until 2pm, and then heading up to the conference center in time for me to speak. While speaking with a colleague, I was complaining about my lack of sleep, the number of flights I'd taken in the last week, and the amount of time it took me to prepare for my speech. In their response they said "Oh, look, I get to travel all over the world and give speeches, my life is so hard." This is where 'Do What You Love and Other Lies about Success and Happiness' touched my soul. It argued this idea that if you don't work in a factory, get your hands dirty, that you are not a worker. That you should be grateful for your position. That you deserve lower wages or paltry rewards because you're privileged.

I've come away from this book believing that work is work, regardless of how we look at it. Whether you're "lucky" to be sitting at a computer struggling to write your book, or you're "doomed" to life as a tire-stacker in a factory. Work is work, and you're neither lucky nor doomed in either experience — everyone can and should make money doing something they're good at, especially when they're providing a solution to a problem that needs to be solved.

Work is work.

[Carolyn Kost · Rating 3 out of 5]

Miya Tokumitsu attempts to dissect the cultural mantra of "Follow Your Bliss" and exposes the dangers and contradictions inherent in the modern rhetoric surrounding work and passion. However, despite the author's insightful analysis and well-articulated arguments, the book falls short of delivering a compelling and cohesive narrative.

Tokumitsu's strength lies in long-form journalism for mass media, and this book originated from an essay for Slate. Surprisingly, the Slate article is more comprehensive on the issue than the book itself, which meanders and gets sidetracked.

The "Do What You Love" (DWYL) trope exposes workers to exploitation by justifying unpaid or underpaid work under the guise of passion. The romanticization of work as a source of love and bliss obscures the grim reality of stagnant incomes, eroding benefits, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a privileged few.

There is a striking contradiction between historical perceptions of work as virtuous, especially if not enjoyable, and the contemporary emphasis on finding love and passion in one's profession, which simultaneously emphasizes self-gratification and narcissism, rather than contributing to the common good. Tokumitsu contends that expecting workers to prioritize passion over practical considerations is disingenuous and exploitative, advocating instead for sustainable wages, safe conditions, and humane schedules.

The book is divided into chapters such as "Visible Work and the Public Profile," "The Mirage of Autonomy," and "Tiered Work Systems and the Labor of Hope," and "No Rest," each exploring different facets of the DWYL ideology. The second chapter, "The Mirage of Autonomy," excessive focuses on workplace surveillance without sufficient evidence, particularly after the revolution in work from home resulting from COVID-19.

In "Visible Work and the Public Profile," Tokumitsu delves into the societal implications of defining identity through job titles and the consequences for women in particular and society in general of prioritizing professional achievements and visibilityover other aspects of life, such as childbearing or the domestic sphere, which removes one from public view. It reminds me of a quote from G.K. Chesterton, “Feminism is a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands." While the book aims to dismantle the illusions of autonomy and passion in the contemporary workplace, it becomes mired in too many inconsequential factors and popular culture references.

I'm a college counselor for high school students. Many of my students dream of being influencers and having their own businesses to have free time, complete control over their time, and so that, as they say, "never have to do anything I don't want to." The reality is that, "...for most, the reality of self-employment, entrepreneurship, and freelance work exacts a high cost. Most obviously, without a large, continuous contract, the income is anything but steady, making any kind of long-term planning (home buying, retirement planning) nearly impossible. Furthermore in the United States, flying solo means forgoing premium employee-sponsored health insurance, employee-matching retirement savings accounts, and paid sick leave or vacation time" (81). They don't understand that they forego "regular schedules, long-term employment, and offices." Moreover, for temp workers (over 3M in 2022) and interns, "Tantalizing closeness is the hallmark of second-class labor: it affords workers a clear view of what could be, yet they remain relegated to the frustration zone of so-close-yet-so-far" (103). Labor economist Gerald Friedman found that "'the gig economy is associated with low wages, repression, insecurity, and chronic stress and anxiety'"(82).

Students are urged to seek internships. Chapter 3 explores tiered work systems and the labor of hope. Kathleen Kuehn describes hope as a powerful force driving cheap labor, often unpaid or under-compensated, fueled by the internalized belief that future opportunities will follow makes it particularly compelling for workers who anticipate a better future just around the corner. Faith Guvenen's research and Akane Otane's insights further highlight the significance of early career choices in shaping lifetime earnings. Intern Nation exposes the exploitation of interns, adjuncts, and temps, emphasizing their little value and the exploitation of such roles to benefit employers at the expense of workers.

"The paradox of DWYL is that, while exhorting people to perform work that they love, it denies that this work is work at all. Persuading professional workers not to think of themselves as workers is one of the profoundest achievements of established class rhetoric. When people speak of the working class as constituency to which they do not belong embedded in their speech is a disavowal of their own status as workers specifically as workers toiling for an employer or entity other than themselves. The social desire not to fall into this class is so powerful that as we've seen people will assume massive amounts of debt submit to intrusive surveillance and managerial control and work for hope instead of wages. This too is a disavowal of their own work. hope remains a major force is keeping the swelling reserve army of credentialed would-be professionals toiling for paltry wages or no wages at all" (113).

At its core, "DWYL distracts workers with visions of nonexistent autonomy and vague self-fulfillment while persuading them to assume capital's interests as their own. That it shares an orbit with professionalization, management, and class anxiety is not coincidental. Just like each of these, DWYL is, fundamentally, a form of social control" (83).

Read the original Slate article for a more comprehensive, yet succinct understanding of the issue. Despite its critical analysis and valid points, Do What You Love seems to struggle with maintaining focus and coherence, leaving readers longing for a more concise exploration of the pitfalls of the DWYL ideology.

[Sean Goh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was brought to my attention through this article.
Probably will make you a cynic about most work within the first 30 pages. Still completely worth the read.
You have been warned.
___
Franklin's virtues of honesty, punctuality, industry, frugality etc. are virtues because they are coloured with utilitarianism. These virtues shape and are shaped by capitalist enterprise. The capitalist spirit puts man in service of his work, whereas previously this relationship was the reverse.
Weber: A state of mind as that expressed by Franklin, and which called forth the applause of a whole people, would both in ancient times and the Middle Ages have been proscribed as the lowest sort of avarice and as an attitude entirely lacking in self-respect.

Many of the 'Me' movements of the 1970s focused practitioners on locating some kind of real, authentic me and hence took on a spiritual, righteous dimension. Which is precisely where they join up with teh Protestant spirit of capitalism. If work and the pursuit of captal are righteous, and unceasing self-discovery is righteous, then surely it is ideal to pursue capital while attending to oneself. DWYL thus became not a luxury or a privilege, but a duty and an expectation. It became good.

As long as our well-being depends on income, and income, for most, depends on work, love will always be secondary as a motivation for doing it. Encouraging workers to pretend otherwise is disingenuous and exploitative.

Invisible workers tend to fall into one of two often-overlapping categories: workers whose labour either operates outside the work ethic or embodies the work ethic's broken promises. For instance, a significant amount of work in the service industry is self-evidently not performed "for its own sake". It's the work we pay people to do so we don't have to do it ourselves, like washing cars or stocking shelves. The other large category of invisible work is work that, no matter how well or earnestly performed, fails to support a financially secure existence.

The importance of public presence to our own self-conception becomes especially clear in our reactions to those who are entirely uninterested in establishing public profiles. To actively reject a public presence defined by self-commodification is utterly confounding.

No one likes being surveilled. Even workers in the National Security surveillance business resist managerial surveillance of their own work, even when it would materially improve the quality of their work.

Whenever institutions are subjected to superficial accountability measures (e.g. standardised testing) without being given actual resources to address deep-seated problems, fraud nearly always follows suit.

Jenny Diski observes that the white-collar office has always been a space defined by what doesn't happen there. People work in offices, but there's no real clue as to what they do, unlike people who work in other places, who make things in a factory, mine things in a mine, teach in school, sell things in a shop. Rather, the office is a containment space for all kinds of fetish-worthy objects.

DWYL distracts workers with visions of nonexistent autonomy and vague self-fulfillment while persuading them to assume capital's interests as their own. That it shares an orbit with professionalisation, management, and class anxiety is not coincidental. Just like each of these, DWYL is, fundamentally, a form of social control.

The salary drawn during a worker's first job upon entering the workforce can affect subsequent earnings throughout their life. Those who earn more at the outset are able to cite their present salary in future wage negotiations, be they for raises or starting salaries in new jobs. In this way, workers build upon their employers' demonstrated testimony of their work's worth.
Interns working for low pay or for free relinquishing this particular bargaining chip.

Tantalising closeness is the hallmark of second-class labour: it affords workers a clear view of what could be, yet they remain relegated to the frustration zone of so-close-yet-so-far.

"The overtime exception": it is possible to boost worker productivity by pushing workers to sixty and seventy-hour workweeks for short periods. However, today, the critical 'for-short-periods' qualifier is largely forgotten. It's been long known that at these hours, productivity starts falling off after a couple of weeks. These schedules can even produce negative value, as seen when exhausted software teams lose more ground by making more errors than they can fix in a given time frame.
Not only that, several more weeks are needed for workers to recover to pre-crunch levels.

The rise of atomising logic (each worker in stiff competition with their peers) coincided with the dwindling power of labour unions overall. As institutions of solidarity that work to establish strict temporal and spatial zones of work and nonwork, unions are in every way anathema to the pervasive control logic embodied by the suspicion that we are in eternal competition with everybody else.
Solidarity becomes suspect when each individual views themself as an independent contractor, locked in a zero-sum battle with the rest of society. Every moment not spent working is one someone else is getting ahead. Overwork then, is not a manifestation of passion but of anxiety and alienation.

Though we often praise white-collar superwomen who 'never sleep' and juggle legendary careers with busy families, it's actually people with the least money who get the least amount of sleep.

The word freedom, particularly in the last decade and a half, has become so overused as to be nearly meaningless. Ironically, it presents itself often in the severely limited form of consumerism - the freedom to choose between Apple or Samsung, all for which we must spend time working. But outside of the marketplace, freedom takes on awesome, almost limitless proportions: freedom to daydream, to give love and care to others, to amble through nature and neighbourhoods, to listen and debate.

[Albert]

Important reminder of the toxic ideology we've all internalized. Sickening to see the vapid idolization of entrepreneurs, the tone deaf motivational claptrap, and the ceaseless hum of the production/consumption sirens that call us to the rocks with cloying melodies of meaningless (cancerous) economic growth (sorry for the tired allusion). The book kinda loses steam but it's short and well worth the read.

[Maryam · Rating 3 out of 5]

"کار تبدیل به غایت شکوهمند خود شده است و این مسئله نه تنها منفعتی برای کارگران ندارد، بلکه سبب محدود شدن نگرش‌ها نیز می‌گردد. شعارهایی مانند "کاری را بکن که دوست داری" و "به ندای قلبت گوش کن" پیوسته ایدئولوژی بی‌رحم تولید و مصرف بی‌وقفه را در جامه خوش زرق‌وبرق لذت و خوشبختی می‌پوشانند. با این حال، هر دو این موعظه‌ها، هر قدر هم بی‌خاصیت باشند، می‌توانند تبدیل به حرف‌هایی رهایی‌بخش و حتی انقلابی شوند، و این تنها در صورتی ممکن است که تمرکزشان از کار برداشته شود. در واقع، همچنان‌که احتمالا بسیاری از خوانندگان تاکنون به این نتیجه رسیده‌اند، می‌توان آن‌ها را به سمت به‌پرسش کشیدن ضرورت و مرکزیت کار در زندگی ما سوق داد."

این بخش از قسمت نتیجه‌گیری کتاب تا حدود زیادی دلیل انتخاب عنوان کتاب و خلاصه‌ای از کتاب را توضیح می‌دهد.

برداشت من از کتاب این بود که این شعارهای همه‌گیر، در نظام کار امروزه به عنوان تشویق و کمک کردن افراد برای یافتن کار مورد علاقه‌شان استفاده نمی‌شود، بلکه مدیرعاملان و استخدام‌کنندگان از این شعارها به عنوان ابزاری استفاده می‌کنند که حقوق بگیرانشان را هر چه بیشتر به کار بگیرند و اگر کسی با ساعات زیاد کاری مخالفت کند با علم کردن این شعارها مخالفت او را نشانه‌ای از دوست نداشتن کارش بیان می‌کنند. بنابراین، افراد از لحظه‌ای که برای استخدام مصاحبه می‌دهند، باید خودشان را بسیار علاقه‌مند به کار نشان دهند و در بسیاری از موارد هم استخدام‌کنندگان از این ابراز علاقه‌ها برای ندادن حقوق کافی به آن‌ها استفاده می‌کنند. به این ترتیب چرخه‌ای به وجود می‌آید به نفع کارگزاران و به ضرر کارگران (نویسنده تقریبا هر حقوق‌بگیری را کارگر می‌داند). اما از آن‌جا که این شعارها در جامعه درونی‌سازی شده، حقوق‌بگیران به‌جای صرف وقت برای احقاق حقوقشان به دنبال کار ایده‌آلی هستند که خود را با رضایت کامل در آن غرق کنند؛ حتی اگر این کار ایده‌‌آل حقوق چندانی نداشته باشد طبق توصیه پیامبران خوشبختی و موفقیت مبلغ این شعارها چندان مخالفتی نمی‌کنند. با یک بررسی کلی روی نظام کار امروزه، نویسنده بیان می‌کند که این عقاید به نفع تعداد محدودی از مشاغل رده بالا و در صدر آن‌ها سرمایه‌داران، و به ضرر مشاغل رده‌پایین تمام شده؛ همان‌طور که مثلا باعث بیشتر شدن ساعات کاری و کم و کم‌تر شدن حقوق آن‌ها و تعداد مشاغل استخدامی تمام‌وقت شده است (در ایران هم این روند دیده می‌شود). خود افراد هم که دنبال کار ایده‌آلشان هستند، کار پاره‌وقت را پلی می‌دانند به موفقیتشان و آن را موقتی دانسته و حتی آن را زمینه مناسبی برای رویاپردازی می‌دانند. در عمل اما، کسانی که در رده‌های پایین می‌مانند، باید بیشتر و بیشتر کارهای پاره‌وقت مختلفی را انجام دهند تا یک حقوق مناسب به دست بیاورند، اما جامعه‌ای که "کاری را بکن که دوست داری" در آن درونی شده، خود آن افراد را مقصر می‌داند و متناسب نبودن حقوق و کارشان در سایه این شعارها گم می‌شود هر چند کارشان کار مفیدی در جامعه باشد. وضع کارگران از این هم بدتر می‌شود با اصناف و اتحادیه‌هایی که در این ساختار ضعیف‌تر شده‌اند که زمانی برای ارتقای وضعیت حداقلی کارگران تلاش می‌کردند. نویسنده اعتقاد دارد که کارگران که تقریبا همه‌مان هستیم باید قدرت واقعی خودشان را، که زمانی بسیار موثر هم بوده، بشناسند، زیر بار این استثمار نروند و برای به دست آوردن شرایط حداقلی بهتر و پایدارتری تلاش کنند.

[Binit · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book debunks the popular 'Do What You Love' (DWYL) trope extant in today's work culture. It argues against the idea that one should find work that is meaningful to them at a personal level and after getting such work, they should be devoted to it, willfully blurring the boundaries between the work and personal life. This idea packages job as a central component of one's identity and encourages people to be uncompromisingly passionate about it. In this scheme, work is supposed to be like hobby which you pursue for the love of it and not just to earn money. The book demonstrates how this idea also functions as a cover for exploitation of labour in capitalism.

Exploitation takes place in various ways such as unpaid internships, underpaid temporary jobs and so forth. By promoting the trope of DWYL, the market has been able to win the complicity of job seekers for their own exploitation. This is so because many people have themselves internalized this idea and are therefore willing to endure tough and unfair work conditions with a hope that these are merely temporary discomforts which will eventually make way for desirable jobs and positions. To their dismay, the book argues, the good, secure, high-paying and prestigious jobs are scarce and are also fast disappearing. Whatever that exist are thus increasingly out of their reach in today's tough job market. However, the 'hope labour' doesn't allow people to come to terms with their own precarious situation, which works greatly in favour of the capitalist enterprises.

In a nutshell, the book prompts the readers to see through the popular discourses about work and put their own interests before that of the capital.