Episode #66 Is Your Work Worth It? with Jennifer Tosti-Kharas

This transcript is computer generated and may contain errors and not be an exact representation of the audio

Hayley Quinn  00:04

Hi, this is Welcome to Self ®. And I’m your host, Dr. Hayley de Quinn, fellow human,  AuDHDer, dear business owner, and the Anti-Burnout Business Coach. I’m here for service based business owners and entrepreneurs like you to help you increase your own self care and self compassion. Change the relationship you have with yourself in your business, and help you elevate your business to a new level. So you can live the full and meaningful life you desire. We are all on a continual learning journey. So let’s learn together. Welcome to self is a place where you can come and learn about the practices that will assist you as a business owner, and get tips on how to engage in your business in a way that is sustainable for you. 

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Now let’s get to the episode 

Today, I have a great guest who I’ll be chatting to about work. Is it worth it? Does it have meaning? And what actually makes meaningful work. Jennifer Tosti-Kharas is the co author of, is your work worth it? How to think about meaningful work. Jen is the Camilla Latino Spinelli Endowed Term Chair. It’s a bit of a mouthful, and Professor of Management at Babson College. She teaches, researches and coaches others about what it means to craft a meaningful career and appreciate the risks and rewards of work as a calling. Jennifer lives outside Boston with her husband and two children. It is my pleasure to welcome Jen to the podcast.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  02:38

Thank you, Hayley, it’s so nice to be here. And yes, thank you for saying my full title, mouthful and all. It’s one of these academic trappings that is pretty much meaningless outside of academia. So, and

Hayley Quinn 02:53

you’ve earned it. And I think when we have earned things in life, we want them to be honoured and we want them to be celebrated. So congratulations on that.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  03:03

Thank you.

Hayley Quinn 03:05

So you’ve written the book. You’ve co authored with Christopher Wong Michelson, and first of all, what was it that inspired the book?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  03:13

Yeah, well, so Christopher and I have been co authors for the better part of the decade actually on research on what it means to view work as meaningful. And we came together through a conference, that typical academic conference, of people who study what work means. But the interesting thing about our collaboration is that we represent different disciplines, so different yet related disciplines. So Christopher is a moral philosopher by training. His PhD is in philosophy. He teaches at a business school, as do I, but his specialty is business ethics, and so he came at this question from the angle of what makes a good life. And since we spend, most people spend so much of waking life doing work, how does work contribute to or detract from a life well lived? 

Now I’m the organisational psychologist. So my PhD is in management with a focus on organizational behavior, which is basically Organizational Psychology, but you do it at a business school. And I became involved actually through work with my dissertation chair, who studied the various meetings that work can have we talk about the sort of at length in the book, but through that, I got interested in this question of in particular, when we say work is a calling or deeply meaningful, a source of passion, deep commitment, centrality to life. You know this? These are sort of the people who are. If really feel work is a big part of their life, what does that mean, and what are sort of the perils and pitfalls of that? 

So it was really from academics. We can write and publish and talk to other academics our whole careers long. But Christopher and I really said, we want this is such a question that is relevant to anyone who works, who has ever worked, will ever work? We think about our students, we think about friends, we meet, and we talk about what we do for a living, and they’re so interested in it. And we just thought, how can we disseminate some of the really interesting work that’s being talked about research that’s being talked about at the conferences we attend, and get it out to real people. 

So our dream for this was really that it would just lead people to ask these big questions. Not necessarily provide them with a three step plan to meaningful work, or simple, trite answers. I mean, we don’t believe there are easy answers to this question about what work does or should mean. But actually, and here I’m going to take a nod from Christopher and his philosophy training. It’s about asking the right questions, other than pretending to have all the answers or easy answers. Yeah, like, by the way, like so many other books do, or like so many other authors do, like, I’m going to tell you how to figure it all out, and I think especially with a question as complex, ever changing as this one, it’s right, particularly hard to pretend that we have some easy plan.

Hayley Quinn 06:56

Absolutely, I love that. I work a lot with women who are in service based businesses. A lot of them are allied health professionals, and feel like their work is calling and it’s they’re very passionate about the impact. And for me, I work from this place, if there is no cookie cutter answer to all this, because we are so individual, and the reasons why the work is meaningful to us is different for people as well, isn’t it? But what you talked about sort of asking the questions, and I think that’s great, isn’t it? It’s like we can get great answers if we ask great questions. Yeah, so what would be some of the questions that you would say to people? These are the sort of things you would want to be asking yourself so that you can create meaningful work and like and therefore a meaningful life, because this very much resonates with the work I do with people. Yeah.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  07:56

So, the big one is hinted at in the title of the book, Is My Work Worth It? Is your work worth it? You know, just to say, Why? Why am I working? Why? What do I expect to get from my work? And then implied in that question of worth it is, what do I give to my work in exchange? So we always make this contractual exchange when we work. And the obvious contractual exchange is I give my time and energy, and in turn, I get a paid a paycheck is the obvious one, but we know we get so much more from work than just a paycheck. And so, in a very holistic way, what do I give to my work? What do I get from it? And do I feel like that trade off is, is worth it what I give? And here’s where this concept of sort of a career span, or developing a career over one’s life becomes relevant. Because I think we’ve given people such a strong cultural message. I mentioned earlier, I study work as a calling, and so we’ve given this very strong cultural message that work should be a calling. And among, for example, my students, I see a lot of angst about, what if it’s not a calling. And I think a lot of people might immediately see how to think about meaningful work, and go, Oh my God, what if my work’s not meaningful? Am I doing it wrong? Basically, is this? Is this wrong? And so I actually think part of again, not giving simple pat answers. We’re not trying to say everyone’s work should, should be meaningful. We know not every work, not every job, will feel meaningful day in and day out, but sort of on balance, are you getting what you want from work? 

And for many people, that’s not that the work is what gives life meaning. For some people, it is for some people. My work is what gives my life meaning. And I think for your caregivers that you mentioned in helping professions, in professions that are clearly serving a social good, it’s very easy to get that external validation of, I’m helping others, I’m helping the world, I’m doing good in society. But there’s a there’s a subjective side to that too. What am I getting and is it serving me? 

One of the ways that work can serve us is, I’m earning money and I have maybe stability. I’m providing for my family, or I’m working to support something outside of work, in, if you will, life. I mean, this work versus life distinction is is a bit, it’s not to say there’s work or there’s life, but this non work maybe that’s where I find my calling. Maybe that’s where I find the meaning in my life. So if I know that, and I know that I’m working for this reason, and by the way, it could be for just for now, for a lot of students, for a lot of people, early in their lives, or at various life stages, depending on what life brings, we need to work for money and we need or we need to work to buy a home, to establish ourselves to, do things that are provide care for dependents of various kinds, and we that’s the trade off. 

That’s what makes the work worth it, and then other but, but I think all too often so that. So the reason I think asking the question is so profound is that all too often we enter a job, are so busy doing it, and are so busy living life and doing work, and never really stop to say, what is it all for? Why am I? Why am I doing what I’m doing? And so I think just that being more intentional is profound. I think that’s just, that’s why we say. I think just asking the questions. Being aware of the questions is important. Absolutely,

Hayley Quinn 12:05

I couldn’t agree more. I think we go to school, or I dropped out school early, eventually went back to university, established myself as a psychologist. I’ve evolved my career and my own business and work with lots of people have their own business, but I think a lot of people, and I certainly did this for a while as well, just get busy being busy doing the thing, getting on with it. Showing up, working the hours, but it’s when you do step back and start to get more intentional. And I think when we think about that meaningful piece as well, is what does that even mean to you as an individual? Work being meaningful for some somebody, it might be, I’m having an amazing impact in the world and doing some social good for somebody else, like you say, it could be I earn enough money that allows me to go and spend time with people that I care about, or do things that interest me in my life and make my life feel meaningful. So I think they are really important questions for people to ask. And it is that slowing down, isn’t it like slow down and ask yourself, What am I doing? Why am I doing it? What does it mean that I’m doing it? What are the other questions, and the thing that comes up for me is burnout. I work in the sort of burnout prevention space. 

I’m very passionate. I’ve had my own experience of significant burnout, so I’m very passionate about anti burnout and sort of burnout prevention. What do you think the impact of work not being meaningful is? Because I think one of those things is you can end up burnt out because you’re just working working. There’s not the like you say, there’s not this kind of contractual agreement with you and your business or you and your work that actually flows both ways. You can just be giving and giving and giving and giving and you’re not getting anything back that is actually nourishing you.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  14:06

So I think this is exactly a contributor to burnout. Yeah, and I think it’s the classic story that no one, no no boss, no manager, is ever going to sit down and say, you’re working too hard. You’re giving too much, have you stopped to think about how this is affecting your life? I mean, maybe the rare, really good, really well, well trained manager would or who took OB classes and, in their MBA training, or something like that. Because that’s something I really try to emphasize for my students, is this isn’t just about you, it’s about also others that you’re responsible for. 

Hayley Quinn 14:45

Yeah, and I would if I could just add in, I would say not just managers and bosses, but those of us that are self employed. We need to stop and say, you’re working too much. You need to slow down. We need to have that compassionate relationship with ourselves. And be, be a great boss to ourselves,

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  15:03

big, big time. So my college that I teach at Babson College is known for entrepreneurship, and a lot of my students think I will make, I will be my own boss. I will make my own hours. I will and I always say, so then you’ll work whichever 60 hours a week you want, or I mean, it’s just when you see what it takes to be self employed and to work for yourself. Exactly the risk is you give and give and give, because so many of us, we want to be seen as doing a great job, competent, delivering for whoever, if it’s clients, whoever is the end user, and we won’t, and also, I think we’ve come from this cultural moment that’s all about, if you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work. You should just be working removing all the guardrails and just going all in on work. 

And this is part of this rhetoric about work should be a calling, but at what point? And lots of research has backed this up, that often when we feel our work is meaningful, that we get benefits from it. We absolutely it contributes to our overall well being. It’s really beneficial for our life, because, again, who, what’s the alternative, who wants to feel that their work is meaning less, and nobody would care if we, didn’t show up and do our work. 

So it’s, it’s great to feel the work is meaningful, but, uh, but a trap people can fall into is they overwork. They give and give and give and again, because, maybe they’re not in there, maybe they’re not in it for the money in a bad way. Meaning, are they getting exploited? Are people taking advantage of them again? No one, no client, no and beneficiary is ever going to say, stop. 

Hayley Quinn  16:52

You’re giving too much, giving too much to me. You should charge me way more money.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  16:55

We interviewed someone from the book, who is working in nonprofit law and at her nonprofit, an award went to the woman who they explicitly said, as they were giving her a service award, they said, she never says, No. She always, even if she’s off, she always comes and shows up and will never not show up, and my friend sitting there thinking we’re celebrating this kind of culture of overwork at the expense of anything else you’re doing. And that’s what’s held up as the gold standard is, I will sacrifice everything in my life to do my work. And I think this question we’ve started talking a lot, just as sustainability is sort of a hot topic, thinking about environmental sustainability, this notion of career sustainability, can I maintain this? And it is just not sustainable to give and give and give and be in a culture where that’s the expectation, and actually to not do that is something wrong. And so that’s why it’s actually interesting. We’ve had this new, term quiet quitting or lazy girl jobs that people in in business are sort of reacting negatively to. But I think this notion of quiet quitting is a really natural balancing of the scales to say, I don’t have a going if going above and beyond is the norm, then it’s no longer going above and beyond. It’s just a culture of overwork. 

Do we take the control back and say, how do we establish healthy boundaries and not have them be judged as being negative?

Hayley Quinn 18:47

And we’ve got to stop seeing overworking and burnout as a badge of honour, because it is literally creating so much distress illness, both physical and mental. It’s awful. And I work very much from a sustainability place in the work that I do with people a place of thriving, like, if you thrive, your business will too, and we can be successful and sustainable in work. There’s ways of doing it, and I love it. I hadn’t heard that lazy girl concept, but I was just talking to one of my coaching clients yesterday, and I said to them, I don’t say this is a critical comment to myself. I don’t say this isn’t a way of being harsh, but I I like to be lazy in the way I do my work. I want it to be efficient. 

I want it to be the easiest path it can be for me, because I value my rest. I value my time in non work, so those things are really important. I don’t want to just be busy, being busy. And when people say, what do you do? Oh, I’m so so busy. I’m so so busy, and yet I still manage to do a lot of things. And people will say, Oh, you’ve always got something going on. And I always say yes, and I’m always doing lots of resting as well, yeah, so that there’s not this perception that, oh, Hayley is always busy doing things. It’s like, yeah, I am. I always have projects on, but I have a lot of time where I’m resting as well. I’m just sitting watching TV, or I’m going for a walk, or I’m out doing something I enjoy, or sleeping in a bit later in the morning, whatever it might be. So I love that you’ve talked about that, and you’re right. We need to shift this culture of overwork, because it’s really, it may be serving a few people, but it’s certainly not serving the majority. Is it

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  20:40

Certainly not, no. So I love that. I love that you say that to people, because I do think seeing role models, successful people who are admitting that and not just acting like I’m just super human, and I don’t sleep, and I’m or I’m constantly multitasking, so I’m on vacation, but also closing deals, or we have all these, I think really like glorification of always on, always working, kind of culture, and it’s harmful.

Hayley Quinn 21:16

It is, it is, and it’s sad, because it creates so much guilt in people, and I work mainly with women, and I think there is, there’s often quite a lot of self sacrifice. I mean, we’re socialised into serving others, doing the right thing, putting our needs last, all that stuff. So there’s lots of people pleasing, lots of self sacrificing. We don’t need any more of that messaging, and it needs to be okay that if you want to go midway, if obviously, if you’re in a position to, I work mainly with people who are self employed and have the flexibility, but arrange your day. I start my day later, unless I’m doing podcasts and getting up for doing podcast recording. I used to start my day at a relatively normal time, and now I don’t start my day normally till before 10:30 in the morning, because I like to ease into my day. I have big breaks between any appointments that I’ve got. I take myself to different places to do work that actually feels nice for me, and I recognize my privilege in that, that I can do that. 

But I think it’s important that we find ways of working that honour who we are as human beings and have that meaning, whether that’s in actually the work that you’re doing, or what that work allows you to create in your life that feels meaningful. I love that you’ve written this book. I love that it’s starting to ask those questions, isn’t it?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  22:52

We hope, so we hope. We hope that this will help people think about how to sort of frame these questions within their life as a whole, and hopefully remove some of that guilt or some of that stigma. Because we do share stories where someone tried to go all in on the career and be a good corporate citizen and burned out. And we also share stories of people who very proudly, choose not to work, or choose not to work what we consider traditional jobs. We cover the fire movement so financial independence, retire early, this notion of why should I spend my prime years even working at all? We cover a guy that we interviewed who tries to earn passive income so he can live his dream of living on a beach in Costa Rica with his buddies and doing just about as little work as possible. 

And we again, in our society, to choose not to work is seen as so counter cultural, especially in the US, let me just say, it differs in different parts of the world, but in the US to choose not to work is so counter cultural, but there are so many different paths to figuring out how to live a meaningful life. And so again, we just want to present different models, different and we’ve gotten feedback from readers that different, almost like characters in the book who are, who are all real people spoke to them. So that’s what I love. That’s what we were aiming for. Look,

Hayley Quinn 24:34

I think it’s probably the same in many countries, certainly here, if somebody was just to say, I’m choosing not to work, there would be quite a lot of stigma and judgement around that. I think the other thing we struggle with, with the kind of online space is there’s a lot of people promoting this idea that you can make millions of dollars and not really be working very much which frustrates me a lot, because, let’s face it, yes, maybe down the track when you’ve set up a business and you’re paying lots of people to do the things for you, or you’ve got all the automated systems in place that you are paying for that can do the things for you, then maybe you can step back and, do sit on the beach and drink margaritas or whatever is your choice.

So it’s getting this, this kind of I don’t I’m never keen on the word balance. I think it’s working out how can you have what you need and want? Whilst taking care of yourself the best way you can. So you’re not overworking. You’re not just over giving, but understanding that to earn certain amounts of money to live in a time where living expenses are high, there’s going to be a certain amount of output or input, sorry, that you’re going to have to give. So there’s so much that complicates all this, I think, is it’s, how do we get that messaging right for people, that there’s not some magic answer where you’re going to just be able to sit on a beach and have money pouring into your life and not do any work, but if you are very motivated by money, and if that’s what people want, that’s no judgement from me. 

If you are very motivated by money, how can you work in a way that doesn’t burn you out, still feels meaningful, but you’re probably going to be working a lot, and what can that look like? Or how can you decide? Well, actually, I actually would rather simplify my life a lot so that I don’t need to have as much money coming in, and then I can slow down, or do things differently, or perhaps choose to do some unpaid work in conjunction with paid work. So there’s so many I mean, gosh, we could talk about this all day. There’s so many things, isn’t there? Are there any particular questions that you would say to somebody like for me, I always get people. I always start when I’m working with people of coming back to their own values as a really nice place to kind of start from. But are there any particular questions that you would say to somebody here’s like, one or two or three questions that if you asked yourself these, you would be a good step towards figuring out what would create meaningful work and life for you? 

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  27:46

Yeah, so I think there are a few times, and granted, they are somewhat cliched, but that’s because they are real when we do tend to step back and ask these big questions. So a major crisis that threatens our mortality is one of them. So no surprise, two things we talk about a lot in the book 911 and the covid pandemic. Both times when people went, What am I doing with my life? So great resignation occurred. Lots of people switched jobs. If anything, I think our book, we’re trying to get people to ask, ask these big questions, almost in the absence of but sort of, it’s the, it’s the classic, if this were all to end tomorrow, if I knew my time on this earth was, even more limited than I walk around, knowing it is would what would I do differently? Would I continue to do this job? Would I continue to do this, maybe this part of this job, would I sweat the things I’m sweating now? Would I take a different picture? Would I understand that maybe my job the day to day may not always be perfect, but serve some broader and, but just to sort of, it’s these, it’s this perspective that we only get and, and I’m glad we only have these major crises, maybe once a generation, let’s just say. 

But what gets us to sort of step back and reflect. And then I think another situation where we tend to do this is, again, no one wants to picture their death bed, looking back on it all, but sort of, what? What if we imagine what we would want subsequent generations, whether or not we have our own, sort of kid children, per se. What would we like our legacy to be? What would we like people to remember about our lives? And therefore, how does that inform the choices that we make? By the way, Hayley, I think both of those instances, sort of picturing, if I were to know. My time is limited, or if I knew sort of imagine I’m gone and looking back. It’s almost like, Ebenezer Scrooge or something, what would I want my legacy to be? How would I like to be remembered? 

Those get at exactly what you said, which is, what are my core values? So another, what would I absolutely not give up. What would not be worth it to like, how far could I be pushed at work? What would I not sacrifice? Would I not give up? Christopher and I, we share the story in the book about how we both worked as management consultants, and I remember very vividly male. I should say he was male senior partner in the company who happened to be sort of the head of my division at a company gathering, bragging about how he had never missed one of his kids’ birthdays. Yeah, and he was saying it, and again, right? He was saying it like a badge of honor. 

And I was sitting there as at that point, I had not had kids. I was in my early 20s, but I was sitting there going, this is messed up, like, this is not the organization, nor the culture for me, because not missing a birthday is not even an option, that’s not even something we should be talking about. And the implication there was because other people are. But I haven’t these moments, are when we say, what are my values? And therefore, is this fitting or not? So for students who are wondering, how do I figure it out? I’m not sure what I want to do with my life. I’m not sure what is meaningful to me or I’m not. They don’t even know where to start. Yeah, I just tell them, Go have experiences. 

The more jobs you can work in, environments, organizations, settings. Just try things, and you’ll learn what you like, and then what is not a fit. And sometimes that learning via negativa, meaning, what do I not want to do is just as important in telling as what feels like a fit. Very few people, it sounds like your own personal story, like very few people, my own story. We don’t get it. We don’t enter some career path, and then that’s it. Forever. No,

Hayley Quinn 32:16

I definitely took, I definitely took the windy road, which actually on reflection, has served me really well, but it’s interesting because for me, my health and well being, physical and mental health, that’s a non negotiable for me, and that’s why I do the work I do. It’s the way. It’s why I do the work that I do in the way I do it for myself, I hold my well being at core in everything I do, and it’s why I do the work with other people, because it’s just been having seen the cost, financial health, relationships, of burnout. I don’t want that for other people, and to just see the levels of burnout increasing, increasing, increasing, I’ve found just heartbreaking so that’s certainly stuff I come back to, but I think you’re right. It’s like, what is, what is something I’m not willing to sacrifice for my work is so important,

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  33:12

and so to your point, to be tapped into, what would push my mental and physical well being that means being also self aware, which I think some people aren’t even self some people, and again, they we just normalize. Sure I’m exhausted all the time, sure I’m way too big, sure I feel scattered or I feel depleted. But doesn’t everybody, we’re all it is this culture of busy, busy, busy. I don’t who can even think ahead, who can even plan? I’m constantly exhausted. I’m running on fumes. I mean, we have all these even sort of ways that we talk about how chaotic our work lives are, how self important, we’re putting out fires. And at the end of the day, I think most of us could. And again, I don’t mean to breed a sense of complacency or a sense of do as little as possible and dial it in. But I think we’re going, it’s not like we’re going from a bottom level and trying to get people to work, take it more seriously. 

We’re at a level where people are taking their work as like the ultimate if I don’t get it done, it’s this catastrophic failure and this personal failure. We put so much pressure on ourselves to perform and give and give and give. And as you’re saying, there has to be a point at which we reach our natural limits. But I think even just being tapped in enough to say, really, how is this making me feel? And really am I as my energy, tapping into what energises me, what energises out, leaving me feeling depleted at the end of. Every day. It’s not normal to feel like we really have to, sort of scrape ourselves off the floor at the end of every day and then wake up and pump ourselves full of caffeine and do it all again. That’s not, that’s not normal, that’s not desirable, like an ideal, 

Hayley Quinn 35:21

Yeah, but like, say it’s not normal, but it is normalised and we’re saying, hey, you’ve heard it from me and Jen. It is not normal. You do not have to feel like you are burnt out all the time. You’re picking yourself up off the floor. And, these are questions I’ll ask people, What? What energises you, what depletes you? Get to know what type of work actually feels good for you? Tune into your body. Tune into your mind. What are the things that you’re doing that actually you’re really not that good at, and you’re thinking you have to do everything for yourself, because perhaps you hold some beliefs that you shouldn’t have to ask for help, or you’re weak if you don’t know how to do something. 

Or, I dropped out of school when I was younger. I went through a period of time where I didn’t want to ask anyone for help, because I felt like they think I was stupid, because I held this belief that I was and now it’s like asking for help is such a wise thing to do, and I’m not good at everything. Of course, I’m not. I couldn’t be. So I find people who are good at things I’m not good at, and I get them to do those things so I can focus in on the things that I am really good at and give my energy to that. So I think, like you say, this self awareness and tuning in and asking yourself those questions is so, so important.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  36:41

It is. I mean, just just knowing, knowing to again, knowing to ask those questions, and knowing to tap in. And I think there is this social comparison. So you said it earlier, everyone else has it figured out, and not me. Everyone else is getting rich quick, and not me. They’re living on a beach. They’re, and that they can do it all, and no one can do it all. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Everyone has things that energise them and things that deplete them. And so just this notion of comparison, it’s so natural in our psychology, it’s we can’t avoid it, but it rarely does. It serve us as well as saying it’s not what works for anyone else, my classmates, my peers, people who kind of seem just like me, it’s really about what works for me. 

Hayley Quinn 37:34

That’s it absolutely and like you say, We that that is a natural, inbuilt tendency. As a human being with a tricky mind, we can’t change the fact that we’re going to do both upward and downward social comparison, but we can be aware of it, and we can look at, is that then motivating my next step, and is that actually helpful? Because a lot of the time, if we’re looking at, say, Instagram and somebody is making millions of dollars, but they’re not telling you it’s actually costing them millions of dollars to make millions of dollars, and we’re trying to base our decision making on that, then it’s not going to be helpful, and we are going to feel inadequate. We are going to likely work too hard, and we are likely going to burn out. So I think these are such important conversations, and I think we have to have more and more of them, and I’m so glad, one, that you and Christopher have written the book, and two, that you’ve joined me on the podcast, so that we can kind of articulate this more that what’s in the book. One of the things,

Hayley Quinn  38:34

Well, we kind of talked about the risks and some of the risks of doing this stuff, but let’s talk about some of the rewards of doing meaningful work.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  38:46

Yeah, absolutely.

Hayley Quinn 38:47

What would you say to that? Because you do talk about risks and rewards, and we don’t want to have it all sort of like doom and gloom. What are some of the rewards

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  38:55

of time? Not at all. And so I mean the idea of and again, to think about the alternative to feel like work is meaning less is not an existence that I would wish for anybody to feel like I do my work. No one cares. No one thanks me. No one recognises my efforts. These things are harmful to well, mental and physical well being and feeling work is meaningful is very good for our overall well being. So if we do feel like our work is meaningful, we are not just more satisfied with our work. We are more satisfied with our lives. Often meaningful work is rooted in a societal contribution helping other people, and part of that is receiving gratitude, receiving, again, recognition of the work that we’ve done, and very clearly being able to point to here’s exactly. Exactly how my work helps. 

Now, occasionally we have people sort of twisting, what they’re doing, to say I’m helping society because I’m, I don’t know, making the rich richer. And that will trickle down in the form of more wealth for everybody or something like that. But I mean, often when we can kind of objectively point to a way that our work is is helping, and who’s benefiting, and how that’s that’s just a way to feel like we are occupying, sometimes people say, occupying a position in society that matters, and so that is very, I mean, just good. It’s good for us. And let’s take that view of it’s good for society as well. We want people who care about making a positive social contribution. 

This is where, if Christopher were here, he would really want me to hit that hard. Because as a psychologist, I can say all that matters is how I feel about my work. And as a philosopher, he would say, but there are some objective metrics that we can look at to say, is this work meaningful or not? And that would be one of the ways and the way that we value societal contribution of work, obviously, is not perfect, and often to go back to caregivers, teachers, social workers, right? We do not put our money where we value the most. It’s usually inverse, right? So society is not great at maybe financially recognizing work, the worth of work, but I think we sort of know and feel what are the jobs that make a difference, and all we need is a loved one in the hospital, say, to appreciate nurses. Or we need schools to shut down and covid to go, Oh my God, these teachers are doing the most important work we can imagine. Or whatever it is, again, a little shift in perspective, and you see things very differently. But, so meaningful work, it benefits not just the person doing it, but hopefully others. The lives of others as well, which is an incredible benefit.

Hayley Quinn  42:11

Yeah, I love that you you talk about that, that it’s not just about the work or the impact, or what, what we’re getting from the work, but that external validation that we get recognized and acknowledged and with working with people who run their own businesses, again, they don’t have a boss except themselves. And one of the things I always do with people I work with, and then the women that come into the group that I run, is every time we meet, we talk about celebration of achievements, no matter how small. 

So that’s self recognition. So we’re not just moving from okay, I’ve got this goal. I met the goal, onto the next, onto the next, onto the next. I think it’s so important that we actually recognise for ourselves. This is what I’ve done. This is what I’ve managed to do. These are the challenges I’ve got through and celebrate, whether that’s I bought myself a new cup, which I’m a little bit in love with right now, and having my favourite tea in my new cup, or whether it’s going out for dinner, or sending myself flowers, or doing something more elaborate, or even just saying to myself, Wow, that that was great.

Hayley Quinn 43:26

I’m so glad I managed to do that. I think that acknowledgement is so for people who are working, you would hope that there’s colleagues and management that would be doing that for you. But if you’re working for yourself, it’s important that you stop and do that for yourself? Yeah,

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  43:41

Absolutely. Because also, by the way, everything you’re doing when you’re self employed, you did it yourself. You don’t have an apparatus working around you to make everything happen for you. That’s something people really take for granted when they work in a company, right? Is that all this staffing development, right? Yeah, is happens for you, and when you’re self employed, you’re doing it yourself. I do want to say for listeners who who can’t see us, hayley’s cup that she referenced matches perfectly her blouse that she’s wearing. So this is like a very beautiful cup that’s also like the perfect complement to your surroundings, which is like, extra amazing,

Hayley Quinn 44:25

I would say thank you so much. It is rather lovely. The little things in life

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  44:29

No, I think absolutely celebrating this is it so celebrating small wins, and if no one’s going to do it for us, we have to do it for ourselves.

Hayley Quinn 44:40

Absolutely, absolutely. So I’m curious, from a personal perspective, for writing a book, and like you say, you’ve done academic articles, you’re an academic, you do lots of writing, but writing a book is a big achievement. I’ve recently, I wrote a book chapter many years ago. When I was doing my PhD, and I’ve written a book chapter recently in a book to empower other women, which is exciting. And I have my own book draft that has been sitting there for far too long, and I will get back onto that. But what I’d love to know is, what did you learn about yourself through the process of working on this book?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  45:25

to that end of a book draft that could sit forever. This is where having, I really appreciate having, not just a co author, period, but Christopher specifically as a co author, because he is extremely deadline driven and goal oriented in a way, in a much more micro way than I am. So he will, whereas I might have this big goal write book draft, which is very large and overwhelming and then unlikely to happen in a timely fashion, he’s like, how do we break it? I have lost a lot of my consulting skills, and he has not. So he’s very good at keeping us on task, moving us along. So I do appreciate collaboration, not just because I have a built in accountability partner, someone to read my work and make it better, even before it gets to our agent or our editor, or anyone like that. It makes it a lot more fun. I think I’m an extrovert. I like collaborating with others. 

The worst part of my PhD experience was actually writing my dissertation where I felt like it was me alone at my desk. I had my committee vaguely on the other end of it, but it was all on me. I did not enjoy that, and pretty much everything I’ve done since then has been a co authorship. I love co authoring. So I do love so I mean, I would, I would encourage, right you or anyone else, even if it’s not a co author, but just to feel like you, you’re in dialogue with someone can be helpful. Think the other thing I want to mention is I wrote this book while I was on sabbatical, so that was a very weird experience to say. I’m not working in air quotes as I normally am. I wasn’t teaching, I wasn’t serving on committees. 

All my normal work as a professor was on hold, so I could only have to write, and I think that greatly helped. Christopher was on sabbatical too for I was a full year. He was half a year that helped us get the book written. But it did raise this existential question that I grappled with, do I want to just do this? Can I imagine a world in which I just write and don’t have the other piece of it, the teaching, the service to my institution. And at the end of it, it was a very it was a full year journey. And I think at various points of that year, I was all over the map with it, but ultimately, I realized I did miss it like to come back and teach and be on my campus and be around my colleagues. I realized how much, as much as I loved writing the book, I had missed that. But I so appreciate and I mean, in the book, we talk about the benefit of a sabbatical, the benefit of taking a break from work. 

So, I mean, sometimes I think it’s just the reality of again, the trade offs. If you’re self employed and saying, I’m always doing what is for someone else, maybe a client, a customer and not for myself. How can you intentionally carve out that time, almost like your own mini sabbatical? Is there a passion project that you’ve been wanting to tackle that might be worth it to actually put that in not the back burner, but put it on the front burner. And then again. I am so lucky to have an institution that every so many years gives me the option of a sabbatical. Not everybody has that. Though, I am encouraged that more companies are offering maybe not a full year, but offering a couple weeks sabbatical just to get a break. I mean, just to get that break, have a new perspective, try doing something else. 

And sure you run the risk. Someone could say, maybe I want to do that other thing instead, and maybe, but often people do come back to their jobs feeling even more refreshed, feeling even more committed and knowing why they’re there.

Hayley Quinn 49:27

I love that you took that opportunity as well. You were talking about self awareness and reflection earlier, and I love that you took that opportunity when you were having that sabbatical, and the focus was writing the book, but to ask yourself, if this was what I was doing, would this be okay with me? Would this feel like enough? And I think that’s so important. Like my business has evolved over the years, because I’ve asked myself, Am I still feeling fulfilled? Am I still feeling like this is what I want to be doing? It. Is there something I’ve been doing that I’d like to actually do more of that and slow down some of this? And that’s how I kind of do that for myself, and it’s working really well. So I love that. 

And yes, I think the PhD process is a solitary and again, knowing yourself. I talk a lot with people, it really is about getting to know yourself really well and changing the relationship you’ve got with yourself to one that is more compassionate, more understanding, willing to put yourself at the front to say, and what do I need? And how do I need to be doing this? Not so you can just be like, well, it’s all about me, and I’m only doing things that suit me. But when we take care of ourselves, we can put back out in a much different way. 

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  50:46

Absolutely, absolutely! 

Hayley Quinn  50:49

Couple more questions. I’m mindful of time, and I could honestly chat with you all day. It’s like we made a connection with you and I through Yael, who I adore. Yael Schonbrun, who’s been on the podcast twice. And I could talk with Yael all day. And it turns out, I could talk with you all day as well.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  51:05

Well, same, same on both fronts.

Hayley Quinn  51:09

So you’re an academic, you’re an author, you’re a wife, you’re a mother, you’re a friend. I’m sure you have other roles in your life that you’re committed to, how do you take care of yourself in all those different roles? What are the sort of things that you’re aware of that you need to do to take care of yourself?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  51:28

Yeah, I’ve gotten so much better at saying no. Just that simple, that simple act of saying no at some point, sort of, pre tenure in my career, I read one of these how to survive as a female academic, and it recommended. The book recommended keeping a no log. So it’s sort of like the flip side of celebrating what we say yes to what do we say no to? With the insight that everything we say no to says yes to something else. I’ve heard other female academics say, if it’s not, if the answer when someone asks you to do something is not, hell yes it should be no, absolutely. I take a version of that in my life, right? Because, again, as women, I’m again, I’m an extrovert. I’m very agreeable. I tend toward people pleasing. 

I get asked a lot of things, a lot, a lot. I get asked to do a lot of things in a lot of domains of my life and my instinct, because I like the person who’s asking me, and I see why they’re asking me. And I could do it, and maybe I even should do it. My instinct, and especially early on in my career, pre tenure, young parent, young kids trying to make friends, was just to say yes to everything. And what you realise when you say yes to everything is that then you end up doing nothing. Well, right, you’re just stretched so running, and I wouldn’t even know, and I would let things, things would just fall through the cracks, because I was so over committed. So I quickly, although definitely not quickly enough, that it definitely took me way longer to learn this than I should have. But was just to say no and to and again, I try to help, I try to connect people with I can’t do it, but here’s who can, or here’s another idea, or here’s how I maybe can help, but just kind of letting go that fear of letting people down or making people angry, or that. 

So that’s been, that’s been a huge one, has been saying, no, and then I think another one, and you mentioned it already, but knowing when to ask for help, knowing when, I mean, a huge one is being really explicit. And the book kind of forced me to do this, being really explicit that I’m on sabbatical, which does not mean now I’m the full time only parent, right? Like, that means I’m gonna pick up all my kids carpools and all my kids. And I did do a lot more parenting than I normally would, but being really explicit, for example, with my husband, yeah, here’s what I need, here’s what I do. 

The same thing, actually, with Christopher in terms of the book, like, here’s what I can do, here’s what I need from you. I mean, just that in any, I think, partnership, where there’s the high stakes, being really explicit about what you need and when, and then also when you can sometimes you’re giving, sometimes you need things, but again, not apologizing, not feeling like it’s so easy. And again, I think women, yeah, we do this a lot, right? We want to take care of everybody else. We want to be helpful. 

Be like to be seen as always being there. Sometimes we just can’t, and we have to know when to put ourselves first, our needs first, prioritize something and recognize that we can’t. This myth is that we’re doing it all, nobody’s doing it all, right? And so we just have to do, do the best we can in any situation, but also, but also, sort of knowing what it is that will actually make a difference for us. And we can’t always know that with certainty, but at least, at least we can try to put that out there when we know there’s something we really need.

Hayley Quinn 55:34

Yeah, I love that you spoke about that. I mean, every time we say yes to somebody when we don’t want to. We’re saying no to ourselves, aren’t we, and I’ll say to people, like no, they say, Oh, I can’t say no, so you can. You’re just saying it to the wrong person, saying it to yourself all the time. That’s so great. And even when you said, I’ll say no, but I’ll still try and help them. I’ll try and find them an alternative. It’s like, there’s still this drive, isn’t there? 

Like we’re meant to be helpful, particularly for women, we are meant to be helpful and serving other people. And it’s time we realise that we have to serve ourselves so that we can be healthy and well and have the energy and then say yes to the things that we are motivated by our values to say yes to so when we show up to those things, we do epic work, absolutely. I love that.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  56:31

So I should say, I do also say to myself a lot, what would a male colleague do in the same situation, right? Like, how would a male colleague do this differently, and that’s extraordinarily helpful. 

Hayley Quinn 56:45

Yeah, absolutely I am. I have started when I get back to people. If I’ve taken a little bit of time to get back to somebody rather than apologising, I’ve started starting my emails with thank you for your patience, and then I just move on to whatever it is. And I was having this conversation with some friends, a woman I know, and her husband was there, and he said, I’ve never said sorry for something like that. And I said, I know you haven’t. You’re a man, but women do it all the time. We are constantly apologising when we haven’t done anything wrong.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  57:25

Yep, so it’s

Hayley Quinn 57:27

time to change. It’s time for it to change. Jen, and I’m loving this conversation. I have my next question. I love. I ask it of all my guests, and I’m always curious of the answer. If you could meet your 80 year old self right now, what do you think she would say to you?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  57:43

What an amazing question, in light of our earlier conversation about looking back and I really hope that my 80 year old self would be in some ways, I I hope at that age, the joke is, you know, academics never retire, because it’s the best job in the world. So why would we, so I would hope that I would still be like thinking about my next book proposal or thinking about ideas, hopefully not on my, not on anyone else’s terms, but on my own terms. So I would love to be engaged in some passion project that is meaningful to me, but not really in service of any next rung on the career ladder, but kind of still very much, engaged in in my own terms. I hope that I will look back and feel that my own work was worth it, of course, right? I have to ask this question of myself, just as I’m asking others to make it. And I would really hope that I’m leaving, I don’t know, maybe some kind of a legacy behind of just having helped, having helped someone, likely my students, hopefully my kids and my husband, right? 

Hopefully those who are close to me. But if I kind of feel like with writing the book, if I help one person through these ideas, it’s worth it. So just this notion of trying to help, trying to get people to feel like their lives are a little bit better as a result of something I’ve said, or did I mean, I think that would be kind of the ultimate reward and the ultimate legacy. Honestly,

Hayley Quinn 59:33

and if she were to come to you today, what do you think she’d say to this version of you today?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  59:39

Well, I hope she tells me to keep going that I’m doing, I’m doing a good job that not to again, not to sweat the small stuff, not to worry about other people as much, and to stay sort of focused on. The work I’m doing, why I’m doing it, what I’m giving to my family and other things that I areas of my life that are meaningful to me. I think she would probably tell me, yeah, to worry less about some of the things that I’m worrying about, certainly not to worry about. It’s so easy when you’ve published a book to get into this world of author comparisons. So what are other books charting, or attention people are getting, or things like that? Take that off the table. None of that matters, and just sort of believe in yourself and keep going. I think that would be sort of the ultimate 80 year old Jen speaking to currently mid 40s Jen

Hayley Quinn 1:00:53

Oh, that’s beautiful. And the people that need your book will find your book and read your book, and the other books don’t exactly, in that respect, that’s it. It’s beautiful. It’s been such a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you so much for coming on, sharing your wisdom, and I’m sure people will find this really helpful. Thank you so much for being a guest.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas  1:01:15

Likewise. Hayley, clearly, the work you do and the messaging that you send out is mattering to people, so I’m honored to be on your podcast, and thank you so much for your great questions. Thank you so much. Bye, bye.

Hayley Quinn 1:01:37

Thank you for sharing this time with me today. I hope our time together has been helpful and supportive. If there has been something in this episode that you have found helpful, I invite you to share it with another person you think might benefit. 

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I wish you all well in your relationship with yourself and your business, may you go well and go gently and remember if you thrive, your business will too you.