Every Working Adult Should Think About What Work Means in Their Life

“Low Pay” Is the Top Reason for Changing Jobs

On March 22, recruitment service operator Persol Career released the results of a survey on reasons for changing jobs. The survey covered men and women aged 20–59 who changed jobs before or after last April's state of emergency declaration. Asked their reasons, the top response after the declaration was “Low salary / no prospect of a raise” (9.7%).

Second was “Want to improve my skills” (8.0%), followed by “Concern about the future of my industry or company” (7.3%).

Before the declaration, “Bad atmosphere at work” led at 12.5%, followed by “Concern about the future of my industry or company” (9.7%), “Low salary / no prospect of a raise” (8.7%), and “Experienced harassment” (5.9%). The company believes anxiety about the future due to poor business performance during COVID affected the responses.

Responses related to relationships and environment, such as a bad workplace atmosphere, decreased. Increased remote work and fewer drinking parties were said to be one factor.

Source: LinkedIn News Editorial Team

I established my company in January 2021 and have finished its first fiscal period. I do not particularly plan to hire employees, but after leaving salaried employment in August 2017 and living through a year hit by COVID-19, my thinking has changed completely. Of course, reading more than 500 books on Kindle alone during that time also played a part.

What changed is my realization that most people do not seriously think about their relationship with work, probably using less than 0.00001% of their brains to do so.

If You Want Money, You Should Not Work

First, fundamentally, work is not the only way to receive money.

Yet plenty of people probably believe work is their only, or main, way of obtaining money.

This is a major misunderstanding.

For example, without going deeply into specific techniques, there are ways to earn efficiently without working. It is possible to earn around ¥1 million per month even in a NEET-like state—lounging around all day on your smartphone.

In other words, the idea that you must work to make a living is nothing more than a fantasy.

The Essence of Work That 99% of Working Adults Misunderstand

So what is work? It is providing society with the functions you possess.

The performance of those functions is determined by your talents and passion.

For convenience, that performance appears to take the form of a salary.

However, a salary is an amount needed for living that a company determines according to its own arbitrary and biased standards and pays monthly. It is not proportional to performance at all.

Because the standards are the company's own arbitrary and biased ones, dividing salaries by parameters such as country, society, industry, company, and position still will not produce a satisfying amount.

Business owners are no exception. It is well known that when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he received one dollar a year as interim CEO.

I too am a small business owner, but even generating ¥1 billion in annual sales can leave me without compensation.

In fact, some celebrities' online communities even involve paying money to work.

In investors' case, one might say they make the money they provide do the work.

The World Is Also Full of Worthless Jobs

Considering these realities, if so-called labor—giving up your own time—is fruitless, you should quit as soon as possible.

COVID-19 is increasingly revealing that jobs we once thought normal are completely unnecessary.

Mizuho Bank and Recruit are beginning to institutionalize three-day workweeks, and AI adoption is accelerating. Without dressing it up, many people's jobs will surely be taken by AI.

You are better off leaving early if your job has a future of being taken by AI. There is no need to force yourself to work.

An Era of Living While Playing

…Words like these used to readily provoke opposition.

However, from a neuroscience perspective, I think “work is play, and play is work” makes complete sense.

That is because performance is high when the brain's amygdala is in a pleasurable state.

If work means providing society with your functions, and high performance is required, even a slight underlying feeling of reluctance produces the exact opposite result.

When I worked at a company, I was constantly doing things reluctantly, so I hated the job and company, and the company probably hated me too.

But when I began choosing my own work and working while traveling as a digital nomad, ideas flowed and results came thick and fast.

Lost Time Never Comes Back

People's views on life are also greatly influenced by their environment.

Above all, once unproductive time has passed, you cannot get it back.

If you are trapped in work solely for subsistence, you know far too little about how the world works and need to start studying immediately.

My Well-Paid Cousin Died During COVID

Finally, I want to add the story of my cousin from the bubble generation, who died unnoticed last year.

After graduating from the science and engineering faculty of a major university everyone knows, he joined a major electronics manufacturer and earned more than ¥8 million a year. But he considered even that salary too low and moved to another manufacturer.

However, the manufacturer he joined drastically changed its business—it is no longer even a manufacturer—and he was laid off.

He was already middle-aged, and his skills were the kind common in major companies that are unusable elsewhere, so apparently finding a new job took more than a year.

Naturally, his annual income probably fell substantially.

I do not know much about it, but he had two children, owned his home, and moved often, so his household finances were probably in dire straits.

Apparently he ended up living apart from his wife and children and died alone.

Not understanding the essentials can lead to such a cruel ending.

PS: I dislike the Japanese word for a working adult, shakaijin, because it sounds like a slave, haha.