He has also set up a wine business with a friend. The younger two, he notes with obvious pride, won’t remember a time when he wasn’t there for them. He now works three minutes’ walk from his house, does the school run each morning and is learning jujitsu alongside his children, aged 10, eight and five. It took the pandemic, and losing all his contracts for eight weeks, for him to recalibrate. “I was still chasing … well, whatever it was I was chasing.” He sounds genuinely at a loss. But he remained at the beck and call of his clients. In an attempt to control his time, in 2014 Weatherhead left his job to become a freelance consultant. “I was just like: what are you doing here at 11 o’clock at night?” “They probably had commitments, children, partners,” he says in disbelief. Weatherhead remembers leaving the London office late, in the lead-up to a big pitch, to find about 20 others still at work too. “It’s difficult to see beyond that when you’re in that world.” What people want less of now is pointless presenteeism, stress, toxic workplaces and the commute Julia Hobsbawm “It was always about the next thing, whether it was a promotion or another opportunity,” he says. That meant long days, regular travel to Manchester and London from his home in Bolton, and extended periods away from his three young children.Īt the time, he accepted this as the price of his ambition. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Guardianįor nearly half his life Weatherhead, 40, was climbing the ranks in advertising, all the way to director level. ‘For me it’s about looking forward: in 20 years’ time, will I be happy about the decisions I’ve made?’ … Rob Weatherhead in his work office, a few minutes from his home. “I don’t have the titles, benefits package or authority I maybe once had,” Rob Weatherhead tells me, “but there is no money in the world you could offer me to go back to chasing them.” Even Beyoncé – a self-professed workaholic, who has spoken of going without food, sleep and bodily relief so she can “slay all day” – is now singing on Break My Soul about quitting her job and building “a new foundation” around love, fun and rest.įor some of us, this amounts to a new identity. In just two years we’ve gone from celebrating “hustle culture” to a backlash ensuing after Kim Kardashian dared to declare that “nobody wants to work these days”. In pop culture too, this shift is evident. In one survey, 37% of respondents said their job had become less important to them through the pandemic, with many citing burnout or a change in values. Those who can’t afford to opt out of work altogether, meanwhile, are less invested in it. In the US, 2.8% of employed people resigned in May alone (although that is balanced against “hires” of 4.3%) – only just down from the peak of 3% last year. Hundreds of thousands have quit their jobs, most to take early retirement or live off savings, shrinking the UK labour force by an estimated 1 million workers. This has been called the age of anti-ambition: over the past two and a half years, many people have taken stock – of how they spend their time, where they find meaning, their hopes for the future – and found work wanting. It was as if the fire that had been fuelling me for half my life was down to a smoulder – and for the first time, I was content to let it go out. I was still productive, but no longer at the expense of my health, happiness or relationships.
Gingerly, I started interrogating my ambition: what was I seeking from work, and where might this feeling be better sourced?īy my 30th birthday, in March 2021, the version of myself who had organised her entire life around her career felt like a stranger. My burnout was especially distressing for being self-inflicted I felt bewildered and betrayed, as if my trusty north star had led me astray. Then, one September morning after yet another all-nighter, I came to a sudden, painful stop. At first there was a perverse solace to this: I was still making progress, even though I was stuck in one place. Through lockdown, I worked all day, most days, and several nights through to dawn. By then I had been freelance for six months. She might have challenged me had I not stopped seeing her because of the pandemic.
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