Recharging: A Need or Misconception?
Examining recharging's purpose for a corporate, young adult
Posted From: New York, New York, United States
The tires screech… burnout.
A friend of mine recently confided he has suffered from burnout.
He is one of the hardest workers I know; if it strikes him, it surely can hit anyone. Was this because of a lack of recharging (a self-imposed cause) or too great of depletion (a work-imposed cause)? This piece explores if recharging is necessary with all jobs, or, if it is an imprudent effort across all jobs.
Coming across a term in a new light; “recharge”
I joined my current employer - a large professional services firm - during COVID. To my initial surprise, the company repeatedly emphasized individual wellness during the first couple of years of my employment. Vacation policies, company-wide holidays, and regularly arriving employee gift baskets each highlighted how they prioritize people's need to recharge.
I am impressed by the culture and commitment to these items throughout my company as it has afforded me confidence to prioritize my well-being, such as taking vacation with minimal worry. Interestingly, these policies piqued my interest: they are explicitly given in order to "recharge" employees. After talking with a few coworkers and letting an entire year pass from this observation, I have decided to dissect the topic of recharging, specifically, is recharging necessary with all jobs?
This piece explores that question, not by interviewing workers (which can be done in a potential part 2…) but by exploring our anthropogenic relationships with work and life.
We begin by examining frameworks for work’s relationship with life and then evaluate the term "recharge" through each framework. The piece concludes by deriving implications for my relationship with work.
First framework: Ikigai - An ideal relationship with work?
The Japanese language has a concept called ikigai. This word has no direct English translation. Instead, it is a summary of the intersection of four dimensions of work that provide a person with a holistic reason for living.
Ikigai represents the intersection of four elements:
Love: Bringing joy, passion, enthusiasm, and excitement
Needs: Impacting others positively
Paid for: Supporting oneself financially
Good at: Leveraging skills, talents, and strengths
When the four elements intersect, you reach your Ikigai. To an unknown observer, this might feel like you are experiencing a deep sense of fulfillment, purpose, and satisfaction with your task, and wider life, at hand.
Second framework: American work culture, evolved - The varying degrees of "work is life"
An emerging framework in the realm of always-on, knowledge-based workers is the tenet that life encompasses work, but not the other way around. Recent mass layoffs in white-collar jobs - the tech industry has shed upwards of ~360k jobs in 1.5 years - combined with emerging pushback against Gary V-esque "Hustle Culture," has created this feeling within a large swath of working-age adults; they voice their reluctance to devote all their living hours to a job. Further, the company man is no longer prominent. In the past 10 years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has found the median years of tenure with one's current employer to have decreased by 13%. Contrary to work culture from the prior generations, devoting oneself to one employer over your entire life is not a worthwhile goal; in fact, it is looked upon lowly! As tech workers experienced, why devote a decade to one employer when your computer access can be gone by 4 am the next morning after layoffs were announced when you are on maternity / paternity leave?
The American evolution of work and life is not a universal truth, nonetheless, it is now a prevalent social norm. For example, instead of there being a taboo about voicing concerns about a job's requirements, workers are pushing back against the work is life demands from employers; even investment bankers, a classic example of an extreme workaholic job class, have created demands in the past couple of years for boundaries between work and life.
This does not mean "workaholics" have disappeared. Elon Musk praises around-the-clock work demands. Top VC members, like Ben Horowitz, articulate similar beliefs in their principles. In Hard Things about Hard Things, Ben reflects on his time as a CEO and says:
"Spend zero time on what you could have done, and devote all of your time on what you might do. Because in the end, nobody cares; just run your company."
On a spectrum of not at all to 100%, the American Culture has moved leftward; work seems to no longer be such a large part of life. This is not a departure from the norm, but a return to one.
Third framework: Our relationship with work, prior to agriculture
Concurrent to the social norm illustrated above, Anthropologic research shows we may be moving towards philosophies espoused by "the original affluent society," aka hunter-gatherer societies. In a 1974 book titled Stone Age Economics, Marshall Sahlins argues that hunter-gatherers worked far less than humans today not because they couldn't, but because they didn't need to. Why work more when they fulfilled their desires with their production levels? Sahlins presents this clearly by stating:
"The most obvious, immediate conclusion is that the people do not work hard. The average length of time per person per day put into the appropriation and preparation of food was four or five hours. Moreover, they do not work continuously. The subsistence quest was highly intermittent."
In some societies, work averaged to only 2 hours 9 minutes per day (15 hours a week)" This is a far cry from Americans' average working week of 47 hours.
A radical idea: work is not life
With this knowledge, we find that work can never consume more than one's life itself, and instead, is merely a part of it. In the most extreme cases, work can be a very large part of one's life, but never more than it.
With this nuanced, American work / life framework, we can now examine if recharging is a necessary part of work.
Recharging, to me
I am an individual who is good at my job, is paid well enough, and is somewhat doing what I love and what the world needs. Additionally, my work does not consume my life; I put forth an average of 40 hours of screen time a week. I work within the professional services field, where my valued contribution is my mind.
With this baseline understanding of my work, we can evaluate how recharging will unfold, either as part of my work or apart from it.
All the rage these days: recharging
Before evaluating if I indeed recharge, we have to investigate what recharging entails. Merriam-Webster defines recharging as "regaining energy or spirit." This concept stems from batteries, where, their energy stored is continuously depleted, and then refilled (recharged) by not engaging in the same activity that depletes them.
Therefore, the battery of our lives should be able to store and release our energy on demand, with proper management. Similar to how different battery forms and chemistries are used for different results (see this podcast, for a primer) depending on the work and person involved, the type and extent of recharging needed would differ in order to be "complete."
The Adirondacks: A place to recharge, or simply, live?
On my most recent vacation, my fiancée and I spent the Memorial Day Weekend roadtripping in the Adirondacks in Upstate NY. (It was an amazing vacation) We decided to spend the weekend away from NYC to celebrate our two birthdays (as they conveniently book-end the weekend) and provide my fiancée with a “getaway treat” after finishing Level 2 of the CFA.
For part of the trip, we were nestled on a remote campsite. Cellphone service was zilch; our only interaction with others for 16 hours consisted of waving to passing boaters on the lake. Ignoring the immense amount of insects and our mold-infested tent, this experience would classify as an optimal way to recharge.1 Away from electronics, city life, and work, we could focus our energies inward to ensure we rejuvenated our bodies, minds, and souls.
This would be the optimal place to recharge and to do so at a fast rate.
Ultimately, the trip did not recharge me. Instead, I lived a more complete me.
While my current work fulfills multiple aspects of my Ikigai, it does not fulfill all four circles. Preemptively knowing this, we planned a trip that would allow each of us to fulfill our circles that are not met from our full-time 9 to 5s. For my fiancée, this entailed visiting a couple of wineries "for the vibes" and eating soft serve every day. For myself, it involved hiking and camping; to pursue my passions.
With the above concepts in mind ahead of the trip, I did not bring my laptop.2 The lack of working, though, was not my goal. I enjoy the full-time work I take part in, as it involves all four of the Ikagi circles. But, the extent to which some of those four circles are filled is limited. Through my 9 to 5, I love learning about people's interactions and how they create change through institutions. However, I also love spending time learning about nature, small towns, and life in between. As a part of my job, I cannot fulfill those latter aspects completely, so, a roadtrip through Upstate NY provided me with opportunities to more effectively do so.
Taken together, is recharging fulfilling my Ikigai circle and not working on my 9-5? No, it is not. On the trip, I lived my life, rather than recharging in order to live my life. To step away from work for four days is not a form of recharging. Instead, it allows me to fulfill the other desires in my life.
Recharging would mean my work drains me, not fulfills me. It would also mean that my work should have a finite capacity; I cannot work without recharging. I have not experienced these phenomena; yes, aspects of my work drain me and sometimes I feel like I need a break, however, this does not mean I need to recharge from my work. Rather, these symptoms indicate humanity: I do not have the capacity to work like a machine nonstop.
As illustrated by Ikigai and work not being life, it is natural for us to want a break from work, considering we spend, on average, 47 hours a week on it. Doing anything for that long a week, other than sleeping, would need respites. Respites, though, are not recharging, as recharging implies loading up one's capacity, to merely drain it again.3 Spending 47 hours in one capacity, especially with minimal skin in the game, is inhuman. This means that instead of living, we work. Therefore, recharging is not the solution; redefinition of what work is and how we want to interact with it is.
Layoffs, job offers, and a long road
For the past year, I semi-actively searched for jobs. In July 2022, I applied to a few, progressing on interview rounds. In January 2023, I undertook the same process, even without fully defining closure on the prior search. Ultimately, I received a few offers.
In the past few weeks, my company went through layoffs. A tumultuous time on a macro level, being brought directly to my micro level view.
Today, I feel more active and satisfied than ever in my current job. Rather than my battery draining due to external searches and reduced morale, I am more committed and feel my best yet towards my current job. This process furthers my journey on a long road, one step further from where I began.
Feeling the need to recharge and actively recharging has not made me feel better, in fact, the opposite is true. The moments where I feel worse about my job come eerily close times to dedicated recharging time - the time meant to be away from work.
Alternatively, moments I spend deeply examining if my current job led me closer to Ikigai - evaluating it to a level I do with personal relationships - proves more fruitful. This introspection affords me the hindsight to realize why I am at this company and in this job. Recharging to go back to the same job without this level of introspection would have, and has, caused me angst; the exact opposite of what recharge disciples claim. Recharging through a vacation or outside activities actually leaves me more uneasy about the life I will head back to; a bad situation is still a bad situation, even if I have more energy to deal with it.
A long road lies ahead for me and my career. I am fortunate the past year has provided me with opportunities to reflect and realize what I want out of my job. Yes, I have taken vacations, yet they have not recharged me. Only the recognition of my job's purpose within my life has, in order to better live out my Ikigai within the broader context of American work culture and human tendencies.
Post 16.
Given the moldy tent, we ended up sleeping under the stars - a first for me!
By phone, I only checked my Teams and Outlook for a total of 10 minutes over the four days.
Simultaneously slowly degrading the carrying capacity over time.