Quiet quitting refers to not overworking yourself or doing extra things that you will not get compensated for. You’re not an underachiever but also not an overachiever.
It’s doing the tasks involved with your assigned role, no more, no less.
It’s doing your job without your job taking over your entire life.
If you are yet to hear the term "quiet quitting", I envy you. It has been everywhere recently in circles discussing work and workplaces.
When I first heard about it, I have to say it resonated with me.
One year ago, I was overstretched, disillusioned and almost burnt out in my work in an NGO. I worked ridiculous hours, and weekends, in an environment where the working group fractured and broke apart, with four or five people in a team of 12 leaving in six months.
I had put my hand up for all tasks and gave every piece of work my all. I was not rewarded for my work, and promises of a promotion were ignored and forgotten.
In the last year, I sought out a job description for myself, and have tried to stick to what is required of me. Sometimes I fail and go above and beyond with some of my responsibilities, but for the large part, I stick to my tasks, even if they do not take up all eight hours of my workday.
In that way, when I first heard of quiet quitting, it resonated with me. There was now a phrase to describe what I was feeling and doing.
What has happened since has been an explosion in discourse around quiet quitting. It has seemingly become a word to wage verbal wars around.
The word has taken on a much more bigger meaning.
On one side are those that say that quiet quitting employees are stealing from companies. That they are essentially slacking off. Recently, Ash had a conversation with someone who went off on those quiet quitting, calling millennials who quiet quit "soft" and "lazy".
On the other side are those saying that the responsibility for creating better workplaces and motivation falls on the employers. That quiet quitting is just redrawing boundaries between the personal and the work, and creating much needed work-life balance.
Regardless, it's clear this term has become overused in articles and oversaturated online more generally, to the point where I do not feel resonance with the phrase any more.
I do not want to pick sides, but just want to better express how I feel at work.
Much like "the Great Resignation" and other terms we’ve heard recently, it seems as though there are certain words or phrases that come in and out of popularity, elicit furious discussion, and leave.
I think the fascination is both about how to work in this new age, and how to describe how we each feel, working through the pandemic and a time where norms of work are changing radically.
Personally, I am less interested in fighting battles and more interested in trying to understand what work means to me and how I feel about it.
I think we need better words to better describe how we feel about work to open up better discourse around how we can make work better.