The Science of Sexual Attraction & What Does Your Job Mean to You?

This episode delves into the complex science of human sexual attraction and explores how individuals perceive their work and its significance in their lives.

1. Sexual attraction is distinct from physical attraction, often involving an unconscious, magnetic pull toward another person.
2. The concept of "allure" is broken down into three components: the draw to another, the helplessness of this draw, and the intimacy it seeks.
3. Work perception has significantly changed, particularly after COVID-19, with people reassessing the meaning and value of their jobs.
4. The "Great Resignation" reflects a mass reconsideration of career paths, highlighting a desire for work that truly resonates on a personal and meaningful level.
5. The episode discusses how societal shifts and technological advancements are influencing both romantic inclinations and career choices.

1: Introduction to Sexual Attraction

Mike Carruthers introduces the topic of sexual attraction, detailing its unique qualities compared to general attractiveness. James Giles discusses the magnetic nature of sexual allure and its psychological components. James Giles: "Sexual attraction is more about the allure, that pull you feel towards someone, which is quite powerful and often beyond your control."

2: The Changing World of Work

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas discusses how individuals' perspectives on their work have shifted, especially in light of recent global events, questioning the intrinsic value and meaning of their professional efforts. Jennifer Tosti-Kharas: "Post-COVID, people are really starting to question if the work they do is truly what they want to be spending their life doing."

1. Understand Your Attractions: Reflect on what truly draws you to others beyond physical appearance to better understand your relationships.
2. Reevaluate Your Career Goals: Consider what you truly value in your job and whether it aligns with your personal life goals.
3. Explore New Interests: Allow yourself the flexibility to explore new interests that may lead to unexpected and fulfilling career paths.
4. Communicate Openly: In relationships and at work, maintaining open communication about your needs and expectations can lead to more satisfying and meaningful engagements.
5. Practice Mindfulness: Being present in the moment can enhance both personal interactions and professional satisfaction.

Of course, you know what a tank top is – but do you know why it is called a tank top? A tee-shirt looks like the letter T. But a tank top doesn’t look like a tank. So where did the name come from? Listen as I start this episode with the explanation that goes back to the 1920s. https://undersummers.com/blogs/undersummers-about-us/the-history-of-the-tank-top-why-is-it-called-a-tank-top

We have all likely felt a sexual attraction to someone. When you see that person across the room at a party and you can’t take your eyes off him or her – that is sexual attraction. It is very different from other kinds of human attraction, like being attracted to someone as a friend or someone you want to work with. True sexual attraction is based solely on a person’s appearance. It is a universal yet very individualized pull towards someone else and it can be very powerful. Joining me to discuss the science of this little known human experience is James Giles. He is lecturer at the University of Cambridge Institute for Continuing Education and is well known for his writings on philosophical psychology and human relationships. He is author of the book, Sexual Attraction: The Psychology of Allure (https://amzn.to/4bY2Jmk).

The whole world of work has changed a lot in the last several years. Today, people don’t stay in one job or even in one career like they used to. Additionally, people are questioning their work and asking themselves, “Is this really what I want to be doing?” It also seems people are looking to find more meaning in their work, not just a paycheck. To help understand why things have changed and how best to navigate these changes is Jennifer Tosti-Kharas . She is a professor of management at Babson College and author of the book Is Your Work Worth It?: How to Think About Meaningful Work (https://amzn.to/3VnFf2V)

It is a mystery that has confounded people since the invention of laundry: Why does one sock go missing and where does it go? Listen as I explain one very plausible solution that explains why you have socks without a mate. https://reviewed.usatoday.com/laundry/features/youre-not-crazy-your-socks-really-can-disappear-in-the-wash

People

James Giles, Jennifer Tosti-Kharas

Content Warnings:

None

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Mike Carruthers
The science of sexual attraction, which is different than any other kind of attraction. When you are sexually attracted to another person, you feel your thoughts being directed to that person almost against your will. When people find somebody sexually attractive, they find it more difficult to look away from the person. Also, ever wonder where that missing sock in the laundry goes? And the ever changing world of work?

And why you don't have to love your work to be happy? While it would be great to love our work because, again, what's the alternative? We don't want people to hate their work, think it's certainly meaning less. But we know that we don't all need to love our work to do great work, nor do we need to love our work to have a great life. All this today on something you should know.

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Mike Carruthers
Something you should know fascinating intel, the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should know with Mike Carruthers. Hi there. Welcome to something you should know. It is summer pretty much everywhere now, and with warm weather comes warm weather clothing, like t shirts and tank tops.

And so I get why it's called a t shirt, because you lay it out flat, it looks like the letter t. But why do they call tank tops tank tops? Well, the name comes from a woman's bathing suit called a tank suit. First popular in the 1920s, a tank suit was a one piece suit with shoulder straps. It was called a tank suit because it was worn in a swimming tank.

Swimming tank is an obsolete term for what we now call a swimming pool. Shirts or tops resembling that style of two over the shoulder straps became known as tank tops. And that's the story, and it's something you should know.

Why are you attracted to some people but not other people? You know, that spark, that, ooh, I like the way she looks, or I like the way he looks. That thing that attracts us to other people and them to us is what keeps the planet populated. People have to be attracted and get together and have babies for humans to continue. Yet most of us don't know very much about what's going on.

When you feel that something about someone you see across a room or someone you meet at work, and it turns out that the science of human sexual attraction is fascinating. Here to help us understand it is James Giles. He is a lecturer at the University of Cambridge Institute for Continuing Education and has been studying this for a while. He's author of a book called Sexual the Psychology of Allure. Hi, James.

Welcome to something you should know. I think. I want to start by maybe we need a tighter focus on what is sexual attraction and what it is when you talk about it, what is it you mean by sexual attraction? I think sexual attraction is really strongly distinguished from other sorts of attraction. First of all, because it's based on physical appearance and very, I think people who might doubt that, oh, you know, that you can be sexually attracted to someone because of their personality and so on.

James Giles
What seems to be sexual attraction can often be motivated by other things that aren't really anything to do with sexual attraction. If you think they're sexually attracted to someone because of the person's status or their money or their power, but that's not sexual attraction. So if sexual attraction, by definition means you're attracted to someone's physical appearance, then is sexual attraction the same thing as physical attraction? Two words for the same thing. No, they're not.

You look at the research and everyone knows from the personal experience that friendship is often based on physical attraction. We know that children choose friends who are the better looking people in the class, if they can. And also with older people and adults, the physical attractiveness of the other person plays a role in wanting to be friends with that person. And people of similar levels of physical attractiveness often seek out friendship or even affiliation and other things with each other. We know that people who are physically attractive are usually liked more by people.

And none of that is sexual attraction. So physical attraction definitely plays a role in sexual attraction, but it's not to be equated with it. When someone sees someone and is sexually attracted to them, what goes on? I mean, a little light lights up in your brain. What is it that happens that makes you go, ooh, hey, look at that.

Mike Carruthers
I like what I'm seeing here. The core of it really lies in this experiential element that we have when we are sexually attracted to another person. And the fascinating thing about it is that when you are sexually attracted to another person, you feel that attraction emanating from the other person like a magnet. So you can imagine if a nail could experience the magnet's pull, pulling it towards it. That's what we feel.

James Giles
We feel it in all sorts of ways. And wanting to be closer to that person. You feel your thoughts being directed to that person almost against your will. And we know that when people find somebody sexually attractive, they find it more difficult to look away from the person than someone who is just physically attractive or someone who isn't attractive at all. You use the term allure.

Mike Carruthers
In fact, it's in the subtitle of your book. Explain what allure is, because we've heard the word and it's all kind of mystical and mysterious and everything. But what is allure? What I like to do with the idea of allure is I break it down into three components, which ties into what I'm saying here. And I think the first aspect of it, which is interrelated with the other two, is that you feel yourself drawn towards the other person.

James Giles
Secondly, you feel yourself helplessly drawn. It's almost beyond your control. And again, you have to remember there's numerous degrees of sexual attraction. There's the overwhelming, where you really are, you look at the person, you feel completely and strongly attracted to the person. Or there's just the minor version where someone passes you in the street, you think, oh, she's nice.

And you just look. So there's all different degrees of this. But in every case, I would argue there is a sense of being drawn and being helplessly drawn in the direction of the other person. Now, the third component, I think, is when you feel yourself being drawn, what are you being drawn to? Well, you're being drawn to an intimate connection with the other person, a sexual connection.

So in that instance that you feel yourself drawn towards the other person. I think what happens is immediately a sexual fantasy appears so that you imagine yourself, you know, in varying degrees. To maybe a degree of not even noticing it. That you imagine yourself caressing that person or touching that person. So you see somebody's lips and you think, she has beautiful lips.

And it's nearly beyond your control that you imagine your lips being brought up against hers. Or you see her figure and you imagine your arms around it. And it's just those little things that are the core of the sexual fantasy that is the result of being attracted to that person. And these three components, I think, blend in various degrees. And sometimes one or more of them can assert itself more.

But I think if you want it to be sexual attraction, it pretty much has to involve these three aspects of allure. Well, one of the things that I'm sure anyone who's had a sexual attraction to someone else has found out is that you may see someone very attractive, sexually attractive. But it doesn't go the other way. That person has no interest at all. It's just a one way street.

Yeah. You can be attracted to a stranger in the street who doesn't even see you. You can be attracted to someone who is repulsed by you. Right. A sexual attraction is just an experience that you have of feeling the other person's physical appearance, casting its spell over you and pulling you towards that person.

Mike Carruthers
So I would assume there's a purpose to sexual attraction, and that is to keep the species going. So we have babies and we have more people. But it's interesting, and I'd like you to talk about. We're not all sexually attracted to the same people. Right?

I mean, some people like tall people, some people like short people. Yes. And that's an important point to realize. So we know, for example, that people tend to be attracted to another person who resembles, in various ways, their opposite sex parents. And there's fairly good data for this.

James Giles
There's one study that what they did is they took a picture of a man's wife and they took a picture of his mother. And they did this with several men. And then they mixed all those pictures up and had independent people try to place the young woman and the older woman who looked most alike together, and they weren't bad at doing it. They got a pretty accurate result for finding out the woman that looked like the mother. And there's other things like facial metrics that they have done both with women and men, and showing that there are similarities or studies on eye color and hair color that people tend.

It's a tendency, it's not 100% thing, but there is a strong tendency in that way where people tend to choose someone who resembles their opposite sex parent. And this is why we all are attracted. One reason why we're all attracted to different people, because our parents just don't look like Mike. But seeing someone who's sexually attractive, that's no indication at all that they might be a good match for you in the long run. It's just right.

Mike Carruthers
It's just sexual attraction in this moment. I don't think there's any evidence for making a good maid. It just is sexual attraction. And this is, again, why a lot of the data is confusing. Because when they will ask a woman who she's attracted to, they fail to say sexually attracted in the moment or attracted to as a long term partner.

James Giles
And those are very different. A woman might find a man, for example, very sexually attractive, but his personality and his irresponsibility just make him not a candidate for her as a long term partner. And I think that distinction is very crucial to see that people don't choose mates always for sexual attraction. They choose mates for all sorts of reasons, to be in the family, or he's a good wage earner, or she's friends with my other friend, or all sorts of things, or I can't get the person that I'm sexually attracted to, so I'll choose this person instead. There's a big difference, choosing someone and settling for someone.

And in numerous cases, people just settle for someone. Or they might have had many bad experiences with, say, an attractive woman and being unable to keep her, so they opt for someone who's less attractive. We're discussing the science of sexual attraction, and my guest is James Giles. He is author of the book Sexual the Psychology of Allure. Ready to pop the question and take advantage of 30% off the jewelers@bluenile.com?

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But are there things that are universally sexually attractive to pretty much everyone? People might agree on that someone's physically attractive, right? Like two women might agree that a particular man is physically attractive. He would be a good model. Everyone would think he's good looking.

James Giles
But one of them might say, he just doesn't do it for me. He's good looking, he's got all that, but he just doesn't do it for me. And the other one might say, oh, he does it for me. Again, I think that physical attractiveness versus sexual attractiveness has to be brought into play there. We don't know everything.

Of course, there's not lots of research done in this area. Okay, let me give you an example. There's something called the matching hypothesis, and this is the view that people tend to choose someone who is at their own level of sexual attractiveness. So if you just got people to rate somebody on a general scale of one to ten according to how sexually attractive they are, there tends to be a tendency. There's a tendency for people to choose someone who is in their own level.

So two fives choose a five, two tens choose a ten. There's all sorts of discussion about why that's the case, right? And nobody really knows why it's the case. One view is, well, that, you know, the aspiration view is that you don't go beyond, you know, what's possible for you. Is there much of a difference between how sexual attraction works for a man versus a woman?

Mike Carruthers
Because from what you're saying, it sounds like you're saying that sexual attraction is all physical, it's all appearance. But we hear things like, well, physical attractiveness isn't as important to women as it is to men. And I don't know if that's true or not. What do you say? Well, yes, you do hear that all the time.

James Giles
And again, I would say that looks aren't as important to women in terms of long term relationships. But in terms of initial sexual attraction, there's no good data to show that women don't care about the looks of a man. In fact, there's data that shows the opposite, that women are just as interested in the looks of a man. And there was one very interesting study where they took students at a university, invited them to a dance, and randomly assigned them to a partner. This is your partner for the dance.

And little did the students know, but the people had been coded by independent judges before the dance in terms of their sexual attractiveness. And the one thing that predicted whether they wanted to see the person again later and would be interested in pursuing them later was the person's degree of sexual attractiveness. And it was the same for men and for women. But when they followed them up six months later, that had no predictive value about whether they'd be together. And in fact, the one factor that did have predictive value was the matching hypothesis, how closely they were related on the level of attraction.

So I don't think women, women are just as interested in the physical appearance, sexual appearance of a man, how sexually attractive he is as men are. But there's all these society taboos. Women are not to show that kind of behavior. Women have to think in terms of a long term relationship. Women are going to be mothers.

There's all this pressure from all these different ways that stop that. But that doesnt mean that in the moment that a woman looks at a man, that shes not doing exactly what hes doing, looking at him in terms of his sexual attractiveness. If physical attraction is all about appearance, which is what Im taking from what youre saying, what is it about the appearance? Can you generally say, well, what women really look for in a sexually attractive person? Is this about his eyes or whatever, or is everybody individual?

Mike Carruthers
It just depends on the person who's looking. Yeah, I think so. I mean, there's all the features of eye contact and skin and hair and the tone of your voice. That's one thing very important for people. And the height.

James Giles
The body isn't just a stationary thing. And in one interesting study, they did light points of people walking. This is where they just have a stick figure drawn in, points of light that they map from an actual figure walking. And they looked how men walk. Now women walk and they walk quite differently.

Men have more velocity, more side to side motion, take longer steps, women take shorter steps, have more of a hip sway and a back arch when they walk, then they, what they did is they had the light point figure walking in high heels, and you couldn't see the high heels. But both men and women rated the light point of the woman walking in high heels as more sexually attractive, because when you look at it, it actually exaggerates the women's way of walking. So features that exaggerate the feminine aspect or the masculine aspect are often thought to be more sexually attractive. So here's a question I've wondered about. A woman can look at another woman and say, you know, oh, she's a very attractive woman.

Mike Carruthers
Is what she seeing that makes her say that woman is very attractive? Is it the same thing that a man sees that would make him say she's very attractive? Well, that, you know, that's a really fascinating question, and it's complicated. We know, for example, that in women's magazines, the women models tend to be slimmer and not have so much of a figure and less body fat. Whereas in men's magazines, when women are using advertisements, they are more curvaceous and full and have more subcutaneous fat.

James Giles
There's something there, but that's a really good example of where physical attraction and sexual attraction contrast with each other. A woman can look at another woman and think, yeah, she's sexually attractive, but I'm not attracted to her. But I know that a man would be, but she could still find her attractive, but not in a sexual way. How do male female friendships fit into this discussion? Because men and women, I guess, can be friends.

Mike Carruthers
But what is the friendship? I mean, is there some sexual attraction even though there's no sex? Or how does that work? We know that cross sex friendships, male and female friendships, they're a relatively new thing. Like in the 1940s and fifties, they were quite frowned upon.

James Giles
It's considered a deviant friendship, and in many countries in the world, they are just illegal. Right? You're not allowed to be with a man, let alone be a friend with him, if you're not his partner. But one of the things about cross sex friendships that's happening, I think, is the profile is the same as in a romantic or a sexual relationship where the woman tends to be younger than the man, tends to be shorter than the man, tends to be less educated or less making less money. That tends to be the case in partners, sexual romantic partners, and that's also true in cross sex friendships.

So there probably is definitely a sexual element there. But it's important to remember that just because there's sexual attraction doesn't mean that people act on it. You can't act on every instance of sexual attraction. So it's okay that you feel sexual attraction without thinking that, oh, this must mean this and that and so on. No, it doesn't.

We feel that, and that's a very normal thing. And in cross sex friendships, it seems like it's there. There is definitely an element of sexual attraction, and that gives it a different flavor from male and female friendships. Though there's several other things, too. Like, there's a female way of thinking that males enjoy.

Males often in their friendships, have competitive aspects that makes them a little bit unpleasant. And with a woman, he doesn't have that. And women also have a competitive streak. And some women say, our friendships are just too emotional and they're too strong. And with a male friend, I don't have to worry about that.

So there's several features going on there. There is sexual attraction, and often these relationships do turn into full blown romantic relationships, but again, they need not. Thanks, Mike, very much. I really enjoyed this. I appreciate you having me on the program.

Mike Carruthers
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For a while now, I've wanted to do a segment on how the world of work has changed, because you can see how it's changed. I mean, when you look at the workplace pre Covid compared to how work is today, so many things have changed. And while some things look like they're going back to the way they were, a lot of other things are not. And perhaps the thing that has really changed is how people view their work. Or maybe its better to say the way people question their work.

Is this really what I want to do? Does this work really mean something? Jennifer Tosti Karas has been studying this and has some great insight I think youll find interesting. Jennifer is a professor of management at Babson College. She also teaches, researches and coaches others about what it means to create a meaningful career.

And she is author of a book called is your work worth it? How to think about meaningful work. Hi Jennifer. Welcome to something you should know. Hi, Mike.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas
Thank you so much for having me. So let's start by talking about how work has changed, because it's changed a lot. Not just pre and post Covid, which is a substantial change, but the whole idea of work has been changing for years, and it's just different now. When my father was working, he kind of defined himself by what he did, and it just seems to have gotten very far away from that. Yeah, it's funny, Mike, to hear you say we've changed how we used to think about work where, how we used to think about work is pre 2020, maybe, because I like to go way back, like a century back, right.

And sort of trace our movement from farm work to factory work to kind of mid 20th century office work and office culture. And I think that's where when you say, we're your father, certainly my father, my parents age, we're still in that kind of dominant office culture for many people, where you expect to have one employer, maybe the majority of your career, move up that ladder, retire from that place, and also stay in one place, raise the family, not really move around. So already, by the time I graduated college in the year 2000, I'm kind of this cusp of generation X and a millennial. I already had no delusion that I would work for the same company forever. Everyone I knew was job hopping, moving around, certainly not yet working remotely.

I would say that is more of a post Covid thing. But we already had this notion of what is sometimes referred to by people who study careers as a boundaryless career. And most of the changes that you've just described were changes that happened gradually over a few decades. Things just evolved. The workplace evolved.

Mike Carruthers
But then Covid came, and it changed things quickly and changed things a lot. I mean, more than we ever would have thought. So jobs that prior to Covid, you would say, there's no way this could be done remotely. Suddenly, guess what? We all saw it.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas
They're being done remotely and well and successfully. And now workers don't want to go back. They're negotiating. Will it be two days in the office? Will it be basically, I don't want to come in unless I have to, and I certainly don't want to come in on a Friday.

And we're just seeing all this newfound. I mean, we had already gotten way more flexible and way more boundary less than we had been, and now it's just gone to really another level. I mean, I guess the other thing that I want to make sure that I say, especially given what I research and study and write about, is people really reconsidered. Post Covid, the big why? Why am I doing what I'm doing?

This is why we saw the great resignation, because people suddenly, especially when you're faced with your own mortality, people are dying. I could die. I could die tomorrow. We don't tend to go around thinking those sorts of thoughts, but when we do, we suddenly say, is what I'm doing with my limited time on this earth, is it really working for me? Is this really how I want to be spending my time?

And so many people quit jobs that they otherwise might have gone along in because they said, time is too short. And I have to try. I may not know what I want to do, but I have to try to do something better. One of the things that historically seems to drive what job you take, what job you want, what job you will settle for is your desired standard of living. How you want to live will determine, well, what job do you need to live that way?

Mike Carruthers
And that seems to have changed. There's a movement you may have heard about called the fire movement. Financial independents retire early. And so some people said, how do I actually free myself of work as quickly as possible? And a lot of that is, what do I really need to live?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas
Do I need. We get trapped in this. And especially in the age of social media, constant marketing, we think we need a certain standard of living. But a lot of people, not a lot, but at least some people are reconsidering, how much do I really need to live? And is there a way to even get passive income that requires very little of me and I can still live and not work as much?

Mike Carruthers
So when people talk about, well, people write books about meaningful work, but do people think that way? Do people wake up in the morning and say, is my work meaningful? Mustn't I find meaningful work? Or do people just get up and go to work? Yeah, I mean, I think too often, and day in and day out, people just go to work.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas
And by the way, even the most meaningful jobs that we can imagine, right, just these prototypical helping professions, caring professions, healthcare, childcare, social work, right? Saving the world, saving the oceans, very little work feels meaningful every day. So regardless, there are going to be days when you're waking up thinking, oh, man, I have to go to work today. Right? So while certainly there are times when I would say people do ask questions about, is this the job I want?

So, for example, when graduating from college or graduating from high school, maybe entering the workforce, there are times when people may contemplate career changes for lots of different reasons, but, you know, and then maybe they're asking these big questions. But I would say in general, we don't tend to ask the question about, is my work meaningful? And that's part of what, you know, through my own research and teaching and coaching, I would like to get people to think about that. And by the way, meaningful work does not just need to be work that makes the world a better place or, you know, feels personally fulfilling and self actualizing every single day. Again, that's a very, very high bar.

Work can be meaningful if it is providing for my family, and my family is what makes my life meaningful. Work can be meaningful if it is allowing me to enjoy a hobby or something I would say I love doing outside of work. That is sort of my reason for being. My reason for living. So although there is an idea that work itself can be meaningful, that's not always what it has to mean.

Mike Carruthers
But that's what gets talked about a lot. People talk about how they want to change the world and their work isn't fulfilling because they're not doing. It's not their calling. And it's a lot of woo woo stuff when the guy down at the brake shop is making a lot of money and providing for his family and living a good life, but he's just putting brakes in cars. Yeah, absolutely.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas
So we have had a absolute cultural, I don't know, takeover, I'll say, of this idea that you should do what you love, your work should be a calling. And this is something that I study. So we didn't. I mean, this was an idea that dates back to sort of Protestant Reformation. Your work should be a calling either, because you are literally a clergy person doing the work of God later, sort of protestant revolution, protestant work ethic.

The idea was, let's elevate work. Let's elevate what we do day in and day, day out, and say it can serve God, even if I'm just a farmer or just a laborer, that this work can be in service of God. And it sort of, like, beats the alternative where idle hands are the devil's plaything, or whatever people like to say. But we see this really reemerge in kind of late nineties, early two thousands, when we see knowledge work become very popular. And we see a lot of people who, again, are maybe freed up to say, I have a lot of choice.

What is it that I want to be doing? And we start putting a lot of pressure on people, that your work must be a calling. So I like to quote from this Steve Jobs Stanford commencement speech where he tells people, the only way to do good work is to love what you do. And if you haven't found it yet, keep looking. And so then I see a very direct line to my students, and they're in my office.

Like, if I don't know what I love to do, and I don't know if what I love to do is in my work, what does that mean? Have I failed, basically, at life? So I think this cultural pressure is a bit misplaced because obviously, as you said, while it would be great if we all loved our work, because, again, what's the alternative? We don't want people to hate their work, think it's drudgery, think it's certainly meaningless, but we don't all we know that we don't all need to love our work to do great work, nor do we need to love our work to have a great life. Is the issue, though?

Mike Carruthers
I mean, are people sitting around wondering about, is their work meaningful or is it more of a, I wonder what I should do? Like, what do I want to do? It doesn't have to save the world. But, you know, what do I just, especially, I guess, people coming out of school, graduating high school or college or whatever, and wondering, what do I want to do? Is that the question?

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas
Yeah, I think that is the question. And so I think when we think about the overall rewards of work, we do tend to distill them, and it's a little bit of a false dichotomy, but we do tend to distill them to money or meaning. I mean, I'm simplifying greatly, right. But we're sort of aware at some level that often the jobs that, let's say, do the most good in the world or make the world a better place are not always the ones that pay. Of course, doctors, there are some exceptions to this, but surgeons, doctors, etcetera.

But again, I think the question becomes, how much do you really need to live and to accomplish the goals that you have for your life? So not just your work, but your life? And are you caught up in what others are doing? I mean, I see this a lot teaching at a business school and actually one that's known for entrepreneurship. Everyone thinks if I'm not Mark Zuckerberg and I've started my first company, by the time I'm done with college, I'm a failure.

Right? So how do we reduce the social pressure and the cultural pressure? Sometimes there's parent pressure involved, too. Right? Like, you can choose any job you want as long as it's a doctor or a lawyer.

Right? A lot of parents say that. A lot of parents like business schools because they have a return on investment. A lot of people get employed at the end of it and in jobs that are well paying. But I would love for people when they are considering, what is it that I want to do?

Will the job make you? Will it pay enough that you can accomplish whatever the goals are that you have? And also, will it be meaningful even in a way? Again, doesn't have to save the world, doesn't have to feel like a perfect job every day. But can you sort of justify to yourself and others why it's worth taking the time to do right versus the alternative, where I honestly don't know why this job even exists.

And I don't know why anyone should care about it. We wouldn't want anyone to feel like their work is truly without meaning or devoid of meaning. Or I guess even worse, has sort of a negative meaning, is doing harm in some way. There's been stuff in the news about people who are, and you mentioned earlier, the great resignation. Like, people are just exiting work.

Mike Carruthers
Like, are people questioning the value of work? Like, why do I need to work? Maybe I don't need to work. Maybe I will do something else and not work. So I feel like our cultural conversation now is upending any number of beloved institutions.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas
So people are like, why do I have to get married? Why do I need a college degree? Right? And along with that, why do I have to work? So I mentioned earlier this movement toward early retirement, this dream of, like, why do I need to wait until I'm older?

Maybe not in as good health. Why can't I have that today? Right? And so that's sort of one side of this, I think another side of it is this very omnipresent, looming threat of artificial intelligence and automation and what's sometimes referred to as technological unemployment, meaning at its most simple form, the robots are coming for our jobs. But what will it mean if I see a world in which my work either goes away entirely, it's maybe automated, routinized AI can do it better, or it's changed to the point where it's not a job I want to do anymore.

Right? What makes it fun for me or interesting for me and makes me feel like I can grow is gone. Then what? And I think we're right on the precipice of that. I mean, I think there's a lot of angst about it and not a lot of clear answers.

And we're all just as with many major, it feels like world issues right now. We're kind of waiting to see how things play out. And that's sort of psychologically uncomfortable and anxiety provoking. So I think people are asking really big questions about work, and I think it makes sense. And I certainly think, rather than say I must work the majority of my waking life, I would love people to feel like there are options and I can choose how I spend my time and I will work as much as serves me or as I wish to and not more.

Mike Carruthers
Do you think what you're talking about applies to most people? Because I see in the media and just in life, I see people that fit this description that they're questioning their work. Maybe they want to do something else how much do they need to work? Where do they want to work? All that.

I get that. But there's also people who work a lot. I mean, they love their work. They're first in in the morning, last to leave at night. And that's kind of the old stereotypical, my dad's generation kind of thing, where work was everything and you worked really hard and that's what you did.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas
We did get in this place of work being sort of a default state for a lot of people. We had a lot of overworking. We had, it's sometimes called the hustle culture, where people felt like from the moment they wake up in the morning till the moment they go to sleep, unless they're working, they're sort of worthless. That's predominant among entrepreneurs, like the people that I work with at my college. If you're not working hustling, grinding all the time, you're a failure.

And I would love to see people take a step back from that and say, what else would I want to do with my time? And am I using it the proper way? Then I wonder, if we swing the pendulum all the way over to where a lot of us are choosing not to work, what will that actually look like? So my co author, someone I work with a lot on this topic, Christopher Wong Michelson, he likes to say, even if work went away, I think how we would occupy our time would look a lot like work. Can we really be productive in our lives in a way that doesn't somehow look like we're accomplishing a to do list?

Mike Carruthers
Well, what happened, or has anything happened to what has often been referred to as the work ethic in this country, that people had a work ethic, which to me always meant you need to. You need to get up and go to work. That's your work ethic. You can't just not. I mean, that's.

And it does seem like that it's not as clear a work ethic as it used to be. Yeah, I mean, every generation loves to say that the young generation currently is lazy, entitled, doesn't want to work hard. So that was true when I was Genet, you know, Gen X coming onto the workforce. Everyone was saying about us, that about us, then about the millennials, and now about Gen Z. So I do think there's partly, and we love to say this, and it's not clear, actually, the current generation of young people or anyone else is actually lazy and just thinks they're entitled to everything without working hard for it.

Jennifer Tosti-Kharas
There's actually no data to back that up. But I do think this sense, I've been asked a lot lately about a phenomenon called quiet quitting. And that seems relevant here, because that's, that's this notion that quiet quitting. I'm not quitting my job. In fact, I'm very much staying at and doing my job, but I'm doing sort of the bare minimum.

I'm not going above and beyond. I'm doing the job description, but no more. And that really scares employers. I mean, employers are like, how can we stop this? Right?

And I wonder if it's not, again, a recalibration of, for so long, people felt the only way that I can either do my job well or maybe get my employer to recognize me, promote me, maybe even just keep me at my job, was to go 110% above and beyond, day in and day out, all the time. And I think that maybe people are trying to reclaim a little bit of that autonomy and time for themselves. And again, sort of this antidote to this hustling, constant hustling culture. But I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing as long as their job is getting done. But I think we may reach this sort of intersection where my desire of how much I want to do as a worker bumps up against the employer's expectations.

And if that falls to the side of I'm not meeting expectations, you can't expect employers to keep you on or promote you or any of those things. So another label that I often hear is lazy girl jobs, sort of picking jobs, that when they leave, the job stays at work, they're not bringing it home with them. They're doing, again, the bare minimum. But I also think these concepts are very unsatisfying to us because we do. I mean, Americans really do like to think of ourselves as industrious, hard workers.

We do have, as you referred to, a protestant work ethic. Right. It's sort of, our founding belief is doing hard work is inherently moral or noble. So it's very much flies in the face of that, which I think makes people uncomfortable. Well, anyone who has a job has certainly noticed that things in the workplace have changed, and they continue to change.

Mike Carruthers
It's like, in a total state of flux. So I think it's great to get your explanation and your insight into what's going on and why. I've been talking to Jennifer Tosti Karas. She is a professor of management at Babson College and author of the book, is your work Worth it? How to think about meaningful work.

And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, Jennifer. I appreciate you coming on and talking about all this. Awesome. Thank you so much, Mike.

It is impossible to go through life without the following experience. You have a pair of socks. You put them in the laundry to wash them, and only one of them comes back. Where did the other one go? Well, it is possible that you may think you put two socks in the laundry when you really only put one in, but let's assume you actually did put two socks into the washing machine and only one comes out.

The AWOl sock often gets trapped inside the washing machine machine. Socks are particularly prone to go rogue during the spin cycle, especially if the washer is overloaded and then it winds up being whipped into some small gap where the sock can then slip between the tub and the drum or somewhere else in the washing machine. From there, some may even work their way down and get sucked into the drain pump, and other socks may actually make it all the way through and out with the wastewater. And that's where it went. And that is something you should know.

If there is anything in this episode that you thought was particularly interesting that you would like to share with a friend or some relative or something, please, please do so. Please push the share button wherever you listen to this on the player and send it to whoever and help us grow our audience. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. Hey guys.

Candy Valentino
Welcome to the Kandi Valentino show. I'm Candy Valentino. I was a founder before I could legally order a drink, and for more than two and a half decades, I've built, scaled, acquired, and exited multiple businesses in diverse industries. Now, my goal is to help you by sharing the knowledge that I've learned, the mistakes that I've made, and the wisdom that I've developed over my journey. Bi weekly episodes every Monday and Thursday.

Mike Carruthers
The Candy Valentino show. Wherever you listen.

Every story eventually comes to an end. This June, hear the final episode of season two of the hit podcast series in the Red Clay. Durham in the Red Clay tells the unbelievable true story of Billy Sunday Burt, the most dangerous man in Georgia history, in the podcast that people are calling riveting, incredibly moving, captivating, and addicting binge seasons one and two of in the red clay. Now, wherever you listen.