On "quiet quitting” American adulting and having more fun
Goodbye to-do lists, hello joie de vivre.
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School started here last week, and lurking in the back of my mind is the summer “to do” list that I made back in May (am I the only one who pushes off half her adulting tasks to the summer?)
I know that half of the things on it are not done.
I can’t even remember precisely what some of the items are now, and I don’t want to look at the list stored in the Notes function on my phone.
I know that I was supposed to look into joining a Pilates studio.
My partner and I were going to clean out the closets and the dressers that haven’t been organized for years.
I was supposed to put a bunch of items on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist, including the crib we no longer need, that is dismantled and currently stored behind our bed’s headboard.
I was supposed to find an in-network eye doctor on our insurance plan.
I was supposed to research the benefits of the credit union associated with my workplace.
I was supposed to update my LinkedIn page, and follow up on a course that promised to “elevate my marketable skills.”
I was supposed to hang mirrors, or indeed hang literally anything on our empty walls.
As I’m recalling this list, I’m remembering already why I abandoned a lot of it. It is the ACTUAL OPPOSITE OF SUMMER FUN.
You want to know what I did instead?
My partner and I took advantage of our lighter summer workloads and gave up on trying to get work done on weekends and “switching off” on Fridays to save money on childcare, and just decided to go on family adventures around town.
We went to swimming pools all around the city, including a charming public mini-pool in Soho that’s just for kids that happens to be next to a bakery with some of the best kouign-amann (caramelized croissants) ever.
We ate Vietnamese take-out on a pier, found some epic public splash parks, and licked passion fruit ice cream cones.
When there was a heat wave, we went to the Natural History Museum and let our three-year old run around under the whale for as long as she wanted, while we sprawled on the floor underneath in the cool darkness.
One of my best friends works in my department at work, and we went on long lunches. We got tacos and lemonade. We ate at sidewalk cafes and sat in the park.
My pasty New Yorker self got something of a tan.
I never got any abs, but I did admire my calves, which got strong and muscled again from long walks shlepping up hills and all around the city.
I did not work on my gut microbiome; instead we ate watermelon, sliced peaches, and tomato toast (via @grossypelosi) for dinner three or four nights a week, and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
I still have a stack of books next to my desk that I was supposed to attend to that have maybe been there since 2019-ish. But I did read a couple wonderful novels including Matrix by Lauren Groff and Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder.
At some point, in mid-July, it occurred to me that what we were doing was having FUN again.
At the end of last summer, I wrote about how it was almost, kind of, sort of a pretty good summer—but Summer 2021 was never quite the past-vaccine summer that I needed. This one was better.
I credit part of the success of achieving summer fun with giving up on certain tasks on my to-do list associated with the achievement and productivity culture of American adulting.
If “quiet quitting” at work is drawing realistic and healthy boundaries around our labor and doing just the work that we actually get paid for—I think I’m ready to do the same around some of the labor that I don’t even get paid for, but has become part of the expectation for a “successful” adult life of non-stop personal responsibility and “improvement.”
My LinkedIn page may remain vintage 2016. My home is never going to look polished and coordinated and not like someone emptied a library cart next to my desk most of the time.
This is a reasonable trade-off, I think, to achieve a measure of joie de vivre, or exuberant enjoyment of life. Maybe I can give up some of the trappings of a “successful” adult life in favor of gaining some hours back to have a life.
And here's the thing—American adulting already puts a huge time burden on its citizens.
Because we don’t have universal healthcare and instead have a complicated insurance system, for example, Americans spend a staggering 12 million hours a week (a week!) on the phone with health insurers, according to a Stanford study last year. And that’s for those lucky enough to have insurance.
We spend a lot of time (and money!) doing taxes—about 6 billion hours a year—due to an unusually convoluted and arduous tax system. Dozens of other countries, including Sweden, Japan, and Spain, send residents a pre-filled return, and ask them to sign if they agree with the amount that’s indicated. Can you imagine??
Parents of course have their own time taxes that aren’t often accounted for in studies. Who among us hasn’t spent hours, days, weeks researching quality and affordable childcare or summer camps because we are the only wealthy nation to provide no federal family leave or childcare?
In the summer of 2019 I visited 13 daycares and created a spreadsheet detailing each of them that amounted to a part-time job’s worth of effort. We often speak of the “mental load” in terms of gender inequity, but it’s also a systemic policy issue.
And this, of course, is just scratching the surface.
We can’t quit a lot of the responsibilities that keep our lives functioning, but if we “quiet quit” some of the expectations of American adulthood to reclaim some time, who could blame us?
Katherine Goldstein recently wrote about entertaining in her messy house and learning to enjoy it in “Maybe your messy house is your superpower.”
Rachel Yoder, author of the glorious aforementioned novel Nightbitch recently gave an interview in which she said: “I really feel like underachieving can be an act of profound self-care and radical feminism. To say, I’m not going to learn any more competencies, I’m done with that. I’m not here to overachieve in service of other people.”
After neglecting my summer to-do list, I remembered that last spring I had made another list on my phone.
I called it “Things I want to do with E the summer that she is three,” and I had jotted down a list of things that I wanted to experience with my daughter.
Here are items from that list:
Go swimming
Car trips
Picnic at botanical garden
Hikes
Visit cousins
And you know what? I crushed it. The goals I made in service of my relationships and embracing enjoyment of life got ticked off—every single one. And it felt great.
It reminds me of a lovely interview I came across with Meik Wiking, chief executive officer of the Happiness Research Institute in Denmark, where people famously report the highest levels of happiness. Wiking attributes this to a culture of “decoupling wellbeing from wealth.” He suggested doing something for free with people that you care about, like going on a hike.
He also spoke about hygge, which is often translated in the U.S. as buying cozy sweaters, but he described it as the art of enjoying the simple pleasures in life by “crafting a comforting atmosphere to enjoy with a few family members or friends.”
We don’t have the structures that the Danes have to create a sense of national trust, or as one interviewee described it: “We consider the collective ‘we’ versus ‘me.’” But maybe we could give ourselves permission to invest more in our relationships, intimacy, and pleasure.
The week before last, as my partner and I were gearing up for the school year, he groaned and started to say, “So, that summer to-do list...we have a ton of things to get done…”
And I was like, “Shhh. It’s okay. We had the summer that we wanted. And it was really good.”
And then we put our child down for the night, still unwashed and smelling slightly of sunblock.
And we ourselves retired to bed with the glow of summer still on our skin. And we rested well, with a dismantled crib that’s been there since last summer hidden behind our headboard.
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On "quiet quitting” American adulting and having more fun
Thank you for reminding us that giving ourselves permission to have fun is ok. It made me feel relieved to know that I’m not the only one with a closet full of potential Craigslist sales and stacks of unread books by my bedside. Truth is, I’ve been feeling rather dead inside and I’ve realized that my heart has been completely closed up, perhaps bogged down by my own endless master to-do list. I am told that the way we can open up our hearts to begin to feel again is by doing that which brings us joy, which you have eloquently described and your timing couldn’t be more perfect. May we all take those quiet, simple steps towards creating those moments of happiness that will allow our hearts to open up to more love and joy everyday. Thanks again for a wonderful article!
I loved how much fun you had doing what was on the really important list: enjoying playful time with your daughter. Those moments are precious.