What did you want to be when you were a child? A teacher? A doctor? A movie star?

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Well, maybe this isn't a question we should be asking children at all.

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So says Simone Stolzoff, author of The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work. He says when we ask children what they want to be, we make it sound like having our "dream job" is the most important goal in life.

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In his 20s, Stolzoff worked in technology, advertising and journalism before getting offered a job as a designer.

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He was hoping to find the job that would define who he was as a person.

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"I really didn't feel like I was choosing between two jobs," Stolzoff told CNN. "I was choosing between two versions of me."

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But Stolzoff says jobs aren't really designed to give our lives meaning.

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And he says that, especially in the US, there's a desire to always be the best at what you do — and this can even become part of leisure time, as people push themselves to, say, run harder races or read more books in a year.

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Stolzoff took the designer job, but he left it in 2022 to finish writing his book — and find his identity outside of work.

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It's important, he says, not to look for the "perfect" job, but to decide what work is "good enough" to support the type of life you want — whether that means a particular salary, industry, schedule or title.

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And when you decide that, you won't keep wondering if there's something better out there for you.

 

"Now, I'm an author and a freelance journalist," he told Forbes. "But more importantly, I treat my work as part of — not the entirety of — who I am."

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He now makes time to stop working and do things like go running with a friend — and recommends people find time outside of work for family, friends and community.