Since the term was mentioned in a TikTok, “Quiet Quitting” has blown up in conversations around workplace culture and our workplace attitudes. Framed as a counter against today’s non-stop hustle culture, quiet quitting is the idea that you do not need to go above and beyond for your job.
The term is still somewhat ambiguous, with each commentator deciding what it means for them. For some, this could mean not working overtime or picking up work calls on the weekends; for others, it means refusing to take on extra projects outside their defined job scope. At the root of it, quiet quitting reveals that most of us feel burnt out and tired from work.
We explore how reading can improve our relationship with work and help us feel better about the 9 am – 6 pm days we have to work (sometimes slog) through.
Reading helps us to slow down.
A huge reason we may feel burnt out is the rapid pace of the office, leading to overwork. When you work too hard or long without taking proper breaks, you deplete your social and emotional energy, eventually leading to a crash.
One of the best ways to prevent burnout (or recover from it) is to slow down and spend time on yourself deliberately. If this doesn’t come naturally to you, reading is an excellent way of forcing yourself to do just that.
Pick a book (be it a non-fiction or fiction book) that you’ve meant to read for a while. The most important criterion for choosing is that you’re only reading for entertainment; it shouldn’t be for work-related purposes, nor self-improvement goals, like increasing your productivity. You shouldn’t worry about having to finish the book within a set time, either. The goal is to let your mind unwind as you immerse yourself in the text.
This gives you some time away from work. Reading is like taking a long, deep breath to clear your mind so that you can slow down and get the mental rest you need.
Reading opens your mind up to other possibilities.
When stressed, it can be challenging for us to think about anything else. The source of our stress – in this case, work – becomes all-consuming, and it feels like we can’t see outside of it.
Reading helps to challenge the existing way we look at the world. A good book can show us new ways of living and other perspectives that may give us alternative ways to consider the decisions we’re currently making. For example, a book like Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Francesc Miralles and Hector Garcia could prompt us to restructure how we view our work in the grand context of our life’s purpose.
By reading widely, we give ourselves the tools to make sense of our lives, relationships with others, and work. This deeper understanding can alleviate work-related stress and provide a spark of inspiration on how to establish a better work-life balance. In this way, we can build resilience against burnout while drawing more logical boundaries at work – instead of ‘quiet quitting’ entirely.
Reading makes us feel better.
Last but not least – ‘quiet quitting’ may be due to general unhappiness and disgruntlement built up over time, even when the source of our annoyance is long in the past. We mistake those past negative emotions for something still occurring in the present. As such, sometimes, we need a reset in how we’re feeling to return to our offices feeling fresh and new.
Multiple studies have shown how reading positively impacts our moods – by reducing our stress and increasing our empathy. Reading is so powerful that a therapeutic approach called bibliotherapy uses literature to improve a patient’s mental health.
Instead of holding onto past grudges (or letting past emotions snowball into something larger), we can actively improve how we’re feeling. Why not spend a few moments with a book and see how you feel after reading a couple of pages? Perhaps the issue hadn’t been as large as we’d thought; this also gives us pause in being too quick to judge what’s happened at work while repeating the serotonin-boosting effects of reading.
‘Quiet quitting’ will probably continue to be widely discussed; some concerns about (the lack of) work-life balance are indeed valid.
Nevertheless, instead of jumping on the trend, we should take a moment to reflect on our relationship with work and whether there’s anything that we can do as individuals to make it healthier. As we’ve shared, one way of evaluating our attitudes towards work is by reading widely – such as books written by top leaders and renowned thinkers.
One way of doing so is by downloading the NexPage app, which is available on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Access a wide range of summaries of top-selling books (including Ikigai) more conveniently on your mobile phone!