Phoning it in at work is bad for you in the long term. That’s not balance, it’s wasted years. Either find a way you can do meaningful work at work, leave to do your own thing, or leave to find more meaningful work. Just my opinion.
It's only wasted if there were better (realistic) options. For many people, they don't.
If your mortgage payment and overall living expenses are so high that you can only get by with a high paying job then you've shackled yourself to your org and should fear being fired
If you live well below your means you'll have a large savings buffer and won't care so much
> The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, "If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils."
> Said Diogenes, "Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king."
Average home price in the US is 400k and mortgage rates are over 7%.
This is a meaningless statistic with zero nuance. Average is also the wrong thing to look at
Most of the issue preference. There are foreclosed homes that are <$100k, but they are in areas people don't want to live, or can't due to lack of job options.
How is it "bad" for you? Make an argument that doesn’t simply devolve into vacuous platitudes and protestant work ethic nonsense.
If people have found meaning while pushing bits around, I'd love to hear about it. I think working to improve other's lives directly (healthcare, charity work, community involvement, etc.) can provide the most meaning to people.
More than that, phoning it in is bad for your character. That assumes you share a certain moral framework or outlook, though. If you're a moral nihilist, then it's really hard to make such an argument make sense to you. But let me at least try to make it make sense.
I want to be part of something, part of a team, not just a cog in a machine. I want relationships, not just for all of life to be transactional. But, see, wherever I go, I take me. The "me" that I take to my marriage or to hanging out with my buddies is the same "me" that goes to work. When I make one part of my life purely transactional, it's hard to keep that from leaking out into other areas that definitely should not be transactional.
Now, you're going to say that companies take advantage of that, and you'll be right. They do. They try to sell you on "we're all a big team!" and such. But the fact is that some places do actually try to live that out, and some places purely use it to try to extract the maximum effort from suckers. And the second group tends to be corrosive to your character, too, even if you don't phone it in, partly because such places tend to have lots of people who are phoning it in, but more because the company is phoning it in in how they relate to you. But the answer is not to phone it in in return. The answer is to start looking for somewhere better.
To simplify:
1. Reinforced behaviors become stronger, while others get weaker. Ultimately, I'm a behaviorist (ACT).
2. Work is a big part of your waking life.
3. If you spend that much of your life going through the motions, you're strengthening behaviors that may not be constructive.
4. When your situation changes, and you need those more constructive skills and behaviors, you may find them much more difficult to access.
That's a very functional lens. However, there's a deeper lens you can apply. I believe people feel most fulfilled when they're routinely acting in alignment with their core values (what they truly care about).
Phoning it in at work may actually be "workable" from an ACT standpoint if your personal life lights up all your values, and you are feeling completely fulfilled by friends, family, hobbies, etc.
However, I would venture that most people also want to feel that their work is giving them some feeling of intrinsic satisfaction, not just a paycheck. You can call it Purpose, Mission, Self-Efficacy, whatever you want. In my framing, people don't want to live in conflict with their values 8 hours/day.
But there's an even more basic argument that I would make: Life is incredibly short. You are hurtling toward death. If you're phoning it in, you're giving away your most precious resource for a small amount of financial security (and you still might get fired). You may find that when you hit 45 (or 65) you look back and weep for the decades you poured into something that you didn't care about, or even held in contempt.
You have to do what's right for you, but it's never too late. As someone who has admittedly phoned it in previously, I'm violently on the other side now. Regardless of how you feel about your job, I strongly recommend finding a way to give a shit, or getting out by any means necessary.
If you start phoning it in, don't be surprised if you start becoming isolated. And that can definitely be bad for you in the long term.
This is silly. 90% of corporate work employing millions of ppl is not 'meaningful work'
Plenty of people find meaning in work. They enjoy it and would do it even if they won the lottery. If that's you, then that's great.
But that will never be the cade for me. I serve organizations with missions I am proud to support. I work with reasonably smart, dedicated people. I am paid a decent amount. The work is sometimes challenging and fun. I am a consultant, so I can set my own hours.
But on any given day, I would rather do anything other than work. Go for a walk. Watch TV. Read a book. See friends.
And that's okay.
Even then though, most of that work is objectively not meaningful.
And if there really isn't, get out.