>Phoning it in at work is bad for you in the long term.
How is it "bad" for you? Make an argument that doesn’t simply devolve into vacuous platitudes and protestant work ethic nonsense.
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.