Future of Work: 12 books I read in 2022
Laetitia@Work #54
Hi everyone,
I love writing about books. I’m not a fast reader but I am a very enthusiastic one. Ever since my teenage years I’ve loved buying books, reading (some of) them and daydreaming in front of my bookshelves. If tsundoku was a religion, it would be my religion 📚 (you know, it’s the Japanese word that refers to the experience of acquiring books and letting them pile up in your home without reading them.)
I’ll use this newsletter to try and convince you to read more books about the future of work with a feminist perspective or convert you to a special kind of feminist tsundoku 😜 This list is a mix of English and French books. Sadly they’ve not all been translated. But hopefully you’ll find something you’ll want to read in this list.
📚 Below is a list of 12 books about the future of work that I read in 2022. For seven years now I’ve read about 15 books about the future of work & organisations every year. These books were not all released in 2022. But 2022 is the year I read them. (I left out the novels and essays not related to work that I also read.) I find that a reading list always says a lot about the year in question. (In case you’re interested, I also published one such list in 2020)👇💡
#1 Four Thousand Weeks. Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
Life is very short (on average 4000 weeks) so why don’t we all start with the most basic question of how we want to live them? Four Thousand Weeks levels a harsh criticism at all productivity advice: “We're obsessed by our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction (…)Yet we rarely make the conscious connection that these problems only trouble us in the first place thanks to the ultimate time-management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.” I say a bit of philosophy to “start with why” is always a good idea. As far as future of work books are concerned, this may be one of the best I’ve read this year.
👉 Also read Looking for precious time. Laetitia@Work #49 in which I wrote about Burkeman’s book.
#2 How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
In this beautiful book, artist and Stanford professor Jenny Odell also questions “what we perceive as productive.” She is adamant we must redirect our attention as an act of resistance and a way to live a more meaningful life: in our networked age of extreme information overload, the scarcity and low quality of our attention is ruining our health, relationships, communities and the planet. We are and we do what we pay attention to. What does it mean to resist? How can one do nothing? “The point of doing nothing, as I define it, isn’t to return to work refreshed and ready to be more productive, but rather to question what we currently perceive as productive”
👉 Also read my Welcome to the Jungle article about the book (in English or in French)
#3 The Authority Gap by Mary Ann Sieghart
Why are women still taken less seriously than men when it comes to professional accomplishment, expertise, the expression of opinions and manifestation of power? British journalist Mary Ann Sieghart explores this question in a must-read book titled The Authority Gap: “however much we claim to believe in equality, we are still, in practice, more reluctant to accord authority to women than to men, even when they are leaders or experts. Every woman has a tale to tell about being underestimated, talked over, ignored, patronised and generally not taken as seriously as a man”. In a way the authority gap is the matrix of all gender gaps because it accounts for the pay and power gaps.
👉 Also read The Authority Gap. Laetitia@Work #47
#4 Out of Office by Anne Helen Petersen & Charlie Warzel
What impact has the pandemic really had on work? Working from home has become commonplace for many office workers. Also the boundary between work and personal life is blurrier than ever before. Do we work even more as a result? After many exhausting months, one thing is certain: you can’t make 'hybrid' work sustainable without rethinking work... and how much time you spend doing it. With her partner Charlie Warzel, Anne Helen Petersen, whose Culture Study newsletter often discusses the toxicity of modern work culture, wrote Out of Office to help all of us reinvent office work. The future isn’t about where we will work, but how.
👉 Also read my Welcome to the Jungle article about Petersen and Warzel’s book (in French).
#5 The No-Club by Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund, and Laurie Weingart
Everybody is already familiar with work-life balance. But there’s also work-work balance, when you deal with too much dead-end, ungratifying work and too little rewarding work. The No Club originally started when 4 women, “crushed by endless to-do lists, banded together over $10 bottles of wine to get their work lives under control” and “vowed to say no to requests that pulled them away from the work that mattered most to their careers.” Everywhere women are burdened with more “non-promotable tasks”, which prevents economic equality and means there’s a huge waste of talent. The authors share research and useful, practical advice for workers and managers alike.
👉 Also read Joining the No-Club. Laetitia@Work #51.
#6 Vieille, c’est à quelle heure ?! by Sophie Dancourt
Many women are still hit by ageism, at work and elsewhere. The phrase "convent syndrome" refers to the fact that women are expected to disappear after a certain age. Widows were expected to leave the world of the living to go to the convent. The convent syndrome is never explicit but older women really are pushed into becoming invisible. In France alone, there are more than 10 million working women over 45. "Whatever their profession, women have too few older role models (…) This is a fundamental question for our daughters. How can we grow up with the only model being eternal youth?” explains Sophie Dancourt in Vieille, c’est à quelle heure ?!
👉 Also read her inspiring interview (in French) in Welcome to the Jungle and listen to the podcast I recorded with her (in French) 🎧
#7 Imposture à temps complet by Nicolas Kayser-Bril
In the wake of anthropologist David Graeber, Nicolas Kayser-Bril, an NGO journalist and author, tried to investigate why there are people crazy enough to pay others to do tasks that are useless. In Imposture à temps complet, he recounts his own experience of bullshit jobs: hired at a government training institute, he was asked to set up "data journalism multipliers" through "blended learning" on the basis of an absurd and incomplete job description. “If bullshit jobs continue to spread, it's because they benefit someone or something," he writes. "While office life is mocked in popular culture, cynicism is praised…”
👉 Also read my article (in French) titled “Pourquoi les bullshit jobs continuent d’envahir le monde”.
#8 La fabrique des masculinités toxiques by Haude Rivoal
French sociologist Haude Rivoal delved into the world of retail logistics to conduct a fascinating investigation. In her book La fabrique des masculinités au travail, she offers an ethnography of masculinities at work, whose ‘modern’ transformations do not prevent gender inequalities. Indeed these transformations may well be the very condition for the continued survival of patriarchy. The model of hegemonic masculinity (through which a group of men claims and maintains a social position of domination) is not necessarily the toughest, but the one most capable of reinventing itself. After all, “isn't adaptability 'the new imperative' of the 21st century?” she asks.
👉 Also listen to the podcast I recorded with Haude Rivoal (in French) 🎧
#9 Le Boys Club by Martine Delvaux
From cryptos to finance, football, cars and architecture, there are plenty of boys clubs. They can be seen at work wherever men are dominant and money and power aren’t shared. Some clubs, like the old English gentlemen's clubs (which still exist!), are explicitly closed to women. Others operate in a more insidious way: in theory, anyone can be a member, but in practice, there are only men. Without always being overtly misogynistic, these testosterone-driven worlds remain hostile to female individuals, who are perceived as 'weak' and 'other'. "The boys club is not an institution of the past", writes Quebec feminist novelist and essayist Martine Delvaux in Le boys club.
👉 Also read my Welcome to the Jungle article about her book.
#10 Impunité by Hélène Devynck
There are Harvey Weinsteins in many workplaces. Patrick Poivre d’Arvor (PPDA) is a TV celebrity who used to present France’s most watched news programme. Behind the scenes, dozens and dozens of women say they were harassed and raped by him. One of them is Hélène Devynck. Her book Impunité denounces the culture of silence at play in such workplaces. As a young woman, she thought she could have an ambitious career as a journalist. But what she experienced in the TV world made her lose all her illusions: misogyny systematically puts women in the position of prey. It’s not just about one sexual predator, it’s about the system that supports him.
#11 La revanche des autrices by Julien Marsay
A teacher and an author, Julien Marsay has been campaigning for years for French to be taught differently. He’s convinced our language doesn’t have to be so sexist! Also, he’s adamant that our literature anthologies should be more inclusive of women. On Twitter, he highlights female authors who have remained invisible in (male-dominated) history. His recent book La revanche des autrices offers a roadmap for all sorts of fields that have excluded women for too long (including music: do listen to my podcast with Marina Chiche!) After reading this book you will no longer be able to say “the female pipeline is just too narrow”.
👉 Also listen to the podcast I recorded with Julien Marsay (in French) 🎧
#12 Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price
For social psychologist Devon Price, Laziness Does Not Exist. It isn’t a moral failing or a weak personality trait. It’s a signal that we ought to pay attention to. It can signal physical or cognitive exhaustion, in which case feeling lazy means we just need rest. Or it can signal depression or difficult life circumstances. It can also mean the work deal you’re offered isn’t acceptable because it doesn’t allow for a decent life. What he calls the “laziness lie” is part of a toxic ideology designed to make us work ourselves to death and remain individualistic: “for people who believe in the Laziness Lie, things like economic reform, legal protections for workers, and welfare programs seem unnecessary.”
👉 Also read Debunking the Laziness Lie. Laetitia@Work #53
👉 My book (in 🇫🇷) deals with the many limits of productivity: En finir avec la productivité 📚 Why not buy it for someone you love for Christmas? 🎁🎄
🎤 The podcast episode I recorded (in English) with Carolyn Childers & Lindsay Kaplan has just been released! Is Pursuing Productivity a Mistake? 🎧 is part of the 3rd season of the New Rules of Business by Chief: “Productivity is tanking, and executives are scrambling for solutions to boost output. But what if continually cranking up the dial isn’t actually getting us anywhere? Is it finally time to replace this 250-year-old metric of ‘success’? On this episode, Carolyn and Lindsay talk to Laetitia Vitaud, author and speaker on the future of work, about the hidden costs of the pursuit of productivity.”
💡Check out my articles published in English in Welcome to the Jungle. Here’s the latest one in 🇫🇷: Diversité et inclusion : « Au mieux, faites, au pire, taisez-vous ! »
🎙️ Nouveau Départ is on its winter break. That’ll give you time to catch up! Here are the latest 3 episodes: Ce joyeux bazar de la double culture (w. Alexia Sena), Boys Clubs vs Serial Girls (w. Martine Delvaux), La revanche des musiciennes (w. Marina Chiche) 🎧 Subscribe to receive our future podcasts directly in your inbox! (in 🇫🇷)
Miscellaneous
🚰 The ugly story of how corporate America convinced us to spend so much on water, Emily Stewart, Vox, November 2022: “Every now and again I catch an ad for miracle spring water, which promises to cure everything from laryngitis to debt. It’s fairly obviously a scam seeking to separate people from their hard-earned money. Then again, the same goes for the plastic water bottles people buy at the convenience store every day, or the box of water or can of water that promises to be more environmentally friendly but isn’t especially.”
🧠 The Struggle To Be Human, Ian Leslie, The Ruffian, December 2022: “How can we avoid becoming structures, abstract entities with all the messiness of humanity scooped out? By taking seriously that which we cannot measure, and that which piques our interest but does not fit our models; by not being too confident in the models we have; by learning to appreciate ambiguity, intuition and mystery; by making room, now and again, for superstition and mad ideas. Above all, by refusing, in whatever game we’re playing, to make thoughtless and predictable moves just because they’re the moves we’ve been taught or conditioned to believe are the correct ones. We should strive to be difficult to model.”
👩👧👦 The Common Denominator for Mothers? Guilt., The New York Times, Kim Brooks, December 2022: “Screaming on the Inside,” seeks to tell the complicated truth. Grose has spent years writing about parenting as an essayist and journalist; she currently covers the subject for The New York Times. Her book is equal parts memoir, journalism, cultural criticism and manifesto (…) “It’s been obvious for 40 years that you need to be on stimulants and never sleep to accomplish all the things expected of a modern American mother.”
I wish you all a good end of year, full of books and reading time! 📚🎄🤗