Freedom = Success (Not The Other Way Around)

A great article written recently by Polly LaBarre describes the "groundbreaking" enforcement of a "happiness committee" for the overworked lawyers within their various law firms. Here, workers are presented with candies and milkshakes to congratulate their hard work. It sure sounds nice, but using that to leverage a 20% rate of depression within the field might not be enough. He continues about the bending lines of professional lifestyle today:

"The really interesting shift isn’t from one profession to the next, but from one way of thinking about the arc of a career and working life in general to the next. It goes something like this:

Old version: work hard (for a very long time), achieve success, earn freedom (to retire and do all the things you missed out on while you were working).

New version: find work that affords you freedom = success."

As the piece argues, no number of “happiness committees” will halt the erosion in status of the once-venerable legal and medical professions—because their slide as the go-to careers is rooted in a deeper shift in how people think about success. While we still care about money, security, and mastery, we’ve come to put creativity, meaning, and freedom on the same plane.