A study by Deloitte found that 88% of America’s workforce were not passionate about their jobs.
For many of us, work is just that… it’s work.
It’s not something that necessarily gives us a sense of meaning. We are just going through the motions until we receive that next paycheck. We feel like a cog in a machine.
Over time, we may develop feelings such as anxiety, under-appreciation and burnout. However, we keep working out of economic necessity…we may begin to feel like a corporate slave.
However, it doesn’t need to be that way.
In this article, we will go over what we can do in order to avoid becoming a corporate slave and how to take back control of our lives.
Let’s dive in.
Corporate Slave Meaning
A corporate slave refers to someone who doesn’t receive benefits equal to or greater than the amount of work they put in. Simply put, the downsides of work exceed the benefits.
And this can take many forms, including both monetarily and psychologically.
From a monetary perspective:
- Does working harder actually make me more money?
- Am I currently underpaid and struggling to make ends meet?
- Given an emergency, do I have the funds to do what I need to do?
- Are there opportunities for advancement to improve my economic situation?
From a mental health perspective:
- Does this job align with my values?
- Do I get a sense of accomplishment associated with my job?
- Am I doing a job that I am even remotely interested in?
- Do I dread going to work?
There are costs and benefits associated with every job. Think about it like a scale, with each attribute (cost or benefit) having a weight associated with it.
However, the weights of the individual costs and benefits vary from person to person. This is because everyone has their own unique individual experiences & perceptions.
One person’s scale might look like this:
On the other hand, another individual’s scale might look like the following:
At the end of the day, we need to have an honest conversation with ourselves on how much weight we decide to give each individual cost and benefit. If the costs of our job outweigh the benefits, we might be a corporate slave and should consider making a change.
How to Avoid Becoming a Corporate Slave
Starting Our Path to Financial Independence
The most effective method to avoid becoming a corporate slave is through financial independence.
While this is a longer term strategy, it has the ability to pay the largest dividends: achieving the financial leverage needed in order to permanently escape Corporate America.
There are many sub-strategies that we can do in order to shorten our journey to financial independence:
- Choosing a type of financial independence that fits well with our lifestyle
- Decreasing our big 3 expenses
- Increasing our passive income
- Increasing our W-2 income
- Simplifying our investing through 3 fund portfolios
While everybody’s got their own combination of sub-strategies to achieve financial independence, the game is the same: build the life that you want and then save for it.
Setting Boundaries & Respecting Our Time
The truth is that we don’t have as much free time as we think we do.
There is way more value to being a time millionaire vs dollar millionaire. Money can compound and grow forever, but time will eventually run out.
As such, we need to set boundaries in order to respect the limited time that we do have.
This includes but is not limited to:
- Leaving work at work
- Learning to say no for the sake of work life balance
- Taking time off to recharge and relax
- Maximizing our free time to enrich our lives
However, I want to emphasize the last point.
If we only split our time between going to work and resting for work, our brain is not processing a lot of new information. The result is a warped perception of time & life will feel like it’s flying by.
In other words, we need to actively engage in enriching life experiences that can “stretch” the limited free time that we do have. Don’t put your life on autopilot and end up like Adam Sandler in “Click.”
Prioritizing Mental Health Over Money
According to a 2010 study conducted by Princeton:
Emotional well being [levels] off at $75,000/year. In other
“Does Money Buy Happiness?” Princeton University
words, the quality of the respondents’ everyday emotional experiences
did not improve beyond an income of approximately $75,000 a year [~77K in 2021 dollars.];
above a certain income level, people’s emotional well-being is constrained
by other factors, such as temperament and life circumstances.
With that being said, the value of this study is not about pegging happiness to a certain number. Instead, the true value is highlighting the fact that money’s role in our happiness begins to decline at a certain point.
In other words, there is a limit on the amount of money needed for our happiness and we should be aware of what our individual limit is. Without being aware of our limit, we will continue chasing money & our mental health will suffer. We are chasing happiness in the wrong places.
Using our scale example from earlier, we can clearly see how chasing money can impact our mental health:
At the end of the day, we need to find our individual sweet spot of economic security as well as doing fulfilling & meaningful work. According to study by the University of California, spending more time on our passions can contribute to lowered stress and increased happiness.
Final Thoughts
A cog in a machine will continue to turn until it breaks.
At which point it will be replaced with another cog.
We can choose to be a cog, enable our work to own us, and become a corporate slave.
Or we can be the ones who dictate and control how our lives ultimately unfold. It’s our decision.
Thank you for reading! 🙂
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