You wake up at 6am, neck a double espresso before squishing yourself onto a packed tube. The morning consists of meetings and emails, often at the same time, your eyes and fingers burning from the pace of it. Lunch is at your desk, again – a cheese and ham roll from Pret – which you shove into your mouth with the velocity of someone in a hotdog-eating contest. By the time you get home, it's 8pm and you’re exhausted. You collapse in front of a murder doc and swipe through TikTok until you fall asleep, safe in the knowledge that your bank account is steadily accruing digits (though not quite enough to afford property in this country). Rinse and repeat.
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For a lot of people – particularly millennials, who were raised on #hustleculture and the ‘rise and grind’ mindset as an aspirational lifestyle – the above was something to work towards, even dream about. You work hard, you get paid, you become ‘successful’. But, more recently, we’ve seen a swing away from the rise and grind and more towards the ‘soft life’ – a phrase people are now using to describe a life with lower cortisol levels, more dopamine and less focus on working mega hard for money that you can't spent on fun things anyway (because you're always at work!).
If the grind is for you, that's cool. Some people thrive off workplace adrenaline more than others. But if you've ever found yourself working in a high-stress environment while thinking “Is this… my life now?” then maybe the soft life is for you. But how do you take the plunge? And how hard is it to achieve a fun, easy, fulfilling work life that doesn't necessarily mean going broke?
Make sure you’re not being too hasty
We've all had bad weeks at work. Maybe you're not getting on with one of your colleagues, or maybe you had an annoying email one time. This doesn't necessarily mean that you ought to quit your entire career immediately and completely reinvent yourself under a new name. No, if you're feeling unhappy, make sure it's not just a brief ebb before you make any concrete decisions. I like to think to myself “Was I complaining about the same stuff last year?” If the answer is yes, you might need a change. If the answer is no, maybe all you require is some proper sleep.
Dr. Andy Cope, a “Doctor of Happiness” who specialises in positive psychology and the science of human flourishing, says that it's important to “be sure.” “Everybody will have days and weeks which are really tough. Work's called work for a reason. So just be sure you're not having a bad week,” he says. “But if you are unhappy at work, you do need to make a change. Because life is short and precious, it goes by in a blur. You spend 30 per cent of your life in the workplace.” You don't want to waste 30 per cent of your life being stuck in a rut, do you?
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Decide what to do instead
It's all well and good deciding to quit the relentless grind in favour of something less deadening – but you'll need to figure out what to replace it with. Hannah Viney, 35, tells me that she spent the majority of her work life as an award-winning PR with her six-figure own business. She was riding high, but she was also exhausted. “There’s only so long [in which] it’s healthy to operate at that level of heightened adrenaline before it’s time to get off the ride,” she says.
Eight months ago, she decided to quit it all to raise guide dog puppies instead. Now, she runs a small independent wedding dog concierge business, Fetch and Flourish. “Becoming a guide dog puppy raiser gave me a renewed sense of purpose, fulfilment and unadulterated joy back in my life that had been missing,” she says. Obviously, you don't have to become a guide dog puppy raiser, but you get the idea: think about what you enjoy, rather than what you should enjoy, and follow that thread. You never know where it might take you.
Listen to your body
The soft life doesn't mean going for the easier option. It means doing something that makes you happy. If you're not sure what that is, psychotherapist and author Tasha Bailey suggests listening to your body. Really listening. “Be more intentional with listening to your body and it's response to stress,” she says. “Notice when your heart rate increases. Notice when you feel dread or anxiety, and what parts of your job triggers that. But also look for the glimmers, the moments where you feel joy, safety and confidence in what you do. Glimmers are the makings of soft life – they are the moments when your nervous system is at its most relaxed, soft state. Prioritise a job that brings you more glimmers.”
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The soft life also requires not pushing ourselves beyond what's 'too much', in whatever you do. “We can't have the soft life without the hard work of healthy boundaries,” she says. “Start saying no to obligations, normalise speaking up when you don't like something, listen to your limits and practice working only during your working hours. Boundaries don't happen overnight, so have patience and start by having baby boundaries, with small no's or delaying saying yes to obligations.”
Forget everything you’ve been told about success
Most of us were raised to believe that success meant a nice big house, a nice car and a nice duck egg-coloured Smeg fridge. We were also raised to believe that success meant being stressed all the time – because you can't earn money without stress, right? But – and forgive me for sounding like a TED talk here – what if success actually meant happiness, health and stronger relationships? If you want to embrace the soft life, it's worth attempting to shift your perception of what success looks like, and instead think about what makes you happy. Maybe that means taking a demotion, or moving to the countryside, or retraining in a different subject, or maybe it just means turning off work notifications on your phone – that's all up to you.
“Previously, success came to me in the form of financial milestones, hours spent on the laptop and invites to star-studded events. All of this came at the cost of unsociable hours, sleepless nights, no free time to enjoy earnings and fractious personal relationships,” says Viney. “A mindset and perception shift now values success in other forms – a balanced lifestyle, a day filled day-to-day variety and a vocational passion.” In other words, quitting the rat race doesn't mean you've failed as a human being. It means you're winning.
