your 9–5 is exhausting — but not for the reasons you think

we need more high-agency, meaningful work rather than less work

There is something so profoundly wrong about the usual 9-5 job. You know it, you have felt it — we have all felt it.

But the problem is not that it's too much work, or that it takes away more than half of your waking time. The problem is neither that it doesn't pay much.

As much as all those are real issues, I believe the core problem is that it's simply not meaningful enough and that it doesn't let you live a life of high agency.

We have all seen people who would work for the sake of the process itself, without thinking about money or what the world thinks about them. At that point, they do not care about how much time it takes or how much they get compensated for it. We do stuff when we really want to do it because it's meaningful.

You need meaningful work. And you can't have that sort of work without exercising your agency, because you need to:

• Explore what actually matters to you through self-reflection

• Take massive initiative to get things up and running, and experiment

That's why we hate our 9-5s. That's why we don't like or want to go to them. That's why we would prefer remote over the office, and a 4-day work week instead of 5.

The problem is not work itself — the problem is that you do not balance it out with meaning and ambition of your own.

I don't believe the solution to your 9-5 burnout is merely a vacation. The vacation works precisely because your job is so unfulfilling. A perpetual vacation will simply lose its charm because it will become the new normal. It works only in relation to your job.

The problem with your 9-5 is that you work as a tool — you work for someone else's agenda, driving someone else's ambition forward by putting all your skills at their disposal, happily accepting a paycheck for it (without reflection on how socially or economically disastrous such corporate agendas often are).

You are passive to the real problems because all of your activity is going in the wrong direction. You do not need more passivity — you actually need more activity in the right direction.

We, human beings, are tool makers, not tools themselves. We survived harsh climates in ancient times because we built tools that allowed us to adapt instead of going extinct like other species. That is what you need to do now too: stop being a tool (pun intended) and actually make some for yourself.

We may not go extinct physically, but spiritually we already are.

Don't get me wrong — there is nothing wrong with working for a paycheck and paying the bills. I'm not here shaming you for having a job and not being an entrepreneur.

But seriously, what do you think is the solution to a market that is so employer-centric that we all despise it?

The solution is not less work and more playtime. The solution is more meaningful work that you drive on your own and instill with your own values, so the market sees more diversity, more color, and more humanity.