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Stop looking for the perfect job
A 32-minute podcast episode making the case that a good enough job can be enough
Why it’s worth your time
Does your job really have to be your calling? This conversation makes a gentle case that it doesn't, and that work can be one good part of a fuller life. Simone Stolzoff, who wrote The Good Enough Job, tells Laurie Santos why he now argues for work that's good enough.
How to define a good enough job
- Listen to the episode.
His definition of a good enough job comes about twenty minutes in. The practical part follows the last break.
- Write down what good enough means for you.
In a few lines: the pay, hours, kind of work or title that would make a job good enough for the life you want. Then put one thing outside work on your calendar this week where someone expects you: a class, a game, a standing dinner.
Good moments for this: in the first week of Januarywhen work is all you talk aboutwhile you're weighing a job offer
Keep going with Truest
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- It actually happensWe’ll put it on your calendar and remind you before it starts.
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Stolzoff's examples range from a certain income or title to hours that let you collect your kids from school. What counts will likely shift when your life does, so the list deserves a second look now and then.
What might make this harder
Stolzoff describes the guilt he felt leaving journalism. You don't have to leave to try this; one commitment outside work that has nothing to do with the calling is a start.
Questions people ask
What is a good enough job?
In Stolzoff's framing, one that supports the life and the person you want, by whatever measure matters to you.
What is workism?
Treating work like a religion: a source of community, purpose and identity as well as pay. Stolzoff credits the term to the journalist Derek Thompson.
Is it bad to want a job you're passionate about?
Not in this episode's view; the warning is about relying on one job for all your meaning.
What it says, and how it holds up
The episode opens at an imaginary cocktail party, with the question that tends to follow a stranger's name: what do you do? Laurie Santos, who says she has been working through her own burnout, uses it to ask whether our work selves should really be the main character. Her guest's argument is that expecting a job to carry your whole identity is fairly new, and fragile.
At 22, Stolzoff asked a poet he admired about the old line that if you love what you do you'll never work a day. The answer stuck with him: some people love what they do, others do what they must so they can do what they love, and neither is nobler. He ignored it anyway, he says, and spent his twenties looking for a vocational soulmate in advertising, tech, food and journalism. He uses the word workism for work that has taken the place religion once held, and he names two risks: neglecting the rest of who you are, and losing all of it at once when a job you don't control goes away.
The practical half is mostly about structure. Personal boundaries tend to give way under a deadline, he says, so he favors commitments that by their nature keep you from working, like a class or a run, and he describes an ultimate frisbee team where nobody cares about his output. Unless you decide what you want your relationship with work to be, he warns, your employer will happily decide for you.
It's a conversation between two people who largely agree, and much of the diagnosis, from health insurance tied to jobs to a culture that celebrates CEOs, is about the United States. Good enough also assumes the basics are covered. If a job underpays you, isn't safe or doesn't treat you with respect, this isn't a case for making peace with it; getting those right comes first.
Other perspectives
Different takes on the same question. You don't have to pick a side.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.