Work For It

Representations of work and media to help with work.

Like a lot of teachers, I’m back to work this Friday. Like lots of teachers I started working a little while ago. The representation of work in the media is interesting. Much has been written about side hustles and quiet quitting. As a Media teacher, I always remember that the jobs my students will work in may not exist yet, so we focus on soft skills. But I am dealing with students who want to be directors and actors, screen writers and influencers. Things I am acutely aware of the barriers of access to. Attitudes to work across the generations are interesting, and something I have spoken with a lot of people about. Harvard Business Review released their prediction of work force trends, and I often think about this piece which looks at people wearing crop tops to work. Things are changing.  

Working in education I feel somewhat immune to corporate trends, we are operating in an old system. Much like nursing and other similar fields, our work was impacted by Covid, but the expectation was very different. One of the pieces from this very newsletter that people speak to me the most about is Tired Teachers.

Sometimes, when I’m watching a show and someone loses their job, I must remind myself that their job is acting in the show, and no loss of income occurred. Shows like The Office and Parks and Recreation, CSI, Virgin River, and Business Proposal (have you ever seen a more random assortment of shows?) are centred around the workplace, others like Friends feature storylines from work but there are of course numerous mentions about how no work gets done. Sometimes, when a show gets cancelled, I think about the actors and maybe check out their IMdB to see if they have anything else coming up. All this is nothing if not an example of how work and the loss of it, is a concern of mine.

Recently influencer/content creator Brittany Bathgate announced that she was getting a 9-5 job. This meant a step back in the work she does on other platforms, but a move I found interesting, nonetheless. I have spoken before about the fact that watching people who are influencers for a living vlog unrelatable because their workday is the commodification of their life. I love vlogs, please don’t get it twisted but just sometimes I think, what are we all doing? It is because of this I find videos tagged with ‘productivity’ more helpful, or why I find myself watching so many college productivity vlogs. Yet interestingly I do not enjoy teacher vlogs. Maybe that’s not interesting, and just the reality of watching something way too close to home. I felt the same about Abbott Elementary but will watch Summer Heights High as much as I can.

Representations of women at work are interesting because there is still so much about the ‘having it all’ portrayal of motherhood, of being on top of it at home and looking sexy, yet appropriate at work, which is very, very hard to process. This is part of why lifestyle content creation can bother me, because their work is doing things around the house etc. and if they’re doing it anyway, why shouldn’t they be paid for it, but it’s an interesting role modelling for people to keep their homes/lives a certain way, when their audience are not benefitting from it in the same way. And the ‘lifestyle’ corner of the internet is a woman/mother dominated space. Much like teaching.

In preparing myself to head back to work and, when I need some general inspiration about this area of my life, there are certain media I turn to. Whilst I find a good playlist invaluable, the media I’m talking about is focused on the industry and process of doing the actual work. And that’s what I thought I’d share.

·      Super practical, I love The Harvard Business Review Guides, specifically Women at work, Managing stress at work, Getting the right work done and Work-life balance.

·      I constantly refer to Othega Uwagba’s Little Black Book – A Toolkit for Working Women and Working Woman’s Handbook and Work Ethics by Phoebe Lovatt.

·      For an organisation/habit focus, Joy at Work by Marie Kondo and Scott Sonneshein is great.

·      For a look at the concept of work, Out of Office by Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen is informative without being dry.

·      The Anna Edit just uploaded this vlog which is good to help you prep for the new year and Hannah Elise has heaps of productivity, work, study vlogs. And Muchelle B’s (Michelle’s) channel is for serious productivity and organisation.

·      Looking at other people’s workspaces makes me more excited about mine, so I love Show Your Working on Kill Your Darlings. Ditto people’s routines, so I still look at the archive of Extraordinary Routines. Madeleine Dore’s book, I didn’t do the thing today and her newsletter are also very good. I’m pretty sure Dore has a podcast too.

·      If you love reading about people’s working process, The Creative Independent is worth checking out.

·      I’m sure there are tons of podcasts, but I don’t really listen to these. I’m writing a piece on podcasting at the moment, but I just know there are lots of work-related ones!

If there are any work-related media that you find really helpful, please share in the comments.

Just quickly, if you’re enjoying looking at the representation of something like weight-loss programs (like last week) or work (like today) and there’s a topic you’d like to see unpacked, please let me know.

Image from here.