8 questions to ask yourself at the end of the year

Year-end reviews seem so corporate and pointless, but they can help us reflect on what we’ve done, how we’ve grown, and where we want to go next. Here’s the framework I created for myself and use every year.

When I worked in media as a journalist and eventually an executive, it was common for every editorial calendar to have a series of year-end content pieces that we would produce and publish for our websites and TV programs. You’ve probably seen some of them: The biggest moments of 2023, the most successful celebrities of 2023, the most popular TikTok videos of the year, the biggest influencers of 2023 — and I always wondered, does anyone truly care about year-end reviews?

Do you really want to know all the major news stories of 2023?

Do you really want to know how much richer billionaires have gotten in 2023? It’s a lot, by the way.

Do you really want to know what the top shows were on Netflix? OK, this one is cool, but mainly because I want to know whether I watched any of them.

I would argue no. Most people don’t care about year-end reviews unless it is about themselves.

Spotify Wrapped is a great example of how people love year-end reviews when it’s about their interests and habits. The popular marketing event by Spotify shows its customers which artists, songs, and podcasts they most frequently listen to throughout the year. And that information is put in context with the data they have from their 574 million users. For instance, in 2023, Spotify said I was the top 1% of listeners who streamed the artist Miley Cyrus on their platform. What can I say, I love a good heartbreak song.

Spotify Wrapped is so successful that 156 million users engaged with it in 2022. Now, other companies like PlayStation, Nintendo, Duolingo, and Reddit have launched similar products to boost user engagement.

This leads to my theory about why people like year-end recaps, or wraps when it’s about themselves: We want to understand who we are, and these year-end summaries and data points help us see what we like, how we act, and how we live.

So as 2023 comes to a close, I wanted to challenge myself to create a year-end review, highlighting the good, the bad, the ugly, and the best things that I accomplished, experienced, and lived through this year. In corporate America, year-end reviews are a common way to reflect and assess what you’ve done for the company, and how your work ladders up to business priorities. But we rarely put that sort of rigor against our own life, which I would argue is way more important than work.

That’s why I made a framework that I’m following to help me document how I think my year went. I want to highlight what I’m proud of, what I enjoyed, and what I’m looking forward to doing next year.

The questions for my year-end framework are in bold. My answers — at times a little vague for privacy reasons — are italicized. The context of why we’re asking ourselves these questions is provided below my examples.

Year-end review questions

2023 was the year I…

… got comfortable working, traveling, and being alone which helped me create new ideas and launch big projects.

I like to start a year-end assessment with a big statement. This is your opening line, and it also helps summarize your year. It’s where you define how your year was with a statement, feeling, or accomplishment. I try to keep my answers short, like a sentence or two because brevity helps with clarity.

What I’m proud of the most this year is…

• Launching my food brand: The Hungry Bengali

• Becoming a better chef and creating more than 50 new recipes

• Reading more. I read 30 books in total, which helped me get inspired to finish my manuscript. Also, it turns out I love reading Stephen King and Lisa Jewel.

• Traveling around the world by myself, some highlights: Dominican Republic, France, and Vietnam

• Filming a documentary in another country

• Launching a new video project that tells the story of small businesses

• Creating a new marketing program for work that I’m going to implement in 2024

• Spending more time walking and being active, averaging at least 5 miles of walking a day

• Creating more art that I enjoy making and using new mediums to create it

• I became more financially independent, saving more than I have in any other year.

For this question, I like to create a series of bullet points of my top highlights. It can be as exhaustive as you want, but I think it’s important to just make a list of what comes to mind. What makes you feel proud doesn’t have to be strictly work accomplishments either, it can be feelings, experiences, or hobbies that brought you joy or filled your time that are memorable and worth documenting.

This year, my favorite …

• Movie: Oppenheimer and Barbie

• Song: “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus

• Book: “The Institution” by Stephen King

• Show: “Hadestown”

• Restaurant: Keens

• Trip: Vietnam

• Work project: Filming my documentary

• Project: Drawing I did of a woman working in her bedroom with her cat

• Recipe: My stuffed artichokes with sweet corn

• Purchase: Gold spider ring

• Clothes: My mid-rise black denim pants

• Activity: Hiking 20 miles through a state park in North Jersey

• Game: Mario Wonder

• Wine: 2021 Thompson Vineyard Syrah

• Food: Dry-aged steak I cooked and paired with a fancy cheese board

• Event: Dave Chapelle live

The problem I often have with year-end reviews is that they focus too much on accomplishments and work and not enough on things you’ve enjoyed and experienced. Therefore, I like to ask myself what I liked this past year. I like to challenge myself to pick “favorites” or memorable things I saw, ate, and did because documenting those experiences helps us appreciate and cherish them more.

What I wish I did more of …

• Spend more time with my partner

• Hang out more often with friends during weekends

• Take more and longer vacations

• Work less, especially after hours when things weren’t urgent

• Try cooking new cuisines I haven’t done before

• See more live music

• Have hobbies outside of computers or devices, like taking up pottery, crafting, jewelry-making

• Explore new neighborhoods and restaurants outside the metro New York area

• Stop posting so frequently on social media

• Grow more plants, especially herbs and vegetables

• Practice my language skills

• Take on one project at a time so I don’t get burnt out

Every year, there are a million things I wish I did. I like to ask this question after I reflect on what I enjoyed this past year because it helps me get more clarity on what I didn’t do and what I may want to do the following year. I try to keep this list close to my top 10 things I wish I did that were within reason. When I say, within reason, I mean things that can realistically be accomplished in a year. For instance, I wish I was an astronaut, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon, so it wouldn’t make sense for me to add that to the list. Try to not add more than 10 things because any more can become unrealistic. We only have so much time in a day, week, month, year.

This past year, I mostly felt…

… anxious about my timeline and eager to pursue projects that have lasting impact.

This question can be a little scary to answer. It forces you to sum up your year into a few feelings, which can be hard or painful to do. It took me a while to find the words for this question if I’m being honest. And I truly did feel anxious a lot this year for personal reasons. Although I accomplished a lot in my work life and my side projects, I often felt anxious in my personal life, straining to figure out if I was going in the right direction, second-guessing the projects I started, and unsure if I was making the right financial moves. But there is strength in being honest with ourselves about how we feel, and the reality is that we don’t always need to be happy and the world isn’t always sunshine and rainbows, and that’s OK. It’s OK to be unsure about things, that is what makes us human and those feelings and experiences matter.

For 2023, I am grateful for my …

• Health

• Family

• Best friend

• Partner

• Work friends

• Boss

• Curiosity to learn

• Willingness to fail and try again

• Taking risks even when my ideas aren’t fully ready

Gratitude is a powerful emotion we often don’t practice in our modern society because many of us are so busy. Reflecting on what we’re grateful for can help us gain perspective on our time, accomplishments, and the people in our lives. It can help us navigate feelings of anxiety, depression, and stress, especially during challenging times. It can also help people disrupt negative thinking, focus on solutions, and appreciate relationships and experiences. I like to list a few things I’m grateful for every year. I’m especially grateful for my health this year. I was sick for a part of this year and it was very disruptive and painful and prevented me from exercising or going out for a while. I’m finally feeling a lot better and I am so grateful to be able to walk, run, cook, and hang out with people, especially because those are the things I value the most in my life.

For 2024, I feel …

… hopeful and level-headed about my future. I know there’s a lot of uncertainty in my personal life, but I know I am talented, hardworking, and smart, and I’ll be able to finish every goal and project I set out to do while making space to live my life and enjoy it too.

Sometimes it is easier to list a bunch of things we want to accomplish next year than to ask ourselves how we want to feel. Of course, we all want to be happy, but it’s important to reflect on how you’re feeling at the end of 2023, and what you’re hoping to feel and experience next year. By doing this, you can set out realistic goals and expectations for yourself. For me, 2023 was marked with a lot of anxiety around my health and personal life, but for 2024, I want to embrace uncertainty with calmness and clarity.

For 2024, I want to…

• Spend more time with friends, family, and loved ones during long weekends

• Take more vacations outside the country

• Create a habit of unplugging from technology and the internet during most of my weekends

• Finish my manuscript by the end of January

• Grow my food brand by making more high-quality content on YouTube and taking on more brand partnerships

• Design and launch a product that I feel proud about selling

• Create my art brand and share my process videos as well as launch a new art Etsy store

• Uplevel my consulting business and take on new clients

• Find a community that I want to settle down in and put down roots

I always have hefty goals for the next year, and I think those are so important to have because they are big and motivating. But it’s also OK to have small goals as well because life is full of big and small moments that can both be important and influential. I like to list no more than 10 things I want to accomplish for next year because too many goals can feel overwhelming or impossible when you put those goals against a timeline. Some of my examples are a little vague for this exercise. For instance, I want to take more vacations, but in reality, it is best to be specific. Where do I want to go? When do I want to take this trip? Who do I want to go with? What’s my budget? What do I want to experience? For example: “I want to spend two weeks traveling by train through Europe with my partner as we do a whirlwind tour of European sites and highlights on a budget of $5,000 in May.” Being specific with your goals can help you see them clearly and make realistic plans to achieve them.

That’s a wrap on my year-end review questions. To recap, the questions are:

1. 2023 was the year I…

2. What I’m proud of the most this year is…

3. This year, my favorite …

4. What I wish I did more of …

5. This past year, I mostly felt…

6. For 2023, I am grateful for my …

7. For 2024, I feel …

8. For 2024, I want to…

As you can see, it’s a pretty short year-end review. Who wants to fill out a long questionnaire during the holidays? This exercise is supposed to be enjoyable. It’s supposed to help you reflect, show gratitude, document success, cherish memories, and plan for next year.

I like to do this exercise for myself. I’ve been doing it for the past six years, and this is the first year I’m sharing my answers and framework publicly, outside of a few friends and family members. I hope it inspires you to give it a try.

You can keep your answers private, but I’ve also gotten a lot of value from sharing my answers with close friends, partners, and family members and using them as sounding boards because sometimes it’s helpful to get the perspective of others, especially when reflecting on yourself.

I wish you a wonderful new year filled with success, joy, and company.

If you liked this article, please like it and share it with your social networks. You can follow me here, or on TikTok and Instagram “at jareenimam” where I post often and talk about topics like love, money, and work.

Quiet quitting is a terrible phrase, but bosses need to take it seriously

Quiet quitting has become a buzzword to describe unambitious workers, but it’s actually a reaction to toxic working environments. Learn why managers should take this work trend seriously.

Quiet quitting has become a buzzword to describe unambitious workers, but it’s actually a reaction to toxic working environments. Learn why managers should take this work trend seriously.

The phrase “quiet quitting” has exploded online as digital publications write articles about the growing trend of young adult workers who are leaving work at 5:00 pm, spending their weekends with family and friends, not answering emails after work hours, and refusing to overextend themselves for no extra compensation.

The concept — although not new — gain popularity after a Gen Z TikToker created a video where he said he recently learned about a new way to work. In the video, he told viewers the phrase “quiet quitting” meant that you were not “subscribing to the hustle-culture mentality that work has to be your life” and that “your worth as a person is not defined by your labor.”

Some media outlets like Fox News Business have called quiet quitting a terrible trend of workers doing less work. And billionaire investor and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary said workers who are quietly quitting are “losers.”

But quiet quitting doesn’t actually mean workers are doing the bare minimum or exploiting their employers for a paycheck. Instead, the opposite is true. Workers are reacting to years of feeling overworked, exploited, and mistreated by their bosses and companies. As a result, they are pushing back by doing their work and not doing extra work for their employers — unless they are fairly compensated.

@jareenimam Boss asks whether you’re quiet quitting @Jareen Imam #quietquitting #managingup #workculturematters #workplaceboundaries #betterjobs #WorldPrincessWeek #greenscreen ♬ Quirky - Oleg Kirilkov

I think one of the tragedies of the phrase quiet quitting is that it paints workers in a negative light. And because the name is a misnomer, there’s room for managers to make false assumptions about workers at a critical point in workplace culture, especially as some workers try to maintain their flexibility of working remotely. Additionally, the phrase helps perpetuate distrust between workers and bosses at a time when some companies are introducing productivity scores and surveillance tracking in order to monitor every minute of work their employees do.

I think the idea of quiet quitting, which is also similar to coasting, has resonated with so many people online, especially Millennial and Gen Z workers because many American workers are feeling tired, burned out, or mistreated by their employers. In fact, workers’ faith in whether their employers care about their well-being has dropped significantly since the pandemic. Only 24% of Americans believe their managers had their best interests in mind, according to a Gallup post released in March 2022.

When I was working as a media executive before and during the first year and a half of the pandemic, I put so much energy into my company and my career that I felt like I had sacrificed my physical and mental health. Even before the pandemic, I regularly came to work early and stayed late because that was the expectation my bosses had for me. I worked weekends and holidays and logged in at odd hours when there was breaking news because that’s what my bosses said I needed to do, and I did this with no additional compensation. I gave so much of my time to news companies and bosses who demanded I put journalism ahead of my life needs. And I did just that. In turn, I missed family gatherings, canceled holiday trips, soured my relationships with my friends and family, and ruined my health.

In the end, all I had was a job that made me feel lonely, stressed, anxious, and unhappy. I thought that all my sacrifices, especially during the pandemic, leading a global team to be more productive, innovative, and enterprising than ever before would help me get the recognition and promotion I thought I deserved. Instead, the opposite happened — I was ignored and left mentally and emotionally hurt by my superiors and my team. What happened to me, happens to a lot of American workers. We’re dangled a carrot by our employers, and in order to get it, we have to sacrifice so much of ourselves for the company. But we rarely get the carrot. 

@jareenimam Replying to @Engineered Sarcasm what does acting your wage mean? @Jareen Imam #workculturematters #workboundaries #quietquitting #betterjobs #AEJeansSoundOn #healthyworkplace #greenscreen ♬ Blue Blood - Heinz Kiessling & Various Artists

That sort of workplace stress is not sustainable, and it has left many American workers feeling disillusioned. That’s why there’s a growing number of workers who say they don’t see the logic in going above and beyond for an employer, especially when there is no guarantee of a payoff.

Ultimately, it’s easy to dismiss quiet quitting or coasting as employees being selfish or doing the bare minimum. But instead, I think this is an opportunity for workplaces to do better in more authentic ways, such as increasing pay, giving more vacation time and overtime, and creating policies that set better work and life boundaries.

Quiet quitting is a reaction to the years of abuse and exploitation that American workplaces have inflicted on their employees. Nowadays, employees don’t feel as enthusiastic about sacrificing their life for a company because it feels pointless, and oftentimes, it is. And that’s because they’ve either seen examples or have experienced themselves being passed up for promotions, raises, and recognition, despite their contributions to the company.

Elon Musk says that the world has a population problem and that if we don’t give birth to more people, we won’t have enough workers to work. But with how dispassionate people are feeling about their workplaces, especially as they see companies make record profits while their salaries are stagnant, I think we’re going to see more worker attrition. 

There are more ways to earn money online. It’s easier to start a business than ever before. Nowadays, people are more interested in hustling for themselves, and not for their employers.

If companies don’t start making real changes that respect workers’ time and personal lives, they will see the talent pool shrink.

Like what you’re reading? Follow me on TikTok, Youtube, and Instagram to see more stories and tips about love, money, and work.

How do I plan my life?

Deciding on what to do with your life? Try creating an odyssey plan.

During the Great Resignation, I switched careers. I went from being an industry leader in media to transitioning over to the tech world. There were many reasons why I left my 10-year career in journalism, but one of the main reasons was I needed a change.

From stressors fueled by the pandemic to changes in economic conditions, I think there are many people right now who are also facing moments of great transitions. And they are trying to figure out the next steps in their life. Although I landed a job at a big tech company, I still feel like my life is in a moment of flux. And I still feel the urge to figure out where my life is heading, and what I’m going to do next.

So, like any diligent student, I started researching ways to better plan out my life.

That’s when I came across Stanford’s Design Your Life course. This course, created by professor and author Bill Burnett, discusses a technique to create 5-year and 10-year plans to help students better design a purposeful and fulfilling life. This life designing technique is called: the odyssey plan.

What is an odyssey plan?

The name “odyssey plan” was inspired by New York Times social commentator David Brooks. In one of his articles, he used the term to describe a period of great exploration in a person’s life — much like Homer’s epic poem. These odyssey years happen generally between ages 25 through 35 as people transition from adolescence to adulthood. This is a period of time when people are discovering who they are, and it can be a critical moment to develop a plan that helps people reach their goals.

Planning multiple years of your life ahead of time can feel like a daunting task. But Burnett says in his course that “if you plan for nothing, you’re going to get nothing.”

Another reason to create a plan that helps us chart out our lives is simply that we’re living longer. One hundred years ago, the average life expectancy was 35, now in most developed nations, the average life expectancy is 75. Thanks to science and activism, we’ve essentially gained a second life.

Now that we’re living so much longer, it’s not uncommon for us to have multiple careers in different industries. Additionally, social scientists are viewing the stages of our lives differently. For instance, in the 1970s, sociologists believed there were 4 stages in a person’s life:

• Childhood

• Adolescence

• Adulthood

• Retirement

But now, thanks to our longevity and more complex social worlds, scientists believe we have six stages in life:

• Childhood

• Adolescence

• Odyssey years (a period of self-discovery)

• Adulthood

• Encore years (a time when a person is working for purpose rather than money)

• Retirement

Seeing these new stages of life listed out like this resonated with me because I was at a point in my journalism career where I felt like I’d achieved as many milestones in the industry as I could. When I asked myself, “what’s next?” The answer seemed pretty obvious: Become a corporate executive. But when I tried to become a vice president at the media company I was working for, the next stage of my career journey, my managers told me it wasn’t my time — despite my qualifications.

Instead, I was told to wait my turn.

When to transition to a new career?

I don’t like sitting still, I never did. Therefore, I couldn’t see myself being a middle manager for another 10 years before there was room at the top of the corporate ladder to promote me. I wasn’t going to let a company’s corporate leadership structure stagnant my life, which is what I feel like I had endured for the first six years of my media career.

Facing this pushback and witnessing my lack of support, I realized it was time for me to leave the media industry. Instead of waiting my turn, I wanted to try something different while I still had the time. I wanted to learn a new skill. I wanted to take a risk. I wanted to embrace change, even though I was really scared of going from an area of immense expertise to an industry where I needed to start over again.

I also wanted to do more outside of my career. For 10 years, I dedicated my life to being a journalist working in the media industry. But before starting my career, I used to paint, write creatively, film short movies, play tennis, rock climb, and dance. But all those passions lost their priority while I worked in the media industry. It wasn’t because these activities weren’t important to me, but because they weren’t relevant to my journalism career. And because our time is finite, the passions I had that weren’t related to my career faded away.

Reflecting back on this, I felt remorseful, angry, and bitter about how I spent the past 10 years working as a journalist. I wanted to plan out my life better, and spend time doing things that I valued.

Life is funny in some ways. For instance, life feels long and short at the same time. When you’re working towards something, like building a career, starting a business, or accumulating a net worth, life can feel so long because your goals take time. But once you look back at your life, you see that time has gone by so quickly. And when you reflect on your life, it’s normal to question whether working so much was really worth it. And according to researchers, one of the biggest regrets of people who are dying was spending too much time working. And for me, working those extra hours every day for 10 years to cover breaking news events, it just wasn’t worth it anymore. Not at the expense of my life and time.

How to design your life

So that’s why I created an odyssey plan for myself. Technically, you’re supposed to create several different plans with different life choices and get feedback from peers, friends, or family on which plan is the right one for you. As of now, I’ve created two plans. Here’s one plan that I’ve put together as an example for you.

In this 5-year plan called “financial independence as a creative entrepreneur” (Burnett suggests titling your plans using six words), I picked three things that I wanted to focus on:

1. Starting my own business

2. Having a family

3. Writing, publishing, and selling my book

Burnett, the creator of the odyssey plan, says that it’s important to pick three things to focus on in your plans and create a roadmap for yourself on how to achieve your goals. Selecting too many goals could lead to wishful dreams and unfilled plans. The reason I picked these three goals is that I wanted to have goals for different aspects of my life: My professional life, my personal life, and my passionate life.

While creating my first odyssey plan, I was surprised by how difficult it was to narrow down what is actually important to me. The first few drafts of my plan were devoted to working and rising in my corporate career. But when I read through those plans, I didn’t feel excited. Instead, they all felt safe and boring.

When I stripped away my desires for corporate accolades and my fears of failing, I saw that what I really want to do is to create something meaningful for myself and others, like writing my book to share with the world. I want to have a safe and stable home with someone I love. And I want to be financially independent outside of working a corporate job by starting my own business.

I’m still in the middle of creating my other plans, but I think this exercise has been a good way for me to reassess my values. And now that I’m in my early thirties, I think this is a perfect time to head in a direction that finally puts me first.

If you’re in a moment of transition and looking to figure out what to do next, I suggest designing a 5-year plan for yourself. Science gave us a second life, and it’s now in our hands to decide with to do with it.

The American worker has changed. But has the workplace?

Recently, a colleague asked me to attend a meeting at 8:00 pm in order to discuss a project he wanted to explore at work. I said no and offered alternate times during standard work hours.

And just the other day, I was at a board meeting and the chair asked for volunteers to help with a task. There was a deafening silence. Normally, I would jump up and help. But this time, I very vocally said, I can’t.

Soon after, I got a LinkedIn message from an old coworker who wanted to “pick my brain” about how to use TikTok. I sent him my YouTube channel and told him to watch my videos.

We’re living at a time when we have more to do than ever before. Beyond work, we have responsibilities and tasks that demand our time and attention, but we only have 24 hours in a day. And frankly, most of us are tired.

Nowadays, the American worker is not just saying no to extra work, they are also leaving jobs that don’t serve their passions and purpose — and that’s a good thing.

Months before the Covid-19 pandemic started, Yale professor and historian Frank Snowden published a book about how pandemics spark paradigm shifts in societies. When traumatic events like pandemics happen, it causes people to face their own mortality, which makes them reevaluate their lives and their priorities.

“Epidemic diseases reach into the deepest levels of the human psyche,” he said to the Guardian in 2020. “They pose the ultimate questions about death, about mortality: what is life for? What is our relationship with God?”

As our friends, colleagues, and loved ones contracted the virus, and some unfortunately died, that trauma has caused people to reevaluate their lives. The American worker has changed. But American workplaces and work cultures have largely remained stagnant. Worse, workplaces are in denial of how much Americans have changed. Before the pandemic, American workers worked longer hours than most workers living in developed nations, while lacking breaks and paid time off. Prior to the pandemic, hustle culture ran rampant throughout workplaces and corporate thought leadership. But as the pandemic wore on, many workers felt like they had to keep working even though it felt like the world was ending. And as corporate profits soared to the highest levels since the 1950s, American workers’ mindsets about their workplaces soured.

@jareenimam #stitch with @shouldntthisbeobvious apparently the tax rate in Canada isn’t so bad #getthatraise #bettercareer #workculturematters #workingtoohard #moneymoves2022 ♬ original sound - Jareen Imam

As offices start opening up, it’s clear that many companies want workers to go back to how things were before the pandemic. Goldman Sachs is demanding its employees return to the office 5 days a week, according to a Fortune interview with the investment firm’s CEO David Solomon. Labor experts believe this mandate can signal other companies to start asking the same from their employees.

However, many workers want the flexibility of working from home, not because of Covid-19 safety, but because they want to reclaim more of their time. More than 50% of American workers said in a survey that they are willing to take a pay cut to be able to work from home. But in a time of rising inflation and higher cost of living, those pay cuts can be financially damaging.

Additionally, many American workers are feeling overworked and unhappy. The Society for Human Resource Management, SHRM, reported in May 2021 that 48 percent of U.S. workers feel mentally and physically exhausted at the end of the workday, while another 41 percent reported feeling burned out from their jobs. And for the first time in more than a decade, there’s been an increase in U.S. workers who feel disengaged at work, according to a January survey by Gallup.

Hustle culture is dead — at least for now. The pandemic and all of its tragedies have caused American workers to reevaluate what matters to them and it turns out, it’s not work.

In a 2021 survey that polled workers about how they feel about work, many respondents didn’t have positive things to say. Many wanted more pay, location and work hour flexibility, more purpose in their work, and the ability to step back from work responsibilities and focus on their personal lives.

Anne Helen Petersen writes in her book, “How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation,” that burnout happens when devotion becomes untenable: “When faith in doing what you love as the path to fulfillment, financial and otherwise, begins to falter.”

It’s not just companies that want things to go back to normal, it’s also governments and institutions. But realities have changed. Those who didn’t have the privilege of working from home, those working in retail, hospitals, warehouses, utilities, construction, sanitation, transportation, hospitality, and more, had to go into the office. They had to put customer needs before their own personal safety — and now we’re seeing a massive labor movement as more workers aim to unionize — that’s not a coincidence. People are unhappy with corporate and economic needs trumping human needs.

@jareenimam Reply to @phillyphil504 denial is a strong emotion @jareenimam #BigComfy #workingtoohard #getthatraise #workculturematters #bettercareer #findingpurpose ♬ Violin - Grooving Gecko

During the height of the pandemic, I was working as a journalist and manager at a big media company. I was working about 12 hours every day, and I was also expected to work late into the night and on weekends during breaking news — for no extra pay. When my grandmother died, I asked for a day off so that I could write her obituary. I missed her funeral because I had to cover the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. When my family, most of them healthcare workers, were suffering because of the pandemic, I wasn’t able to take time off in order to help them. I wasn’t given any space or time to grieve. During that time, I didn’t feel supported by my company, managers, or team. Eventually, I felt so much despair from the lack of support, I resigned.

I’m one of 4.5 million Americans who quit their jobs during the “Great Resignation.” That’s about 3 percent of all employment. And resignations aren’t slowing down. Workers are now more empowered to seek out jobs that align with their values and goals — that might mean working from home or working 4-days a week instead of 5.

As companies face this new reality, whether they want to or not, I think the biggest thing employers need to focus on is compassion. Using brute force to demand workers to go back to how life once was in 2019 isn’t going to work. People want to reclaim their time and lives. Employers who aren’t able to provide more paid time off, better benefits, and more work flexibility will inevitably have a harder time hiring talent. It’s not because the American worker is lazy, it’s because the American work culture is broken.

Now that we’ve gone through this societal trauma, American workers are seeing they deserve better.