Read here the full transcript of Heather Doran’s talk titled “When Is ‘Quiet Quitting’ The Right Move?” at TEDxLake Charles 2024 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Illusion of Prosperity
Prosperity isn’t your problem, it isn’t your solution either. Let me take you on a journey of how I discovered this shocking revelation.
It was a rainy winter day in South Carolina. I was sitting at the desk of my private office, with a decent window view, my three monitors, dressed in my corporate outfit complete with high heels. Here I had found myself in a position that I had been working towards my whole life.
See if this sounds familiar to you. My whole life I had been told: go to school, get good grades, get into a good college, and this will be the key to getting a good job with good pay. This will be the key to success and happiness. Sound familiar?
The Reality Check
Well, on that rainy day, it occurred to me: I attended college with decent grades. I did all the things, working my way out of the cubicles, leading up to the good job with the good title, making the good salary. But with this new salary came new costs. I was now making an additional payment to my student loan company, equal to my car payment.
And with this higher salary did come a new car and a house in a nicer neighborhood. On paper, everything looked great. This new salary did allow for me to have a more comfortable lifestyle. But working my dream corporate job came with hidden costs that didn’t really add much to my overall savings account or how I felt about life.
I wasn’t unhappy, but something was missing. Life was still life.
I still had to answer the dreaded question every night: “What’s for dinner?” I mean, I had worked all day, making decisions. Coming home physically and mentally drained, doing one more thing felt really hard most nights. I continued to have the repeated arguments with my teenage son.
I was so delusional to think that more money would fix all of life’s problems, big and small, including the everyday struggle of being a mom. No matter how much financial freedom I gained, I continued to worry about work and money constantly.
The Hidden Costs of Success
I was sold the idea that if I just checked these boxes, I would have the life I wanted. That didn’t happen. Now that I was working more, I didn’t have time or energy to do most household chores: cooking, cleaning, laundry, walking the dog. I hired help because I didn’t have time or energy. So while I was making more money, I was spending just as much just to maintain my household and my life.
I was working long hours. I was checking my email first thing in the morning, the last thing before bed. I answered my phone after hours. And while I was willing to be flexible, I didn’t always receive flexibility in return. I seemed to always be putting out fires. No matter what I did to try to prevent the flame from becoming a fire, it was met with multiple challenges. This cycle of constantly putting out fires kept my stress at an unmanageable level.
The Revelation
So on that rainy day, it hit me. Damn, I’ve been lied to. This dream of “get good grades, get into a good college, and then I will have money, success, and happiness” was all just a lie that I had been told. This dream I had placed in my heart for more happiness at the end of the rainbow was all just a load of crap.
I became a quiet quitter. It was like this rebellious teenager had unleashed inside of me in this corporate setting. I read through the HR manual to find any loophole that existed to just barely be able to fit the corporate model without making too many waves. I wanted to rock the boat, but I didn’t want to completely sink it.
The Quiet Rebellion
I needed to feel like I had some control over my days. I would work the hours only according to the HR manual, which would start precisely at 8:30 a.m. and end at 5:00 p.m. I stopped answering my phone after hours, and I did anything I could to just feel comfortable in my clothes again and still maintain the corporate dress policy, which included wearing leggings and yoga-style dress pants instead of the corporate fashion.
I started to notice how prevalent it was that the company’s mission and vision statement was posted everywhere: on the wall, the company PowerPoint, the letterhead. It was like they were trying to indoctrinate us and be under their delusion in an attempt to brainwash us.
I pushed back on all meeting requests that came my way. So many of them were the same. The manager would send a meeting invite marked “high priority,” then have the audacity to show up eight minutes late because they’re “in a very important meeting,” and then proceed to waste even more of everyone’s time by saying, “Let’s just wait for a few more people to show up.” This drove me absolutely crazy.
The Corporate Reality
I was being pressured to meet company deadlines and then being threatened with low performance evaluations for missing these deadlines. And these same managers couldn’t even show up to their own meetings on time. So once I labeled myself a quiet quitter, I stayed in my lane. I remained that rebellious teenager.
My eyes had been opened to the sad truth that the company’s shareholders and leaders really didn’t care about its workers. For most of them, it really was about the bottom line. As a member of the finance team, I would sit in board meetings and notice with the slip of a pen and the wave of a hand, whole departments, divisions, and jobs would be cut in these meetings. No mention of the valuable work that these people had performed or how they had helped the company through difficult times.
I watched as factory workers came in and out of the lunchroom, bundled in several layers of clothes just to be able to do their job in an unheated factory making $10 an hour, while company leaders would pull up in their vehicles making four and five times that same annual salary. This just didn’t feel right to me. Nothing about this felt like success, and none of it brought me joy as I had been led to believe.
Redefining Wealth and Success
This would cause a huge shift in how I would define wealth and success. Instead of looking for my career to fulfill me, I looked to other areas: my job, my work, my money, and my ability to make a difference in the world. How could I be part of a workplace that values each worker no matter their pay or their title? How could I be part of a company culture that promoted the welfare of its workers instead of its bottom line?
In order for me to answer this question, I needed to get really clear on how I would define wealth and success. I needed to see that it was more than just a number in my bank account. I started to see wealth and success as it related to my inner peace, time with my family, and time for pursuing my passion. It became less about how it was over giving my time for tasks and projects that didn’t add joy or fulfillment to my inner soul.
It became about creating the difference. I stopped pursuing my climb up the corporate ladder. I was really happy, and I was really proud of what I had achieved up to this point, but I no longer wanted to grow this area of my life. From here, I would look for companies and leaders that had a true passion for people, ones that had a true essence of doing business from the space of making a difference.
By doing my job and only my job, it has allowed me to pursue my passions, a mission where I get to help other passionate business owners grow their business and help them with their finances. I get to do all of this in my house, in my leggings, and no pointless meetings. I get to show up each day and to support other passionate people that align with my values and how I feel about wealth and success.
It isn’t about being lazy or ungrateful. It’s been about assessing what I felt was most important to me. It’s been about creating partnerships. My new definition of wealth is measured from an internal feeling: How good do I feel while making money? And an external feeling: How joyful and comfortable do I feel while the money is flowing in? I get to make money living a life that feels really good to me.
Now it’s your turn to define wealth and success. Is it really a number in your bank account? Or is it something that comes from within?
