Career

An accountant who fills out spreadsheets at the beach, a dog groomer who always has time for one more client, a basketball player who shoots free throws to the point of exhaustion.

Every profession has its share of hard chargers and overachievers. But for some workers — perhaps more than ever in our always-on, always-connected world — the drive to send one more email, clip one more poodle, sink one more shot becomes all-consuming.

Workaholism is a common feature of the modern workplace. A recent review found that roughly 15 percent of workers qualify as workaholics. That adds up to millions of overextended employees around the world who don’t know when — or how, or why — to quit.

Workaholism could be on the upswing thanks to Zoom, Slack and every other technological advance that makes it easier for people to work anywhere, anytime. Behavioral scientist Toon Taris says. “It is something I’m worried about. The conditions for workaholism to develop have never been as good as today.”

Psychologist Malissa Clark agrees that the stage seems to be set for more people to find their inner workaholics. She said, “The mass shift to working from home and remote work may have changed some of our communication patterns and expectations.” Working from home, which became especially widespread during the pandemic, likely created a new group of always-on workers who lost all sight of the boundaries between work and home life. It’s troubling, she says. “Even just your average worker might now start to be more of a workaholic.”

Jack Hassell, a human resource specialist in New Zealand, interviewed an academic who got a wake-up call during the massive Christchurch earthquake of 2011. When the earthquake started, they were reluctant to quit work and leave their desk, Hassell says. Finally forced to exit the shaking building, the academic had an epiphany. “They realized, ‘Oh my God, I was so consumed with work I was willing to almost die.’”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Part of the curse (Gen. 3:19) introduced toil and effort into our lives. Yet, God never meant for us to become slaves to our work. In fact, He insists that we take a day of rest for every six days we labor (Exod. 20:8-11; Luke 23:56).

You know how it is. Saturday is a blissful day. You get some exercise. Do chores around the house. Spend time with family, friends, and/or pets. You go out Saturday night. And then, it’s Sunday morning. And you know that Sunday leads inevitably to Monday. And on Monday that to-do list will rear its head again. Suddenly, you want to bury your head under your pillow and hope it all goes away.

The cloud of dread hanging over you on Sunday evening; the wave of anxious anticipation you feel ahead of a new week; the cold sweat you get thinking about Monday. These feelings have a name: the “Sunday scaries.” From worry to being overwhelmed to straight-up sadness, these feelings are depressingly common. Several factors are thought to cause the Sunday scaries such as economic uncertainty, burnout, fear of losing a job, and reflection on whether working so hard at a job is worthwhile.

LinkedIn surveyed 2,000 U.S. workers and found that 75% experience Sunday scaries. And while it may seem like workers have long-dreaded the end of the weekend, LinkedIn’s research suggests that the extent to which workers currently experience the Sunday scaries is on the rise.

You may think you have the worst job in America—but are you always on call and facing a deadline, working in a high-stress environment, all for very little pay? Do you routinely work outdoors on the hottest and coldest days of the year? Does your work constantly put you at risk of severe injury or death? Is there no opportunity for skill development? If not, you probably don't have one of the worst jobs."

Using a complex algorithm that measures salary, job outlook, work environment, and stress (like the stress of slicing your hand off, being kicked by a cow, or getting crushed by a falling pine tree), they ranked the jobs from best to worst.

Here are some of non-dream jobs that were on the list of the lowest-ranked jobs in America:

#15 - Butcher

#14 - Coal miner

#13 - Janitor

#12 - Dishwasher

#11 - Roofer

#10 - Meter Reader

#09 - Dairy Farmer

#08 - Oil Rig Worker

#07 - Security Guard

#06 - Lumberjack

#05 - Telemarketer

The four worst jobs in the US in 2024, ranked in descending order #4 to #1:

#04 - Waiter

#03 - Hospital Orderlies

#02 - Welder

#01 - Assembly worker

Possible Preaching Angles:

Work; Vocation; Career — (1) Start a sermon or sermon series on work by using this illustration to stress that all jobs have challenges, but some jobs have more challenges than others. (2) Talk about finding dignity and satisfaction in our jobs even if they aren't glamorous, since most of us aren't in the top-ranked jobs. (3) Be thankful for your job and grateful for people who provide services we need. After all, you probably don't have to worry about a tree falling on you.

The Freakonomics podcast explored why the phrase “I don’t know” is so difficult for people to say. Contrary to the common belief that “I love you” is the hardest phrase, the hosts argue that “I don’t know” is even more challenging, and our reluctance to admit ignorance starts in childhood and persists into adulthood.

Psychological experiments show that when children are asked nonsensical questions, such as whether “a sweater is angrier than a tree,” most will invent answers rather than admit they don’t know. This tendency to fabricate answers instead of acknowledging uncertainty is not just a childhood trait-it carries over into adult life, especially in professional environments. In the business world, saying “I don’t know” is often seen as a sign of incompetence, so people feel pressured to respond with any answer, even if it’s made up.

The podcast hosts note that despite their reputation as “business experts,” they rarely hear anyone in corporate settings-especially in front of a boss-admit they don’t know something. The prevailing belief is that expertise means always having an answer, even if one must fake it. However, this mindset is counterproductive. Pretending to know everything may protect one’s image in the short term, but it stifles learning and personal growth.

The hosts argue that admitting “I don’t know” is essential for improvement and learning. Embracing uncertainty opens the door to genuine inquiry and self-betterment. Rather than faking expertise, the real path to growth is to acknowledge what we don’t know and use that as a starting point for discovery.

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal notes that “Fake Job Postings Are Becoming a Real Problem.” The article details how these fake postings are crushing the spirits of job seekers:

It’s a common feeling when looking at a job listing online: the title is perfect, the pay is right, and the company seems like a solid place to work. But you also wonder if that job is real.

Lots of job seekers have a story about the postings that linger online but never seem to get filled. Those so-called ghost jobs—the roles that companies advertise but have no intention of filling—may account for as much as one in five jobs advertised online.

The [fake] listings are dispiriting for workers, leading many to distrust potential employers and make a difficult process feel rigged against them. ‘It’s kind of a horror show,’ said one job site search business. ‘The job market has become more soul-crushing than ever.’

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, the lies of the world, the flesh, and the devil can crush our souls with false promises and expectations.

Imagine a savvy organization that does a leveraged buyout and buys a company, and the company is losing money. It's awash in red ink. What does the company do? The takeover buyer knows that this company that it's bought is just full of incompetent management. Management stinks from top to bottom.

So, what do you do? Fire them all? Block them out? Put in new people? Is that illegal? No, the buyers have that right. Is that impractical? No, they have the power. It's smart.

In the biblical story God comes to us. Because he's powerful, he's got the right to blot us out. Why? Because look at the world. It's incompetent. Morally incompetent from top to bottom. He's got the power, so it's not impractical. He's got the holiness. He's got the right, but thank goodness he's also got the mercy, because if he was just powerful and holy, he would do what any good company would do who has just bought out another company that's incompetent. Every head rolls. Fire them all! They have the right; they have the power. It's the smart thing to do. But God's also merciful, so he will restore us. He will redeem us. He'll cut the head off of our sin instead of cutting the head off of our bodies and that's the reason…the hymnwriter said, “for his mercies endure, ever faithful, ever sure.”

An article in The Wall Street Journal had an interesting title: “The Little Sins We Commit at Work—and the Bosses Who Are Cracking Down.” Here’s how the article started:

Ever used the office printer for your kid’s homework assignment or scrolled Facebook Marketplace during an all-hands Zoom meeting? Fair warning: Your employer may be paying close attention.

Big companies on the hunt for efficiency are deploying perk police to bust employees for seemingly minor infractions that, by the letter of company law, can result in termination. “We have had lots of requests for new controls,” says Katie MacKillop, U.S. director of Payhawk, which administers company credit-card accounts and watches for misuse.

Clients are asking Payhawk to restrict when and where company cards work. For example, a company can limit a lunch allowance to be available only on weekdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and be usable at Chipotle but not at Kroger. In partnership with Visa and Mastercard, Payhawk is developing a feature that sends real-time spending alerts to corporate finance teams and allows them to instantly block suspicious transactions by employees.

MacKillop’s firm doesn’t track what happens to employees who violate company policies, but she says there is little doubt employers are taking codes of conduct more seriously.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Of course, in the Bible, there is no such thing as “little sins.” Every sin is a transgression against the holiness of God.

Read through the Bible and you will find a positive attitude about having and raising children. Attitudes among our culture today are trending in the opposite direction due to attitudes about careers and individualism as cited by the authors of the book, "What Are Children For?"

Having children is but another possible project, with its own emotional experiences, social obligations, and financial responsibilities. According to a 2023 Pew Research report, only 26 percent of Americans today say having children is important for living a fulfilling life. Whereas 71 percent consider “having a job or career they enjoy to be essential and 61 percent say the same for “having close friends.” As the demographers found in an overview of the forces affecting fertility patterns today.

Increasingly, people justified childbearing in terms of its impact on their personal well-being, satisfaction, and happiness.” When children are seen in this light, it’s understandable that many people, certainly those whose lives feel uncertain and precarious, dread giving up their time, energy, resources, highest ambitions, and—perhaps above all—freedom to the task of raising another human being. When you compare having children—a resource guzzling enterprise that comes with no guarantee of mental or material satisfaction—to all those other possible attractive ends, how could it ever measure up?

Editor’s Note: When using this illustration, let’s be mindful of the single women who long to be married, but are not yet, and the husbands and wives who would love to have children but have not been able to conceive and those who have lost children through miscarriage.

For young professionals today, work is no longer just something they do for a paycheck; it has become one of the primary spheres of meaning in their lives. For those who pursue a vocation, work is a way of leading a purposeful life and making a mark on the world. For those still going to the office, work is where people find others to talk to and, if they’re lucky, people who care about the same things that they do. Often, it’s where people fall in love.

Above all, it’s how many people in the middle and upper-middle classes define their value and sense of purpose: it is against the standards of their professions that people measure their level of success and personal growth. And it is in a large measure on the social status of their professions that they base their self-worth.

Because work has become so central to people’s identities, self-esteem, and social lives, it is easy to lose sight of its many dry demands. For full-time employees, work takes most of our waking hours. And for whole swaths of highly skilled white-collar workers, the willingness and ability to give more and more time to their careers has become a professional virtue in itself.

Yuta Sakamoto was exhausted from selling home-improvement projects, including the boss’s demand that he help clean up at renovation sites on weekends. One day, he mustered his courage and announced he wanted to quit. But his boss warned him he would be ruining his future, and Sakamoto shrank back.

Then a friend proposed a solution. Sakamoto didn’t have to confront the boss again—he could hire someone to do it for him. After sending $200 and his case details to a quitting agency, he was finally a free man.

“I would have been mentally broken if I had continued,” says 24-year-old Sakamoto, who found a new job as a salesman at a printing firm.

A labor shortage in Japan means underpaid or overworked employees have other options nowadays. The problem: this famously polite country has a lot of people who hate confrontation. Some worry they’ll cause a disruption by leaving, or they dread the idea of co-workers gossiping about what just transpired in the boss’s office.

Enter a company called Exit. Toshiyuki Niino co-founded it to help people quit after experiencing his own difficulties in leaving jobs. “Americans may be surprised, but I was too shy or too scared to say what I think,” says Niino, 34. “Japanese are not educated to debate and express opinions.” Exit now handles more than 10,000 cases a year in which its staff quits on behalf of clients.

Possible Preaching Angles:

There are several approaches you might take with this story: 1) Fear and Courage – Learning how to overcome fear with faith and courage (2 Tim. 1:7); 2) Work Ethic – Finding a career that fits with our skills and well-being (Col. 3:23); Wisdom and Guidance – Sakamoto’s friend suggesting the use of a quitting agency illustrates seeking counsel from others when making decisions (Prov. 11:14).

20-year-old James Clarkson works as a gas engineer trainee in North England, and has no plans of stopping. Of course, it would be unusual for any person to consider retirement at 20. But Clarkson has options many people don’t have, because he recently won a lottery jackpot worth £7.5 million (about $9.2 million in U.S. dollars).

Clarkson is from Carlisle near the Scottish border. He was staying at his girlfriend’s house when his phone notified him via the National Lottery app that he’d won the UK National Lottery Christmas Day drawing.

Clarkson said, “News spread fast and we all ended up celebrating later at my grandma’s and grandad's with a roast beef dinner and champagne.”

But by Monday morning, he was back at work as usual. He said, “I need to have a purpose in life, plus Dad wouldn't let me not work anyway.” Clarkson believes it’s important to have a reason to get up in the morning. “I know people might think I'm mad to still work, but I want to. And, of course, there'll be some nice holidays in between.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God designed us to find meaning and purpose in our work. An occupation is much more than just a means for earning a living.

By the time they have turned eighteen, most Americans will have moved at least twice. Most thirty-year-olds will have moved six times. By the end of our lives, most of us will have pushed that number up to eleven. This highly mobile way of life is mirrored in our career habits as well.

The average American worker holds ten different jobs before the age of forty, and this job transience is only expected to increase in the years ahead. Add to these the slew of life changes such as college or vocational training, marriage, and having children, and it becomes clear how many different phases our lives actually have. For all of us there is only one thing that remains the same—the fact that nothing does.

Bonnie Crawford was in danger of missing a connecting flight for a board meeting last week when a United Airlines customer-service rep saved the day. She got rebooked on a pricey nonstop flight in business class. For free.

You’re probably thinking, “No airline ever does that for me.” Crawford isn’t just any frequent flier. She has United’s invitation-only Global Services status.

It’s a semi-secret, status-on-steroids level that big spenders strive for every year. American and Delta have souped-up statuses, too, with similarly haughty names: ConciergeKey and Delta 360°. The airlines don’t like to talk about what it takes to snag an invite, how many people have such status, or even the perks. Even the high rollers themselves don’t know for sure.

Get into these exclusive clubs and you get customer service on speed dial, flight rebooking before you even know there’s trouble, lounge access, and priority for upgrades. Not to mention bragging rights and swag. People even post unboxing videos of their invites on YouTube.

Anyone with this super status needn’t fret about the value of airline loyalty or the devaluation of frequent-flier points.

Crawford was invited to Global Services for 2017 and was hooked. “It was the first taste of this magic, elusive, absolutely incredible status,’’ she says. She wasn’t invited again until this year and fears she won’t be invited back next year due to fewer costly international flights in her new job.

Possible Preaching Angles:

You can approach this illustration from two angles: 1) Boasting; Pride – This shows the negative side of human nature that loves to boast about their favored position and humble-brag about their status. This status is gained by merit. 2) Advocate; Grace; Invitation; Rights - The positive angle is that we have an Advocate who gifted us a special relationship with the Father (Eph. 3:12; Heb. 4:14-16). This status is all due to God’s grace.

Bonnie Hammer started her career in 1974 as a bottom-rung production assistant to the top of NBC Universal’s headquarters. As of 2024 she had become a Vice President. She advises younger workers to resist the lies about work, like “follow your dreams.” Instead, she shares a story about humility and hard work:

I learned my ‘workplace worth’ fresh out of graduate school when I was hired as a production assistant on a kids’ TV show in Boston. Each PA was assigned a cast member, and as the most junior employee, my cast member was Winston, an English sheepdog. My primary responsibility was to follow him around the set carrying a pooper scooper. I had two university degrees. Winston, on the other hand, was a true nepo-baby, the precious, unhouse-trained pet of one of the show’s producers. Plus, as an on-camera star, Winston out-earned me.

But while many days I felt like working for Winston was beneath me, I never showed it. I acted like I was pursuing an honors degree in pet sitting, and each poop pickup was an extra-credit opportunity. The work and the attitude paid off. When an associate producer position opened, I was promoted. I pursued a similar strategy for much of my early career: If I wanted to be a valuable asset to my colleagues and bosses, I knew I needed to add concrete value to their days by showing up, staying late and doing whatever needed to be done.

For young employees who want to feel ‘engaged’ at work, the truth is, you need to engage with your work first.

Do you ever feel like you’re too busy to enjoy life? If so, that’s because you are probably too busy. Not that this is some amazing diagnosis: Most people are too busy.

According to surveys conducted in recent years by the Pew Research Center, 52 percent of Americans are usually trying to do more than one thing at a time, and 60 percent sometimes feel too busy to enjoy life. When it comes to parents with children under the age of 18, a full 74 percent said that they sometimes feel too busy to enjoy life.

Lee So-hee, a 30-year-old office worker, used to live alone in Seoul. That changed in November when a friend gave her a rock. “If you really think of your rock as a pet, I do think it makes things a bit less lonely and more fun,” she said.

Pet rocks, a kooky and best-forgotten fad of 1970s America, are resurfacing in South Korea.

South Koreans, who endure one of the industrialized world’s longest workweeks, have a tradition of unwinding in unusual ways. They have lain in coffins for their own mock funerals, checked into prison to meditate, and gathered in a Seoul park each year for a “space-out” contest.

Pet rocks are the latest new thing. Lee, a 30-year-old researcher at a pharmaceutical company, made her pet rock a winter blanket from an old towel. It came into her life during a demanding stretch at work when she was working long hours in the lab, often late into the night.

“I’d occasionally complain to my rock about what a tiresome day I had at work,” she said. “Of course, it’s an inanimate object that can’t understand you. But it’s kind of like talking to your dog, and can feel relaxing in some ways.”

Choi Hye-jin, a 39-year-old Seoul homemaker, picked up a stuffed cloth trinket in the shape of a rock at a tourist shop next to one of South Korea’s famed rock formations. She takes pictures of it when traveling and has brought it to concerts and autograph-signing events of her favorite singer, who now recognizes her because of it, she said.

There is a reason God gave us the Sabbath rest. We need it. We were not created to work seven days a week. Yet, that is where we are headed as a culture, especially since COVID-19, and this is not a good thing.

Technology tethers us to our work through smartphones and “productivity” apps such as Slack and Teams. The majority of workers regularly check their email on their smartphones, which never leave their side, even after work hours or on vacation. The rise in remote work means work and family spheres are no longer separate, blurring the boundaries between work and home. Or as Andrew Barnes, cofounder of 4 Day Week Global, said, “We’re not working from home, we’re sleeping in the office.” This is our new world of work.

Our relationship with work is becoming increasingly unhealthy. Levels of burnout and stress are at all-time highs. Even before the pandemic, the World Health Organization called stress the “health epidemic of the 21st century.” What is a major source of that stress? Our jobs.

COVID-19 exacerbated this problem. During the pandemic, workdays became longer—in the United States, the average workday is now three hours longer; and in the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and Spain, it’s two hours longer. But more than that, we have gotten used to working outside traditional work hours.

Leadership can kill you. At least leadership in high stakes positions.

Nineteen chief executives died in office in 2023, the most since 2010, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks turnover at U.S. companies. The outplacement firm tallied a record 1,914 CEO exits in 2023, which Senior Vice President Andy Challenger partly attributes to the post-pandemic burnout that many execs feel. In a January survey of 600 C-suite executives by the professional network Chief, 37% said avoiding burnout would be a personal challenge this year.

A candid help-wanted ad might go something like this: Company seeks visionary leader to take business to the next level. Incumbent will be paid handsomely but may have fewer years to enjoy earnings because the stress of the role can reduce life expectancy.

Ivan Menezes was a few weeks shy of retiring as CEO when he died last June at age 63. The company said he was hospitalized for stomach ulcers and died after a brief illness. Notable CEOs who suffered fatal heart attacks on the job in the past 20 years include Jim Cantalupo of McDonald’s, Samuel “Skip” Ackerman of Panacos Pharmaceuticals, Jerald Fishman of Analog Devices, and Carolyn Reidy of Simon & Schuster. They ranged in age from 58 to 71.

According to Business Insider, a big turn off for Gen-Z workers is what workplace experts call “a double bind.” Jeanie Chang is an expert on mental health in the workplace, and she defines it as “giving two or more contradictory messages at the same time.”

For example, claiming to value work-life balance by insisting workers are off their computers by 6pm, while at the same time supervisors routinely send messages after hours. Or when a job advertises unlimited paid time off, but workers are routinely denied PTO requests. Chang says that many Gen-Z workers use another name to describe the practice: “corporate gaslighting.”

As a member of Generation X, Chang doesn’t exactly blame managers for their double-bind habits. She thinks that many of them had the same practices modeled for them in their younger years, and just assumed that’s how work has to be. “People my age and up didn’t talk about mental health,” said Chang. She said that many of her coworkers adopted a survivalist mindset in order to battle burnout and fatigue, but they didn’t understand what was happening since they didn’t have the same common language to describe it.

By contrast, many Gen-Z workers adopt what Chang calls “a thriving mindset.” If they perceive that the company is an impediment to their happiness, many of them will quit, even without a backup plan in place.

“At the end of the day, you can't blame those older folks because they don't know what that is. So, it's a learning curve, but all sides have to be open. No one generation is better than the next.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Business; Church Staff; Volunteer Recruitment; Volunteers - Whether managing people in an office, or working with volunteers in a church, leadership must be clear about their expectations and open about the amount of time and effort that is expected and not take advantage of workers.

As of 2021, around 25% of 40-year-old Americans are not married—the highest percentage ever recorded. In his book, Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, Brad Wilcox argues that marriage is more important than ever for individuals and for the country. Based on his research he offers two reasons for the flight from marriage.

First, there’s what he calls the “Midas mind-set,” where too many younger Americans assume that life is about education, money, and especially work. One Pew study found that for Americans in general, 71% thought having a job or career they enjoy is the path toward fulfillment and getting married was the path for only 23%.

Wilcox was talking to a graduate student who had a clear plan for schooling and work, and then Wilcox asked, “What’s your plan about marriage and dating?” And there was silence. The student didn’t have a plan. Wilcox said, “I think that’s part of the challenge — that people are not being intentional enough about seeking opportunities to meet, date, and marry young adults in their world.”

Second, there’s what Wilcox calls the “soul mate myth”—the idea that there’s some perfect person out there waiting for you. Once you find them and love them and then marry them, you’ll have this perfect connection that engenders intense emotional connection, sense of romance, passion that in turn leads you to be happy and fulfilled most of the time. Wilcox argues, “Any kind of serious relationship, including marriage, is going to be at times deeply challenging and hard and require a lot of work.”