Manohar Kabeer
3 min readApr 15, 2024

Career-less lifestyle & stories of underemployment.

I am a career-less force. Yet I am not a weak one. Climbing up the ladder or switching to roles that lift your career is a proven and recommended attitude towards making life meaningful and leading a career-oriented life. From the past, when Goldsmiths, Merchants, Artisans, Soldiers etc lived a life dedicated to service and purpose enabled by their career. Another thing that has treaded the sands of time is our weekly and monthly calendar. Let’s say career is less about how you spent your years but more about how you spend your week and month.

This lens should give us a glimpse into our internalised ideas and values. Do you prefer a 4 day work week, 40 hours work week or a 6 days work week? Do you really want a holiday on Sunday? Do you prefer working in the mornings or nights? Do you prefer working in solitude or a busy space? Do you prefer working at all?

Do we ask ourselves these questions? Enough? Your career has enforced a lifestyle for you. Your dream to prove or become something has manipulated your rhythm, preference and alignment. So much so that your belief that work life or adulting is such that it lets you be complacent and non-confrontational. The world adjusted for Covid-19. The world adjusted when it moved from agriculture to industries. The world adjusts when it’s a religious festival or a cricket match in India. Will the world adjust if you appeal strong enough?

I was once contemplating that appraisals only account for monetary increment and hardly anything else. You joined a company when you were in your twenties and wanted to create wealth. So yeah this works for you. Now that you are in your thirties, you prefer time over money. So, can you ask your company to not raise your compensation but pay you the same for a lesser amount of time commitment? Most people who heard this for the first time rejected the idea. It is critiqued to say that companies are generally under-staffed or time crunched. No one would let work less, even if you seek lesser payment. They will rather hire someone else. Workaholism and Toxic work life balance is more of a desirable attribute. Hustlers as they call themselves. So, we are asking the question — why do you get to grow only financially? Exceptions of executive training, sponsored courses and business travel don’t fulfil the question. You are asked to work more because your identity in the workplace or markets is that of a resource. One can refuse to be a resource. They can design their life such that they design their week for their life and not their life for the week at work.

Elon Musk’s famous line from internet culture — what did you achieve last week? — is a testament to this lifestyle of hustling & building a career every week. Should you choose to say, I spent time with family, I made this painting or I went out for a coffee workshop, you will be disqualified?

How did we reach this status quo? Are you really working hard when working more? Are you fully employed when you have a full time job? Are you more experienced if you achieve more in less? We will explore this in our next piece / publish of this series on Career-less-ness!