The Future is Out of Office

At every job I’ve ever had, someone has told me to care less.

“It’s PR not the ER,” a coworker once shrugged, watching me agonize over a speech for the UN General Assembly. “You might be doing too much,” said another, as if that were something I hadn’t already been told my whole life. 

For years, I worked like I had something to prove. And maybe I did. Not to anyone in particular, but to some imagined committee. A panel of future bosses, mentors, or dinner party guests who might someday ask: So what have you done with your life? 

The first holiday home after college, a family friend asked how I was doing. I told him I had a job, an unpaid internship, and had moved to DC.

He blinked. “You know you don’t have to do that already, right? You can fuck up in your twenties. No one really starts to wonder if you’ve done anything with your life until your thirties.” 

I nodded politely, but I didn’t believe him. Not really. 

I had already absorbed the story sold to all Americans: that work is who you are, and to be worthy is to be useful. That your title is your shorthand. The job is not just the job — it’s the point. The dream. 

But here’s the thing: I do not dream of labor. 

Or maybe I did once — The kind with purpose, meaning, possibility. The sort of career that made you were becoming more yourself.

My first boss told me to read voraciously. I might’ve taken it a bit too literally. I devoured everything I could: books, podcasts, politics, strategy decks, thought leadership pieces about optimizing your impact before noon. Anything but being alone with my own thoughts.

I wanted to be the person who knew everything, did everything. Until there was nothing left.

I thought if I could just consume enough, I’d eventually arrive at certainty — about who I was, what I was good at, where I was going. But hustle isn’t the same as purpose. 

At one point last year, I would joke to my husband that I hoped to get laid off. Not because I didn’t care — but because I did, and my brain needed a break.

In my old job, I wasn’t working very hard. I wasn’t really being used. Now, in my current role, I’m using 110% of my brain and operating at 150% billability. 

And for what? 

I’ve started to notice how much we contort ourselves to be legible in professional terms. In certain cities — DC among them — you can feel the rhythm of introductions. After your name, the second question is always: What do you do? 

Like a social litmus test, your answer determines whether the other person leans in or politely drifts. It’s not necessarily unkind, but it does flatten something. 

It is a quiet kind of violence: the way curiosity can be cut off at the knees by credentials. How imagination gets filed away when worth is reduced to output. 

Gradually, your identity compresses to whatever fits on a business card.

“The future is out of office” started as a working title. A joke, maybe. But there’s something deeper to it. It’s about refusing to let work become the only story. 

That's the future I want — not because I'm chasing a dream job, but what I really want is a small rebellion: a bit more time and a lot less justification. I'm trying to build a life where I’m not always narrating my value in deliverables. 

There's value in reclaiming slow, aimless movement, a luxury we once took for granted. Spaces where presence matters more than performance, and no one has to prove they belong.

So here's to being out of office — not just for the weekends, but for real.

✏️ Fridge Notes

• "Hustle culture: is this the end of the rise-and-grind?" — Megan Carnegie, BBC.
• "Your Burnout Is Trying to Tell Your Something" — Kandie Wiens, Harvard Business Review.
• "The Frustration with Productivity Culture" — Cal Newport, The New Yorker.
• "Let's End Toxic Productivity" — Jennifer Moss, Harvard Business Review.
• "How to Resist Hustle Culture and Be More Productive" — Rhett Power, Forbes.

🌸 Pressed Blooms

• "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" — James Holwell (ok yes, also The Shining).
• "Without work, all life goes rotten, but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies." — Albert Camus.
• "Measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your success and failures." — Elizabeth Gilbert.

Homework assignment:

• Give yourself one more afternoon urushed
• A conversation unguarded
• Moments unrated in productivity

Feel free to reply with your future out of office moments — no job title required.

Until Soon,

Sarah

soft power strategist / daughter of florists / fan of deliberate edits.