Do you get this feeling that nobody wants to work anymore? I think this mentality has been around for a while but thanks to our good friend social media, this has been brought to the fore big time. I remember when I was looking for work in 2015 and I’d be at the shopping centre during the week and there wouldn’t be many people out and about. But fast forward to 2025 and I’ve noticed shopping centres are hella busy during working hours. Which makes me wonder whether anyone works anymore?
What do people have against work?
Modern work (as well as modern life in general) is demanding. Whether you’re in an entry level job or in a more senior role, you can feel like a slave to your work and to the company you work for. I spent just over 6 years working in customer service and I often felt like a slave. (For context, I’ve had customer service jobs where it felt like customer service had to do everything including acting like a reception switchboard even though the company had a receptionist.) And at the time I felt bad thinking about my job as slavery because it was nothing like the brutality of slavery in America from the 1500-1800s, for example.
But recently I’ve come across the term ‘wage slavery’ and it has made me question the ethics of modern work. As an employee working for a company, business or organisation, in exchange for your time and labour, you receive a wage. But for so many people in working-class jobs, you’re paid peanuts. And with the current cost of living crisis that the world is collectively experiencing, it’s increasingly harder to financially support yourself and to save or invest for the future.
As much as wage slavery resonates with me, there can be very jaded and negative undertones to the wage slavery argument. One of the good things about it though, is that it forces you to question convention and the establishment.
An interesting point that Tom Scryleus, a wage slavery commentator, raises is “school is actually one of the biggest traps of the wage slave system. Most parents force their kids to go … how else will they [kids] learn about the world? But what are they really being taught? Think about it, for over a decade we’re trained to sit still, follow orders and accept that obedience equals reward.”
There’s this really cool guy on YouTube named Timothy Ward, and he’s soooo good at expressing the collective mood and commentating on modern life. In his video ‘Is the ‘DO NOTHING’ movement the answer to the 9 to 5 grind?’ he’s right on the money with the following statement – “I think what people are saying is I no longer feel the need to always have to be grinding, always have to be hustling, always have to be going after something.”
There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious but it’s exhausting work (being on that path) and you’ll very likely wake up one day and realise it’s not the most important thing in life.
Where do we go from here and what can we do?
It’s very easy to go down the rabbit hole of ‘the first world is collapsing’ and to become angry, frustrated and feel like there’s no hope. But as someone with four decades of life experience, I’d say that you haven’t endured everything you’ve endured in life just to give up.
Focusing on the following areas has helped to give me a more positive outlook on life in 2025:
- Work-life balance – for me this involves little to no after hours work and no weekend work (a big change from the 2019 – 2021 me)
- Have hobbies or things you like to do in your spare time – e.g. watching YouTube, going out at least one day on the weekend or one night after work, working on a colouring book, exercise
- Reward yourself – e.g. go on a trip/vacation, cook a new dish/try a new recipe, visit a café
- Keep track of your spending (especially non-essential or discretionary spending) using a spreadsheet or an app
- View saving/investing as a long-term game, and accept that you probably won’t get rich overnight (and that’s okay)
- Live in the moment because you can’t predict the future
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