Why the old deal at work is breaking down and what comes next
For a long time, the deal at work was simple enough to believe. You perform, you stay. You hit the number, learn the politics, survive the reviews, and in return, you get some version of stability. Not necessarily fulfillment or meaning, not always. But at least a story you could build a life around.
That story is weaker than many people want to admit.
Layoffs hit people who did everything right. AI is changing tasks that people once built careers on, especially at the entry level. Companies still talk like performance and loyalty guarantee security, but more and more workers know that’s no longer the full truth. And when performance has been the whole story for long enough, it stops being something you do and starts becoming who you are.
That is the problem behind my next book, Purpose Over Performance: Re-thinking work, identity, and success in a metrics-driven world.
I’m not arguing against standards or ambition. Performance, results, and useful people still matter. But we need to stop letting performance lead. Purpose should lead. Performance should serve.
That’s my larger argument. It’s not just about career advice. It’s about identity, work, pressure, usefulness, ambition, and what success needs to support. We’ve seen the collapse of one story, and I think we can agree that we need a better one.
One part of this conversation is especially urgent right now
Graduates are stepping into work at a strange time. AI is changing entry-level tasks. Stability feels thinner. The pressure to perform starts early. The pressure to market yourself starts even earlier. A lot of young people are trying to figure out how to earn money, build real skills, and stay grounded without handing over their whole identity to performance before adult life has really begun.
I pulled that part forward into a timely, shorter edition: The Graduation Gift: Starting Work Without Losing Yourself, adapted from the forthcoming Purpose Over Performance. It’s for high school and college graduates, and for the parents, grandparents, mentors, teachers, and family friends who want to give them something more useful than generic advice.
It carries the same core idea as the larger book: Purpose should lead. Performance should serve. It just brings that argument into a shorter, more timely format for graduation season.
And yes, part of that argument has to be realistic.
For many graduates, this isn’t the time to sit around asking big questions about meaning while the bills somehow sort themselves out. They need a paycheck. They may need health insurance. They may need to help support their family. They may be carrying loans before adult life has properly started.
The Graduation Gift doesn’t deny the importance of money. It takes that reality seriously. But it also argues that there’s a way to respect money without letting survival become your whole identity.
That is why I released this part first, now. It puts a timely piece of the larger argument into the world now, instead of waiting until the full book is ready later this summer.
Available now
If you have a graduate in your life, The Graduation Gift is now available for preorder, with Kindle and paperback versions available June 1.
Coming later this summer
The full conversation unfolds in Purpose Over Performance: Re-thinking work, identity, and success in a metrics-driven world. Because this is a bigger conversation than graduation alone, but graduation is a good place to begin.