If everyone were a career anarchist, would anyone show up for their job?
To function practically, career anarchy necessitates great communication among collaborators.
Given we’ve already done some inner work on shame around our desires, we’re well-set up to create successful organizations of any size—since “organization” is plural for “relationship”, of course.
Every person in the organization wakes up each morning in their complete agency to choose coming to work, or not.
They know exactly why they are coming to work that day, and it felt in alignment, so they did it.
Don’t worry, this isn’t a world where employees bail on their work commitments willy-nilly. In fact, that would be a symptom of people in a state of avoidance and fear of communicating that something about their role isn’t working for them; desperately needing a change, but feeling insufficiently supported to make it—resulting in self-destruction.
In career anarchy, people join an organization because it is deeply aligned with their true desires—and like any relationship, involves a commitment to the other people in the organization: specifically, a commitment to continue voicing needs and desires as they inevitably evolve, and take radical personal responsibility for all commitments one signs up for.
This fully consensual contract would mean that, if one wakes up one morning and no longer desires to fill a commitment, the misalignment is raised with collaborators, and a solution can be arrived at that honors everyone’s agency—eg, an efficient succession plan that doesn’t place unwanted burden on collaborators.
It will be an imperfect system, and people will in some cases feel put out (though hypothetically, this experience of burdening and stress would happen less often and less abruptly than in the current economy of coerced labor, where people are not invited to share about their evolving needs openly).
When your life no longer supports your desires, change your life—not your desires. Easier said than done, eh?
Change of any kind is physiologically intense for people. It is essential that in all areas of life, we normalize training and tools for emotional intelligence and literacy, so people can take responsibility for their mind-body-emotion state, including the powerful tool of reaching out to others for support (something highly frowned upon in our current culture).
Rather than our current economy’s fevered attempts to control all outcomes to create an illusion of certainty and permanence, we would have the vocabulary to make major life changes more easeful.
Rather than trying (and failing) to dominate and subjugate our future, we would be co-creating success with our careers, moving flexibly and with intention as both evolve.
An economy of intimacy. How ‘bout that 🫠