No matter how much you love your job, it doesn’t love you back.

Schools and TV shows, mentors and bus stop ads, politicians and celebrities all proclaim that we should do the work we love and love the work we do. And we don’t just love our work: we devote ourselves to it, build our lives around it, give up more and more for it. As Derek Thompson of the Atlantic puts it:

The economists of the early twentieth century did not foresee that work might evolve from a means of material production to a means of identity production. They failed to anticipate that, for the poor and middle class, work would remain a necessity; but for the college-educated elite, it would morph into a kind of religion, promising identity, transcendence, and community. Call it workism.

Thompson defines workism as “the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose.” A member of my church recently said to me, “At the consulting firm where I work, there’s a sense of, what else are you going to give your life to?”

As it has been for so many religious movements, America is the hotbed of workism. Among large nations with comparable levels of productivity, none averages as many hours of work per year as America, and the gap is growing. Samuel P. Huntington summarizes: Americans “work longer hours, have shorter vacations, get less in unemployment … and retire later than people in comparably rich societies.” By 2005, the wealthiest 10 percent of married men in America worked the longest average workweek. And a 2018 research article found that, compared to women who graduated from lower-ranked schools, women who attended elite, selective universities do not, on average, earn more per hour, but they do work more. For women, it seems, the benefits of an elite diploma are more time at work and lower chances of marrying and having children.

Derek Thompson again: “In the past century, the American conception of work has shifted from jobs to careers to callings – from necessity to status to meaning.” Drawing a longer arc, the historian Mary S. Hartman has observed that in the modern era, work has become “the chief repository of male identity.” And not just male. Camille Paglia pronounces a dire verdict on a substantial swath of contemporary feminism:

In my opinion, second-wave feminism, for all its professed concern for mainstream, working-class, or disenfranchised women, has drifted toward privileging the concerns and complaints of upper-middle-class career women, who seek the lofty status and material rewards of an economic system built by and for men.

In America today, men and women alike adhere with growing devotion to what Scott Yenor calls “the career mystique – a set of ideas that tries to convince men and women that changing the world through their careers is the paramount path to fulfillment, growth, and happiness.” What happens when work becomes the chief repository of identity, the prime source of status and reward, the paramount path to fulfillment? What happens is failure that we are poorly equipped to acknowledge, much less respond to fruitfully. What happens is “collective anxiety, mass disappointment, and inevitable burnout.” What happens is that our worship of work is shown and seen to be what the author of Ecclesiastes calls hevel, absurd.

“What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” (Eccles. 1:3). The question opens Ecclesiastes’ investigation into all of life. Toil is the engine of expected gain. And the negative answer that the protagonist, Qohelet, returns – “no gain” – proves that, since toil is hevel, all is hevel.

By “toil” (Hebrew ‘amal), Qohelet means roughly what we mean by “work,” typically with a negative tint. Elsewhere in the Old Testament the word can mean “distress” or “anguish,” even “misfortune” or “disaster.” In Ecclesiastes, ‘amal typically means “labor” tainted by frustration or futility. But it also names the fruits of labor: not just the money made from selling milk but the whole thriving farm that has taken decades of sleep-stealing work to cultivate.

What does a person gain from all this work, and even from its fruits and profits?

Ecclesiastes is the record of Qohelet’s systematic exploration of potential sources of pleasure and profit. In his experiment embracing all of life, work features prominently.

I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.… I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. (Eccles. 2:4–7)

Here Qohelet reproduces his résumé. He describes the work of establishing a business and a household, from which and in which he could live in luxury. We should picture an ample, carefully conceived, skillfully developed estate. Qohelet’s accomplishments were built to last. As Old Testament scholar Stuart Weeks comments, “Qohelet’s business is not ephemeral, and he makes his wealth not from, say, buying low and selling high or from providing services, but from vineyards, orchards, timber, and livestock.” In fact, his operation is in some measure self-sustaining: pools, water, orchards, and timber groves; timber furnishes building material. Neither the orchards and irrigation, nor flocks and herds nourished by them, nor grand dwelling at the center were apt suddenly to vanish. All will likely outlast him.

What happens when work becomes the chief repository of identity, the prime source of status and reward, the paramount path to fulfillment?

So far, so exceptionally successful. But, after cataloging his enjoyment of other pleasures his wealth could purchase and his leisure permit, Qohelet declares, “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was absurd and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (Eccles. 2:11). Qohelet here appraises not just his labor but its outcomes, and not just his wealth but the infrastructure of his fortune, which will generate more fortune. What did his work and his work’s outputs do to deserve this derogatory label of “absurd”? At the very least, their problem is not so much them as him, not that they will disappear but that he will. They’ll last a while yet; he won’t, much longer. The problem with even lasting success is that it can’t last long because its agent and beneficiary won’t. Yet, as far as we can discern, Qohelet denounces his work’s harvest with plenty of breath left in him. This seems to suggest a deeper contradiction.

By calling his life’s work hevel, Qohelet asserts a standing rupture in the chain that joins desire, effort, and outcome. He calls work “absurd” because of the disparity he discerns between what he put in and what he got out. But surely his work had gone as well as he could reasonably have hoped. Whence then the divorce between what he wanted and what he got? Somehow even striking success left him wanting something more.

Shortly after this judgment, Qohelet gives two more reasons why work is absurd:

I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is absurd. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is absurd and a great evil. What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is absurd. (Eccles. 2:18–23)

By definition, the person to whom Qohelet will leave the legacy of his labor did not work for it. Worse, Qohelet can’t guarantee a fitting successor. The more successful you are, the more you will leave in the hands of a successor of uncertain character and competence. Both toil and wisdom are irrelevant to inheritance. Even if you’re an executive who can select your own replacement, you can’t control what’s done with your enterprise when you’re gone. Time alone will tell you whether you chose wisely – only you won’t be around to hear. Death stops ambition short. What’s beyond your time is beyond your control.

Qohelet’s second reason is that work is full of pains. He piles up those pains like stacks of unread emails and unanswered voice messages: toil, yearning, sadness, anxiety, sleepless nights. He bemoans hardships that are not physical but psychological. Nothing human was foreign to him; long before our age of anxiety, he knew and named the malady.

In another passage on work, Qohelet stirs some proverbial wisdom into his empirical observations.

Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This also is absurd and a striving after wind. The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh. Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind. Again, I saw an absurdity under the sun: one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, “For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?” This also is absurd and an unhappy business. (Eccles. 4:4–8)

The Hebrew at the start of this passage is difficult. Most translations and commentators take it to say that all effort and achievement arise from envy, but a good case can be made that the verse instead ascribes ambitious work to a passion that draws one person away from another. If you stumble at the “all,” remember that it’s hyperbole. Like a standup comic, Qohelet knowingly keeps qualifications and counterarguments out of the frame, and then squints at the resulting picture to bring one aspect into sharp focus. Whichever translation we opt for, Qohelet’s point is that work is a fertile field for self-destructive desires to take root, go to ground, and spread wide.

Whether fueled by envy or self-isolating obsession, if work is the consuming passion in your life, what could it consume? What will be left after the fire cools?

When Qohelet commends a little quietness over a lot of striving, he is saying that there are limits to what work will give you, so there should be limits to what you give work. If you try to grasp gain with two hands, both will come up empty. There is no contentment without knowing and submitting to limits.

Speaking of limits, the last part of the passage profiles someone who doesn’t have any, as many modern workers boast. He has no one else to work for – no partner, no heir – yet he never stops working. Sounds like so many single city-dwellers for whom work is life and life is work. Not only does he never stop working but he never asks, who for? He never asks who gains from his giving up everything in order to give it all to his work.

Who does the religion of workism benefit? If you have no dependents or heirs, then, by definition, not them. Your workism may benefit your boss. It might especially benefit your boss’s boss’s boss and the shareholders. But does it benefit your neighbor? Does it benefit you?

My wife, Kristin, is both a foodie and a homebody. She enjoys good food and is happy to cook it, but she doesn’t much like going out for dinner. So in the past few years we’ve settled into a relaxing, rewarding Friday night ritual. We get the kids fed and in bed (or at least in their rooms) early, then cook together. Dinner, dessert, decaf espresso, conversation throughout – Friday night helps us stitch back together what the week has tugged apart.

I’m a pastor, and some of my hardest and happiest work is preaching. I spend fifteen to twenty hours preparing every new sermon. In weeks when I’m preaching, I do all I can to have my sermon manuscript written, practiced, and revised by Friday at 5:30 p.m. The deadline motivates and liberates. I don’t want to mess up date night or mangle the weekend. All week, the weight of the sermon sits on me as I prepare it amid counseling appointments and phone calls and other teaching and last-minute needs and neglecting my inbox.

“Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.” —Ecclesiastes 4:6

Once the sermon is ready late on Friday, my shoulders rise in response to the lifted-off load. I feel like I just woke up from a full night’s sleep. I’m suddenly more talkative than I’ve been all week. And Kristin gets to enjoy (what I hope is) the benefit of (what should be) my undistracted attention.

On Sunday I have serious work to do. But from Friday at 5:30 pm through Saturday night, I do my best to rest with my family. That rest can involve a daunting amount of chores and cleaning and laundry, but it also makes room for hikes and playground time and leisurely library visits.

If you want to keep work from ruling your life, set limits to its domain. Confining work keeps it from strangling and devouring everything else that gives life meaning. Commenting on the Jewish practice of Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel reflects, “There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord.” Happiness comes not from working yourself raw, but from knowing when and how to rest.

Excerpted from Everything Is Never Enough by Bobby Jamieson. Copyright © 2025 by Bobby Jamieson. Published by WaterBrook, an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC. Used by permission.