GoKawiilHolly Newson 00:00
Welcome to Working Scientist, a Nature Careers podcast. I’m Holly Newson, and in this series, you’ll hear from authors who can help you in your career.
In this episode, I am joined by Simon May, visiting professor of philosophy at King’s College London, and the author of Jump, a New Philosophy for Conquering Procrastination, a book that helps you understand what’s holding you back from getting on with your biggest, deepest goals, and how procrastination forms part of the human experience.
Simon, thank you so much for joining me. (Great pleasure).
So to start off with, I wanted to ask, you mention the cult of work in your book. What is that?
Simon May 00:37
So, the cult of work is the idea that our identity is our work, is fundamentally our work.
Of course, there are other things that contribute to our identity, some of them extremely important, but that without work, we’re, in a sense, an empty shell.
And the cult of identity, I trace back to the 16th-17th century, essentially to the birth of Protestantism in Europe.
And I mean, I need to emphasize, I’m really talking about the West here, so I don’t want to presume to know about, you know, all the other rich cultures in the world.
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