Jamell Crouthers has held a full-time job the entire time he's been writing. Sixty books in eight years, a podcast, blog posts, all of it built in the hours around his day work. He writes fiction about social issues — race, workaholism, homelessness, addiction — the kind of conversations most workplaces won't touch directly.

When he worked at a medical office, he used to sit in the break room before his shift with his laptop and coworkers walking past started asking what he was writing. Some began buying his books. His supervisor became a regular listener of his podcast.

At his current job in banking, almost nobody knows. The difference, Jamell says, has less to do with courage of opening up or wanting to remain professional but more about whether the environment makes curiosity possible at all and how fast a numbers-driven, fully remote workplace can make that kind of connection feel like effort.

We talked about what happens when work becomes only about hitting targets, and what it takes to bring the parts of yourself that don't fit the job description into the room anyway.

Links to learn more about Jamell Crouthers:

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