I wonder if you saw Fast Company’s recent piece on the Gen Z trend of “Micro-Retirement,” and if so, I wonder if you had the same reaction to it that so many others did to one particular piece.
“Micro-retirements involve taking a one to two-week break from work every 12 to 18 months,” the piece said. The famously-salty Merriam-Webster dictionary responded on their social media accounts: “‘Vacations.’ The word is ‘vacations.'” Unsurprisingly, the article was widely ridiculed as a nonsense term, while the concept was also seen as an indictment of the modern work world in Gen Z North America; the Puritan work ethic and cultural norms are in stark contrast to European nations, where companies often shut down for 6-8 weeks each summer.
To be fair, Fast Company updated the article to explain the difference between micro-retirement and vacation more clearly – the new version reads, “While retirement typically occurs after completing a career and saving and investing for it, some Gen Z workers are taking unpaid leave when they haven’t accrued vacation time and calling it a ‘micro-retirement.’” But it was easy to ridicule, partly because the term micro-retirement seems to fit so neatly with terms like future-proofing, parallel-pathing, and other terms that became known as “garbage language” in February 2020, following a piece by Molly Young in New York Magazine and Vulture, titled “Garbage Language: Why Do Corporations Speak the Way They Do?“
Young wrote, “No matter where I’ve worked, it has always been obvious that if everyone agreed to use language in the way that it is normally used, which is to communicate, the workday would be two hours shorter.” I wonder how many of you can relate to the aversion to corporate speak?
While you may not agree with everything the piece suggests – and you may have some “garbage language” words that have a specific meaning that can’t be encapsulated another way – it’s worth considering how the language you use affects the people you’re with. Have you ever found yourself in a meeting where someone else in the room uses a term that initially seemed like nonsense to you, and which took some time to figure out what it meant?
A leadership team I worked with recently had begun life as a start-up ten years ago before being bought by a multi-national about two years ago. Over the course of the day, the group used acronym after acronym to refer to business processes, their products, clients, and more. At one point, someone mentioned an acronym that isn’t part of their work now, but was a huge part of their start-up life – NUA. A long-term employee sheepishly admitted, “I’m really glad we don’t use that one anymore, because honestly, I never knew what it meant.” The group was stunned. “Wait, what?” “Seriously?!” came the responses. “No. No-one ever explained it to me. I always just nodded and hoped I could figure it out one day.”
Perhaps you’ve been in a similar situation, feeling like everyone else knew what this term or acronym meant, but it felt too embarrassing to admit you didn’t know. If so, you know how that feels for others, especially for anyone who is newer to the team or to the organization. I don’t remember what NUA meant in the leadership team example above, but we ended that conversation by proposing a new acronym using the same letters, NUA: Never Use Acronyms. Never is a strong word, of course, and it’s there simply to make the point – acronyms and, in Young’s words, “garbage language,” can do more to alienate and separate people than to empower and unite them.
This week’s tip:
- Watch your language! Listen to the words that come out of your mouth during meetings – and look at the words that come from your keyboard over emails and other messaging. Consider using less jargon and more direct and specific language that anyone could understand. Make your messaging clearer and more inclusive.
- Practice the tool of NUA! Never Use Acronyms. If using acronyms is unavoidable in your workplace, make a habit of using the full name alongside the acronym every now and then, to make it easier for any newcomers to understand what the acronym means.
- If you’re taking a micro-retirement – or a vacation – do whatever you can to have a clean break from the work environment you left. In particular, this might mean letting go of some habits and processes you’ve had in place for a long time. (Here are some tips on disrupting your muscle memory.)
Try this out this week, and let us know how it goes – we’d love to hear from you. As always, you can subscribe to our feed here, or sign up for our weekly newsletter to get these articles directly in your inbox.
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