Naa Ashorkor writes: Living the soft Life

I want a soft life.
7 to 9 hours of sleep.
At most, 7 working hours a day.
21 working days leave from work.
Brunches, lunches, dinners, vacations, money in the bank, name it all – the soft life must be nice. Sigh!

I followed the Twitter conversation on the soft life which began with a tweet about 22-year olds optimising the soft life too early in their life, especially not investing enough time (15 hours) on work and personal learnings. Because at 22, you have few responsibilities, are in good health and have the luxury of time!

Many young people – 22-year old – shared tweets saying they were depressed with High BP, and in debt. Imagine that!

The economy does not support a soft life, that’s why you’re in debt. Having one job for most people is not enough. If you’re in your 20s, definitely rest and prioritise your mental health but please work, and no, one job is not enough.

According to the urban dictionary, the soft life basically means a life of ease without requiring hard work, sacrifice and unpleasantness. It is important to understand that this social movement is less about wealth and more about fair access to standardised good quality of living.

So basically, you make enough money, preferably from one comfortable job, you might not have savings or investments, but you have enough to get by till your next salary alert drops.

Nice one. In this Accra though???

Today on Between Hours, I had a conversation with an HR professional, Joseph Nii Otinkonrang Ankrah, about working with 20 something year olds and the challenges they have. From the conversation, I learnt the following;

The economy does not support a soft life, that’s why you’re in debt. Having one job for most people is not enough. If you’re in your 20s, definitely rest and prioritise your mental health but please work, and no, one job is not enough.

Y’all are tech savvy, figure it out! You don’t need to start a business; find a business you can support digitally. Support your friends’ businesses. Partner up. The soft life on one salary will leave you in debt. Fact.

HR Professionals are not hiring folks in their 20s because of this soft life interspersed with the entitlement mentality. I was told a story of a smart young lady fresh out of Uni, who applying for an accountant role, said she would not accept anything less than GHS 2,500 a month… cool … well, she did not get the job because she could not use Microsoft Excel.

She would have gotten a job if she had accepted less or had known how to use basic accounting software such as Excel. My dear co-soft life lovers, build your professional life before you finish school. Internships and apprenticeships are good ways to learn and gain practical experience before you get out of school so that you can ask for how much you deserve.

Folks above 35 years are working harder at digital learning than younger people are. If you’re 22, you’ve had digital learning and platforms at your disposal for the greater part of your life. You can network, learn and build yourself up professionally.

Somehow you have only 36 connections on LinkedIn and 1000s of followers on TikTok and Instagram (I’m guilty too).

Okay that’s all the time I have now, I need to go work on my side hustle. I’ll share part 2 later.
xoxo

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