“Work Optional”: The Adoption and Enactment of a New Work Ideal in the Financial Independence Retire Early Community

Abstract

This study examines how people change their relationship with work through the adoption and enactment of a new work ideal: a novel aspiration for what constitutes an optimal work life. Drawing on two years of ethnographic observation of the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) community, two rounds of interviews with 55 informants, and analysis of archival materials, I identify four community tactics that informants used to promote a new “work optional” ideal rooted in financial freedom. I then show how the transformational capacity of this ideal hinged on individual perceptions of its appeal and attainability, which evolved via an interplay of group influence and individual sensemaking. Enactment of the new work ideal ranged from radical recalibration to marginal modification of working life. This study explains not only how people are persuaded to adopt a new ideal for work but also why that ideal varies in its transformative impact. I discuss the implications for research on the ideal worker norm, the meaning of work, and ideological conversion.