CURATED READS FOR GEN Z—AND THEIR Z-CURIOUS COLLEAGUES

first up

Welcome back! This week, we’re looking at how to be optimistic about pessimism.

There’s plenty of data indicating that Gen Zers are pessimistic about the world. It’s not hard to see why, considering that most of them experienced a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic during their formative years, sparking a loneliness epidemic and making everyday life newly challenging. All this coincided with global unrest and overheating economies, making job prospects in some industries iffy. 

These events (and associated “doomscrolling”) have translated into high rates of reported anxiety among Gen Zers, feelings of trepidation in the workplace, and fears that they’ll never achieve some of the key prizes in the game of life, like owning a home or retiring. Gen Z is also less likely to seek out behavioral-health guidance, which isn’t helping. In China, Gen Zers, dispirited by all the stark data before them, have taken to “educated pessimism” and report feeling gloomier about their economic prospects compared with older generations.

What does it matter if Gen Z wants to brood over how bad life can seem right now? For one thing, there’s a health risk: being optimistic has long been considered a key indicator of one’s ability to endure hardships and has contributed to better health over one’s lifetime.

The good news is there are reasons to be optimistic about Gen Z’s particular brand of pessimism. Consider this take on optimistic pessimism by a member of Harvard’s class of 2025:

“Perhaps counterintuitively, one of the healthiest things we can do is recognize that the world is absolutely falling apart right now. Our democracy is in decline, civil rights are being systematically rolled back, and the climate disaster is raging on—pick your favorite apocalypse. While thinking positively may be good for one’s health, it’s a matter of perspective: beaming as the world crumbles around you is borderline psychotic. . . .

“This is not to say that I advocate for misery or detest hope. I firmly believe that we as a generation have the power to fix the problems we face, and to do so will require more than a little faith and belief in ourselves. It is also not to say one should not be resilient—one thing I’ve always admired about Americans is their ability to keep getting up with a smile, no matter how many times they’ve been knocked down. I just think it’s worth taking a look at the world before setting our expectations too high. Take the wins when they come, and don’t worry when it all goes wrong—because it will.”

He has a point. Smiling in the face of uncertainty (think: the “This is fine” meme) reveals a nuance of the balance between optimism and pessimism that one might bring to the workplace. Rather than thinking of work as a series of silly, little tasks to be done in the face of looming existential threats, try instead to focus on the outcomes you can control. Doing so can help provide a sense of agency and optimism on a micro level, even if you tend to think the big picture looks gloomy.

And Gen Zers are not without agency. Gen Z arguably has more influence over how companies do business than previous generations, thanks to their social media prowess and low tolerance for greenwashing, for example. (That moxie has also inspired at least a few older people to be optimistic, as McKinsey partner Tamara Charm notes.)

Gen Zers are actually optimistic about their financial outlook this year and are marginally more optimistic than the average boomer or Gen X American over the long term. Here’s to seeing the piggy bank half full.

VISUALIZE IT

Chronic diseases are expected to become a bigger burden globally, but digital devices may be able to help with disease management.

QUOTE US ON IT

“When you see where we are now, in the last couple hundred years versus the previous millennia, you have to think, ‘Well, I’m really lucky to be alive now.’ If we can just understand that basis for what we have, and build on that, there’s a huge source of optimism.”

—Alan M. Taylor, economics and finance professor, University of California, Davis, on what makes him optimistic

WAIT, DON’T SCROLL

Attitude check. Ann Harrison, dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, explains why “confidence without attitude” is a key trait of successful leaders.
 
What is generative AI? This McKinsey Explainer outlines what makes generative AI so powerful, what it can do, and where it falls short.

Space race. Things are getting crowded in outer space, as government agencies and private businesses increasingly stake a claim in the sky.

NOT US; STILL GREAT

What’s my age again? The difference between how old you feel and how old you really are reveals what people think about their future and how societies view aging. [Atlantic]

Strategic incompetence. While employees of all generations struggle with technology in their own ways from time to time, some leaders simply resist learning about new platforms, making their coworkers’ lives more difficult. [Bloomberg]

CROSSWORD

— Edited by Alexandra Mondalek, editor, New York