I am a recovering workaholic.
It was August 2017 and I had just returned home from another long business trip. Simon and I had been traveling non-stop, city to city, airplane to airplane. We were loving it though…or at least, I was. I only had a few days at home before I had to travel again, so as I usually did, I booked a bunch of appointments all in one day, including a routine check-up by my primary doctor. I sauntered into the doctor’s office 10 minutes early (I’m an Assistant, after all), scribbled my name down on the arrivals sheet, took my seat, and immediately pulled out the iPhone.
Heaven forbid I might miss an email in the 14 minutes it took me to drive here from my house.
My thumbs were just getting warmed up when they called me into the office. I remember holding my iPhone in my right hand, typing with just one thumb, as they took my blood on the other arm.
I don’t have time to pay attention to my body, lady. Can you hurry this up? My work is very important.
The barrage of tests concludes, and I begrudgingly put my all-powerful device down to hear my results. I was sure it was going to be the same as always, “Eat well. Exercise. Sleep. Blah blah blah.” The doctor quietly asks if I’ve been feeling ok. I tell her the same as always, “Eh, I work a lot, travel a lot, stressed a lot, but that’s nothing different than every other day of my life.”
She told me I was having a dangerously elevated heartbeat, that there was severe mucus buildup in my lungs, that my temperature was just above 103, and she was putting me in a cab to go directly to Penn Hospital in downtown Philadelphia because an ambulance would take too long.
Um…what?
Excuse me?
I’m going where?
Fast forward a few hours and I’m still in the emergency room. A new nurse comes in every 10 minutes to tell me something different than the last one did. I’m half listening because I had some very important emails to get out and the internet was slow. I’m becoming ever more frustrated now - not at my health situation - but that this is taking so long and interfering with my job - the thing that defines me. The thing that makes me special. The thing that shows I’m valuable.
Finally, a doctor walks into my curtained cube, takes the phone right out of my hands with a smile, tells me to get up as we are heading to the MRI machine, and “No” I cannot take my phone with me. While shuffling there, desperately trying to hold my teeny tiny robe closed, she calmly says to me, “You know, no one was ever remembered for how many emails they sent.” Then, standing at the door to the MRI machine, she pointed to my curled hand as if it were shaped around a phantom iPhone and said “This,” pointing at my hand, “isn’t worth this,” as she pointed to the brown placard on the wall that said “MRI Room.”
I sat in that waiting room and sobbed. Sobbed because she was right. Sobbed because this wasn’t my first trip to the hospital for stress-related issues. Sobbed because I didn’t know how I got to that place in my life. Sobbed because I didn’t know who I was without my work.
Up until that point, I largely defined myself by my work. I put most of my ATTENTION, and INTENTION, on my professional life. Work was always #1. And I looooove it. I love being busy. I’m damn good at it too. So working 50-60-70 hours every week wasn’t a stretch for me, regardless of my health condition.
I had heard 1,000 stories of burnout before and really never thought it would happen to me. I didn’t know I was falling apart. I didn’t realize I was working to avoid other areas of my life. I didn’t know that there is a difference between passionately working for long hours because you love it and compulsively working in an anxious state because you “have to” in order to make yourself feel better. One is a behavior, the other, a mentality. I think I had both.
WHY DO WE OVERWORK?
We do it because it’s a status symbol. Americans wear “overworked” as a badge of honor these days. We flaunt it. We pretentiously use it as the first line of every email - “Sorry for the delay, I’m just soooooooooooo busy.” We act like it’s unavoidable, it’s not our fault, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
This didn’t happen overnight. The status symbol in America used to be living the leisurely life, wearing expensive clothing and jewelry, and traveling the world. Now we humble-brag that we haven’t taken a vacation in two years.
The notion is rampant in society today. Many commercials and social media ads are geared towards making our lives less busy so that we can work more. You can hire someone to walk your dog, deliver your groceries, and find you a soulmate, We can drink some powder instead of eating and we can give our kids an iPad instead of parenting. And thanks to the evil Jeff Bezos, we can order a muffler, some miso paste, and post-it notes all at the same time to be delivered in one box, tomorrow.
In a piece for the Harvard Business Review, marketing professors Silvia Bellezza of Columbia, Neeru Paharia of Georgetown, and Anat Keinan of Harvard business schools, explained how we got here. Their studies showed a sharp increase in references to “crazy schedules” since the 1960s. They tracked celebrity humblebrags about “being in desperate need for a vacation,” showing our role models are setting the tone, especially for the youngsters. They also tracked the evolution of advertising, as the imagery changed from the lifestyles of the rich and famous to the busy lifestyle of long hours and no free time. They added, “by telling others that we are busy and working all the time, we are implicitly suggesting that we are sought after, which enhances our perceived status.”
Even our government thinks we should work more, as we are the ONLY country without a national paid parental leave benefit nor a federal law requiring paid sick days. In fact, in many industrialized nations, it is mandatory for new parents to BOTH take parental leave.
But it’s not just the status symbol. We do it because it makes us feel important. More importantly, it makes us seem important to others. And maaaaaan, that feels gooooood. Serotonin explodes through our veins, we get all the feelies, and we want to keep doing it. Over and over. It is called a “compulsion” above for a reason. Achieving can be an addiction. And addictions cause us to loose sight of what is real.
As social animals, we want to belong. We yearn to feel loved and accepted. When we work tirelessly and then receive even a shred of recognition or appreciation, our internal wiring says, “Oh. We do work and we get love! Let’s do that - MORE!”
And the cycle continues. Until we break it. Until we stop pretending we cannot control it. Until we value ourselves enough to do what’s right for us. Until we’ve had enough.
HOW DO WE FIX IT?
Most online articles will tell you to enjoy life, stop working so much and something about smelling roses. That’s crazytalk. It is also an example of un-actionable advice - my least favorite kind of advice. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a light switch that I can just toggle off when I want.
What I do know is the process of becoming a workaholic didn’t happen overnight and we can’t fix it overnight either. The first step is always to recognize and identify what is happening. From there, just take little baby steps every day, week, or month. Go at your pace, but you must keep moving forward. That is THE ONLY REQUIREMENT for growth. Just keep swimming!
Additional Tips:
Know your boundaries. Know your tendencies. Know your triggers. Knowledge is power.
Work smarter, don’t work longer. A 12-hr day of distractions, multi-tasking, emotional feelies, and stress is less productive than a well-prepared 4-hr block of dedicated focus time without social media, email, text, excess platforms (especially those like Slack - yeah I said it).
Remember, there is someone out there who loooooves doing the thing that you hate. So fill your own gaps with other people’s talents. Ask for help from smarter, better equipped people that can help you with whatever it is you’re working on. Ask a SME (Subject Matter Expert) for advice or hire a subcontractor who could actually help you do it. OUTSOURCE, BABY!
Ask for help. Period. It does not make you weak or unworthy. No one can do everything. NO ONE.
Pay attention to other areas of your life where you can get the same feelies. Does working in your garden also help you feel accomplished? It’s always helpful to find a replacement act!
Most importantly, start by valuing your work and non-work lives the same. You are a whole human and what happens “at work” affects you “at home,” whether you choose to believe that or not. We are in the same body in both places, so treat it with the respect.
Work is something you DO. Life is something you LIVE.