There’s no other way to say it: I am a recovering workaholic.
Most of my career has been spent working with companies that encouraged my overworking tendencies. Aggressive, outcomes-focused environments, where targets were discussed more than feelings, and goal tracker dashboards were proudly displayed. For more than 20 years, goal pursuit was the hamster wheel focus of my working life: set high (often unrealistic) targets, build a plan to achieve them, and pursue the required tasks at all costs. Rinse, repeat.
Without fail, my list of goals was always too long, and never fully achieved. I set unrealistic expectations for what I set out to accomplish each year, month, week and day, and berated myself when I failed to meet them, despite the fact that there weren’t enough hours in the day to even remotely accomplish it all. I’d try to push the clock as much as I could, skipping workouts and sleep to get more done, but always feeling like I was slipping further behind. I was unhealthy and miserable.
