The rain started coming down, and I was lost. It was May of 2017, and I was hiking at MacRitchie Reservoir Park in Singapore. Although I usually have an excellent sense of direction when I visit a new place, I didn’t have access to a map, and running for cover from the pouring rain messed up my plans. There are several different hiking trails at the park, including one that is nearly seven miles long, and somehow in the middle of the rain, I had made a couple of wrong turns, and I got lost. This was my first solo trip outside of the United States, and I was frustrated and confused.
Of course, in the over six years since then, I have been lost numerous times, and I am sure I will get lost many more times in the years ahead. However, in recent years, I haven’t gotten lost with finding a physical location as many times as I have felt lost in life. The last year has especially been difficult for me. For much of the last few years, I have struggled with the scourge of workaholism, and last year, it spiraled out of control. I was working over 85 hours per week, giving up most of my nights and weekends, and not always receiving the proper recognition and respect for my hard work and unprecedented accomplishments and success at work. I gained 40 pounds of fat in three years, was significantly sleep deprived, and was tired and stressed all the time. I wasn’t getting much exercise, I was eating and drinking all sorts of junk in order to consume enough sugar and caffeine to stay awake and get through everything, and by the time I finished everything each day, I was too tired to spend five minutes brushing and flossing my teeth and too exhausted to do basic things needed to take care of myself. I had very little free time and very few opportunities for a social life. The little free time I had was dominated by thoughts of all of the work I should be getting done, and while I was toiling away with work, many of my friends were getting married and moving, leaving me with few opportunities to see them, even when I did have free time. My relationships with my parents and other family members became strained and deteriorated, and the detrimental effects of being a workaholic continued to intensify. I was unhappy, overworked, and beyond exhausted. I didn’t feel like a human being anymore. I was going through a soul-crushing experience, and I wasn’t excited about life. Even though I was enjoying tremendous accomplishments and successes in many aspects of my work, behind all of the accomplishments, my life was collapsing and falling apart.
Workaholism is a terrible thing. Working a lot of hours while building your own business or something that is extremely meaningful and enjoyable while also maintaining balance and health and getting rest can certainly be laudable. However, workaholism, by definition, involves working excessive hours and does not involve balance. Instead, workaholics are always thinking about and consumed by their work, while generally lacking balance and happiness in their lives. In some North American studies, one-third of working adults consider themselves to be workaholics, while most estimates have workaholics making up between 8% and 17.5% of the adult working population. Workaholics often use work to mask and avoid other problems in their lives, and being a workaholic causes tremendous problems with both mental and physical health. In my case, it created a loss of direction, tremendous burnout, a life totally consumed by work, and an excuse to allow myself to avoid fixing other problems in my life. Being a workaholic is a terrible thing, and changing course is often extremely difficult.
Although workaholics often understand that there are problems with continuing on their current course, there is comfort and safety in hiding behind their work, even though that only serves to exacerbate other problems. In one of my favorite episodes of Doogie Howser, M.D., which is one of my favorite tv shows, even though it went off the air almost a year before I was born, Doogie uses his job as a doctor to cover up other problems in his life, as he comes to admit later in the episode that he became a workaholic in order to cover up frustrations with his lacking social life and his lack of a girlfriend. Over the course of the episode, Doogie comes to recognize some of the problems with his situation, and he recognizes the need for change. However, it is usually hard to leave behind the comfort of having a job at which one succeeds in order to fix other aspects of life. It requires courage, bravery, self-reflection, and strength to make the necessary changes to stop being a workaholic. Nevertheless, it is definitely possible. It requires a reevaluation of the role of work in one’s life, and it forces someone to embrace uncertainty and change. It’s necessary to rethink one’s entire life and to view quitting with a different perspective. As Chris Guillebeau says in his book Born for This, “Winners give up all the time,” yet it is not always easy to recognize when it is necessary to give up in order to be a winner. Change is overwhelming and hard, and it requires courage and guts. Not everything has to be fixed all at once, but at least recognizing what the first step is and taking one step at a time makes change, self-improvement, and an end to being a workaholic possible.
Since resigning my job effective the end of May 2023, my life has been drastically better in so many ways. I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted off of my shoulders, and I am getting a lot more sleep. I have started losing weight, and I have been eating healthier. I no longer feel stressed and overwhelmed all the time, and I am starting to feel like a human being again. Although there are a lot of things that I still need to improve and fix in my own life, I feel like I am gradually finding my way and gaining direction. I am excited about life again, and I am optimistic about the future. Much of my work now is focused on helping people better understand the world around them and helping people develop the courage and bravery to follow their heart and chart a path through life that will allow them to be healthy, happy, successful, and fulfilled. Breaking free from the scourge of workaholism is essential to charting that path and to living a satisfying, balanced, and fulfilling life. Eventually, after it was dark outside, the rain subsided in Singapore on that day in May 2017. As I walked in the dark through strange neighborhoods near MacRitchie Reservoir Park, I eventually made my way to a subway station and took Singapore’s Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system back to Chinatown, where I was staying. Much like that day back in May 2017, I am now finding my path to my desired destination. Breaking free from workaholism is hard, but hopefully, those of you who are suffering from an excessive, exhausting, soul-crushing, and unsatisfying workload will find the courage to change course and find a healthier, happier, and more restful path through life. Hopefully, you will find your way to your own version of a Singapore subway station, and hopefully, you will find the courage necessary in order to begin making the changes needed to improve your own life as well.
