I think many of us can recall the scene from The Shining when Shelley Duvall discovers that Jack Nicholson’s “work” is only the phrase, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” typed over and over again for countless pages. While this is a shocking scene in the movie, the aphorism rings true. Horror film aside, I’ve been thinking a lot about our overwork-obsessed culture. I see the posts on social media glamorizing the hustle and the daily grind, the photo documentation of putting in the long hours on nights and weekends, and the misconception that burning the candle at both ends is standard behavior. There’s the thought that if you aren’t persistently busy (and we all love to talk about being busy) that you must not be really trying or that you must not want it enough. Vacations, sick days, free time, and hobbies are often trivialized or omitted completely. We’ve all been aiding and abetting a culture of anxious, burned out, and exhausted workers.
I was talking to a friend recently who discovered that she didn’t have any sick days at her new job. In America, there’s not a federal law requiring paid sick leave or annual leave. I questioned what employees do if they got sick and her response was, “They just have to keep working through it.” They’ve discovered that overworking (working 55-plus hours weekly) killed 745,000 people in 2016 (higher risk of stroke and heart disease). To put this in perspective, more people are dying from overworking than malaria. I know these facts are depressing, but this nose to the grindstone culture is not only miserable, it’s also dangerous.
I understand that there are circumstances and pressing situations that may require longer hours, but with the lines being blurred more than ever between “on” and “off” time with 24/7 technology, we need to stop romanticizing work. It shouldn’t be normal to carry around the weight of feeling perpetually behind and the assumption that 11-plus-hour days are manageable. No one should get a gold star or a pat on the back for sleeping five hours, abandoning vacation days, and/or spending weekends glued to their phones or computers. While people seem more receptive to de-stress practices like meditation and yoga, I think we oftentimes aren’t addressing why we are so drained and so disconnected in the first place. I would dare to guess that, for most people, it comes back to their work-life balance.
Personally, I’m trying to cut back on the knee-jerk responses to the standard, small talk greetings. Responses like, “Oh it’s just been so crazy – I have so much work to get done and not enough hours in the day” and “It’s just so busy. We’re both working all of the time.” If you don’t let people know that you are constantly treading water, they won’t understand how hard you are swimming, right? Yes, there are times we all work more than usual or have more on our plates, but we don’t need to treat it like a badge of honor or a fact of life. We don’t need to reinforce the idea that achieving success, respect, or purpose requires (unfortunately literally) working ourselves to death.
Hopefully, the next time you see someone bragging about their hustle mindset, their around-the-clock productivity, and their prioritization of work over everything else, you’ll remember that loving what you do doesn’t mean that it’s all that you do. In the race to work harder and longer, don’t forget to think about what it is that you’re actually working for or toward. As we all know, the workaholic mindset certainly didn’t bode well for Jack Nicholson in the end. Talk about a guy who could’ve really used a vacation or sick day.
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