Forget Every "Life Hack" Except This One.

Workaholism is the addiction that stops so many of us experiencing the life we should. And almost all the supposed solutions make things worse. So here's one bit of wisdom that got me working smarter.

Workaholism is a destructive addiction - but rather than challenging it, we often celebrate it.

Go to any airport - and you will see there is an entire industry built on making humans more efficient, with business and self-help books claiming they can streamline your life and career, as if our goal should be to reach an optimal point of production. What very few of these books tend to focus on is: What then?

Somewhere along the line I swallowed this idea, hook, line and sinker:

If you work hard enough, there will be a point where you cross a line, and your life will fall into place - feeling successful and fulfilled.

Let me be clear: this is not an argument for why we should all stop doing in what we are doing, drop out and join a commune. I strongly believe work can and even should be a means to give ourselves purpose and structure. It’s the headlong, joyless, exhausting, enervating focus on it that harms us. More often than not, it ends up being counter-productive, the opposite of our intention.

Growing up in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher made a lasting impression on me. She seemed to say: Life doesn’t owe you a living, and if you want to be secure, you’d better work hard.

I somehow came to believe that meant I should pour all my energy and effort into work, letting it take precedence over everything else. My dogged focus on it came to define me. I allowed it to invade all aspects of my life, devouring my evenings, weekends, and holidays. If there was a choice between work and the rest of my life, work almost always won.

But there was no moment when I crossed the line and felt fulfilled. Too often the feeling was like having a squadron of mechanical diggers, creating vast and elaborate sandcastles on a beach, only for the tide to come in and wash them away - before blindly following the process again. No amount of life hacks seemed to stop that cycle.

I was on it all day, every day. I felt I had to reply instantly to all emails, checking in just before bed and as soon as I got up. I chased and harried, attempted to squeeze out more and more… I failed to see not just that this would never make me happy, it was completely unbalancing my life. If I’d set out clear boundaries and not tied up all feelings of self-worth in achievement, I probably would have been more productive and certainly a lot more content. What’s more, I’d have been there more for my children.

I wasn’t alone. It’s clear millions buy into this approach – only to end up feeling the dream has been mis-sold. Efficiency is fetishised - to the point that when the coronavirus first struck, we realised there was no give in the system, no buffers to protect us when crisis struck. That’s doubly true in any workaholic’s personal life.

So much effort is wasted – spinning our wheels because we can, rather than because we should. In my experience, the average office can burn up endless energy in work that is more performative than useful – designed to suggest busy-ness and engagement, rather than actually delivering much of real use.

The result is that instead of achieving a sense of fulfilment and achievement, many end up feeling cheated, burnt out by a punishing existence that is a constant grind, racing towards a goal and a future that will never be reached. Meanwhile, the needs of our loved ones and ourselves are sacrificed on the altar of meaningless work.

That feeling of having invested everything in something only to realise you are bereft is summed up in Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”:

“Ain’t it hard when you discover that,

He really wasn’t where it’s at,

After he took from you everything he could steal?”

Just look around. There is an epidemic of “quiet quitting” and the fact that TATT (standing for Tired All The Time - which I have mentioned before) has become a recognised medical condition. People are wrung-out, exhausted on a treadmill that takes them nowhere – with a vacuum where they thought they would feel happy or content.

Generation Z believes they can smell - and is calling - “Bullshit”. They can’t buy property - and can see themselves working deep into their seventies, why should they exhaust themselves in pursuit of a productivity that only benefits others?

There have been times in my life where each morning I have stood with my head under the shower, attempting to lift myself for another day at work that felt as daunting as a triathlon. And yet the thought of changing things was completely alien to me. The solution seemed to be multi-tasking, rising earlier, sleeping less - more of me.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I hoped that happiness would ultimately come with achievement. In fact, whenever I achieved anything, I only ever felt a brief moment of respite and relief, before moving on to the next thing. My underlying sense of anxiety and pain never went away. In fact, it often became more acute. When there was a lull, I felt something was wrong, nervily anticipating another call, another task to fill my time.

I chose more and more pressure. I traded being a BBC news executive, with endless daily deadlines, for being the Director of Politics and Communications at No10 Downing Street. Don’t get me wrong - it was a major privilege and learning experience, but the screw kept turning, down and down.

I was determined not to let the job defeat me, fighting every battle, mastering every brief, priding myself that whenever the Prime Minister called, day or night, I would have the answer. I slept with two phones by my bed - both on. Never had a proper day off. Looking back, I think I put myself in situations where I took bullets I didn’t need to take.

When David Cameron told me he was pleased with how professional and calm things had become since I arrived, I felt pride and redoubled my efforts. I was piling on more and more pressure and cracks were starting to show, not in my work, but in my private life. Poison from my past was starting to seep through. I got divorced. The pressure increased. I believed there was only one solution: work harder.

Looking back, I don’t know how I did it. Priding myself on keeping the show on the road at work while my private life was falling apart. It is clear to me that one of the reasons I ended up in such a mess was I believed the lie we are told that pushing ourselves ever harder is somehow the answer.

I am not saying I shouldn’t have taken on challenging jobs – but I do wish I’d had the wisdom to approach them differently:

• To know that every significant moment is not a battle that will define me;

• To understand some things cannot be controlled;

• And many battles are pyrrhic – the collateral damage simply isn’t worth the supposed victory.

• In short – a shift in perspective and approach could have helped me achieve more and be content.

I also suspect that filling all my hours was a way to block things out. There is a poignant moment in the movie, “Bohemian Rhapsody” when Freddie Mercury describes the struggle of being on his own and having to confront the pain he feels inside:

“The in-between moments…I find them intolerable. All of the darkness you thought you left behind comes creeping back in.”

Work becomes a way of avoiding real issues. But it’s a strategy that only works for so long. There is a moment when the pressure builds, and cracks start appearing in the dam.

I had the pleasure of speaking to the playwright, James Graham for my podcast, Desperately Seeking Wisdom. He’s written so much that is brilliant - too much to mention - but my favourites are “Ink", “Best of Enemies” and “Brexit: The Uncivil War”, where I am played by Rory Kinnear.

James was incredibly open about being a workaholic:

JAMES: It's probably not surprised you that I identified through therapy a problem with… work addiction. And not dissimilar to other addictions, whether that's alcohol or drugs or sex, using work as ‘hits’ to get me through…

ME: But it's also a way of crowding out your life.
So, I look back at my many problems and weaknesses, and see I'd fill my days with meeting and meeting and meeting and going running here and doing this and doing that and doing the other. I was stopping myself just being there with myself and having to confront what that was like.

JAMES:Yeah. I've definitely used my busy-ness as a weapon to destroy relationships…not going to that friend's birthday…or I'm sorry, I can't be loving and intimate with you tonight because I've got to finish this scene. And that was one of the revelations when I first went to therapy was I thought I was struggling in my life to be happy, to be fulfilled. I was asking, “Why am I self destructive?” And the first question she asked me is was, “Where's your coat?” I didn't have a coat on and it was snowing outside. I hadn't had time in my life to go and buy a winter coat.
And I was like, yeah, I know. Oh my God, that's so irrelevant. And she wouldn't let it go. An hour later, I was in tears going, ‘Oh my God, you're right. I don't look after myself, and I use work as a way of avoiding that.’

Young people often ask me for career advice. I see many of them believing what I believed – and I want to tell them:

Work won’t ever love you back - and if you let it, it will suck you dry. Yes, you should commit and engage – and great things only tend to happen when we focus. But you will get so much more out of it – and almost certainly be more productive - if you find and set boundaries and don’t expect the steady accumulation of status, money and possessions to make you happy.

DH Lawrence’s story, “The Rocking Horse Winner” is effectively a metaphor for this advice. It’s about a family that is struggling for money – the need is intense, seeming to breathe out of every wall of the house. A boy, who is clearly desperate for his mother’s love, discovers he can predict the winners of horse races if he rides his rocking horse fast enough. In his brain he connects receiving the love he craves with serving up what that person demands to feel better.

The logic is faulty though. The experience simply exhausts him. His mother’s need is insatiable - and no amount of effort on his part will change that. He dies trying – unable to see that his entire life is built on a false assumption. It is a tragedy that his mother can’t love him how he wants her to – and his solution won’t work.

How many of us have this false connection with work, believing it will solve the problem we carry around inside?

In my last piece I wrote about following the belief that out there is “The One”, the person we can subcontract our emotional needs to – the mistake of following that idea as well as the belief that work will fulfil us – as I did - is combined brilliantly in the Talking Heads song, “Once in a lifetime” (an image from the video is below). David Byrne is direct, addressing “you” - someone who followed the rules, but having given it everything, is left confused and forced to conclude they have been on a fool’s errand:

"This is not my beautiful house…

This is not my beautiful wife"

Everything they told “you” was wrong.

But what can we learn from that?

I led a life believing:

• workaholism and self-sacrifice would lead to a place where I was happy and fulfilled…

• love was about finding someone who would be responsible for meeting my emotional needs…

• life was like a story – there may be hiccups, but in the end, there will be order and resolution…

I based my life on these false assumptions. That led me to make some bad choices and took me to places where I felt deep pain.

An Australian nurse, called Bronnie Ware, wrote a book called, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”. One of them was:

“I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”

The others included:

“I wish I had led a life true to myself, not what others expected of me.”

And:

“I wish I had the courage to express my feelings.”

I’m not suggesting we chuck it all in, blow up our relationships, stop working and drop out.

But I am clear, there is a way to swim in the mainstream of our society and be happier, more balanced, more centred – and part of that is setting aside the myths we are told about how to be fulfilled.

So here’s one “Life Hack” that really could make a difference:

Often, less is more.

Stopping, putting your foot on the ball and letting things play out is often better than running full tilt at everything.

It’s in the pauses that we have our Eureka! moments.

Mostly, when we take time to be mindful, tune in and go with the flow - life goes easier.

A Stanford study showed that productivity drops significantly after more than 49 hours work a week. Those who worked 70 hours a week produced no more than those working 55 hours (details in notes). In fact, I would argue that most working 55 hours a week will perform poorly in all sorts of other ways: being burnt out, cynical and unpleasant colleagues.

All of this is part of realising work is not a substitute for a full life.

When I realised that, I began to clear a way to start working on myself and being there for others.

That meant dealing with my past, respecting myself by making clear boundaries, accepting it’s futile trying to control everything…and frequently picking myself up, dusting myself down and going again when I’d fallen off the wagon or made another mistake.

• Do you know any workaholics who might benefit from reading this? Please share:

• I want to hear your tips on dealing with workaholism - and thoughts on this substack:

Notes:

• Bohemian Rhapsody, directed by Bryan Singer;

  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1727824/

• James Graham talking to me on Desperately Seeking Wisdom podcast;

  https://www.desperatelyseekingwisdom.com/episodes-series-3/desperately-seeking-wisdom-with-james-graham

• The Rocking Horse Winner, DH Lawrence; https://www.classicshorts.com/stories/rockwinr.html

• Once in a Lifetime, Talking Heads (written by David Byrne)

• The Top 5 Regrets of Dying People, Bronnie Ware;

  https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/

• Studies in Productivity by John Pencavel;

  https://profiles.stanford.edu/john-pencavel