Work is just work

I love work. It drives me. It’s exciting. Everything about building things with folks is a pure thrill. Like when I crack open a hard design problem and learn something! Or when a test passes on a big refactor! Or when I watch a designer reveal something new about human cognition, about typography, about language, about a silly little bug in SVG!

Despite my love for work you’ll never catch me working late though because I don’t really...believe in it? I’ve always found that if you run, run, run you can move whole galactic clusters in a day. And the folks who tend to work beyond those hours out of choice aren’t being any more productive or effective in my experience, but rather the very opposite. And the managers forcing overtime on their employees are cruel and foolish and have no idea what hard work really looks like.

Anyway! I worry that I enjoy work way too much. I always want to talk about it, to discuss this new thing I’ve built or decision I made or upcoming project I’m working on next. I want to talk about how someone dealt with a tough political problem and managed to get something done. It feels like talking about my favorite band or favorite movie — it animates me completely!

Isn’t that lame as hell though?

Well, here’s an an interview with Ira Glass, where he talks about working hard and how sometimes that’s ok! If you like work so much then it really is ok to prioritize your life with work at the very center and you shouldn’t feel bad about it.

But my other concern besides the lameness of it all is that every company I’ve worked for has exploited my excitement for the work and that’s often what causes burnout. I get that we’re not a family, and my boss is never going to be a pal. But can’t the work at least be exciting? Can’t we go to sleep excited for the next problem, the next big idea?

Sigh.

This frustration of being in a toxic relationship with my work reminds me of this design engineer I knew who would clock in at 9am and clock out at 5pm but during that time? What a whirlwind! Every day I’d watch him accomplish something significant because he was so relentlessly focused. And he never had to work late, too.

But his relationship with work was different than mine.

Whereas my job is always tied up with my ego and self esteem, for him the work was just the work. To be treated from a distance, to not be discussed outside of working hours. At the office he was a dynamo of productivity—setting a high bar for himself and everyone around him—but once the day was up he returned to being a person. The work was over. He could be himself again. He didn’t want to talk about work because yuck why would you?

So I’m asking a lot of questions out loud here: what kind of relationship do I want with my work? Is it ok to let my entire mood and personality be dominated by my job? And is it healthy to care this much about something that can never care for me in return?