I suffer from loving too much: that's how I've always felt about work. My obsessive personality won't allow me to just like the things that are important to me; I have to love them until I bleed! Burnout can sneak up on me easily, but now I'm on high alert. Not in this household! Loving my career is very dangerous because the harder I work, the faster and more fruitful the harvest will be. It's almost irresistible!
One of my toxic traits is setting sky-high deadlines and goals, unattainable for anyone who is a little more mentally healthy. I see it as a fun contest and complete it, no matter what it takes. Twenty blog posts in a month and a new course to be launched in a week, all while sleeping 8 hours a day, exercising, cooking healthy food, reading, seeing my friends, and spending quality time with my husband. Of course, my “normal” pattern is to drop the plates of my personal life to keep spinning the work ones.
I cancel meetings with friends, refuse trips with my husband, shorten the weekend to just one day (if that!), penalize sleep, physical activity, and so on. It's no shock to anyone that no health can withstand this pace and that there is no creativity and well-done work without health.
I did - do - will do (?) everything to meet a goal I invented, even knowing it's a stupid type of "productivity".
Today I recognize these sick behaviors, but when I am in this cycle of lack of mental clarity, I get very irritated and stressed if my personal life prevents me from performing work tasks; I just can't help it.
Recently, talking to a friend who has been in this same place, we talked about our many projects (always professional), desires for growth, and - always them - our goals. She also creates goals with very tight deadlines and I, being on the outside, could observe her suffering. See, the contest is enjoyable but it’s painful at the same time. It’s hard to explain.
"Friend, if the book is not released this May, but in July, how impactful is it? In your life’s timeline, does an impossible deadline make sense? What is the weight of two months, compared to the many years of creation you still have ahead?"
She said she had never thought from that point of view before. Neither had I.