Breaking Free From a Culture of Overwork

We’ve all seen it: the scrambled frenzy of overwork. The badge of martyrdom for working evenings and weekends. The social pressure to work all hours. Leaders who get pissed off when you don’t respond to emails at 10 pm on Sunday night. Companies consciously or unconsciously create cultures of overwork, where people are asked to prioritize the company over self-care, loved ones, and the rest of their lives.

The question is: What’s really true? Is there value in cultures of overwork? Is there value to the social pressure to work nights and weekends – and sacrificing quality of life?

I’ve read many articles and books about this over the years, and the research I’ve accessed indicates the opposite. Here’s a small sample:

• We need quiet downtime to synthesize ideas and create innovative solutions.
• Our brains average about 6 hours of productivity a day to do the kinds of analytical thinking and decision-making required in most white-collar jobs, but our work culture is still built on blue-collar industrial values and hours.
• No one does their best work when they are burnt to a crisp and resentful about work because they are sacrificing the things that matter most.?
• Teams that prioritize getting things done – rather than prioritizing the amount of time they spend on the computer – are more successful and have more impact.

At the same time, some roles or industries require heroic periods of work, and it may even be energizing and life-giving for some people at some times. Sometimes my work gets intense, and most of the time it’s fun and energizing. Unfortunately, I frequently see that either individuals get sucked into cultural expectations that aren’t true for them, or they don’t know how to hold their boundaries and be in truth and integrity with themselves, or both.

In our culture, we have been taught that hard work is noble. But what exactly is hard work? Does it have to mean working long hours? Instead, here’s what I find noble:

• Showing up fully with your whole self to meet important situations
• Showing up fully to support your colleagues, team, clients or customers, company, and/or community – whatever is most relevant.?
• Acting in truth, alignment, and integrity with yourself and your own knowing. Not suppressing right-aligned action nor pushing action that isn’t true.?

When you work hard from a place of alignment and truth, you emotionally and physiologically process intensity and stress differently. When you fight against yourself, it can create layers of negative consequences in your emotions and body.?

Inevitably, I’ve had clients who feel trapped, miserable, or even take medical leaves of absence because of health impacts from sustained stress and overwhelm. That’s heartbreaking. We can choose a different way.

What’s really true for you?

If you find yourself caught in habits of overwork, it’s possible that things can change, but they’re not going to change without some radical self-honesty. So let’s get real. Before your mind protests, do yourself a favor and listen to yourself for a minute. Tune in to what your body, heart, wisdom, and soul are trying to tell you.

You can ask yourself questions such as:

• What’s true for me right now??
• What does my body need??
• What is my heart longing for??
• What does my soul long for??
• What does my inner knowing/wisdom know I need to be in integrity with myself, my life, my loved ones, and my job?

What’s the truth about what work needs?

This question is designed to illuminate two things: 1) Any subconscious assumptions you’ve made about work that aren’t necessarily true, and 2) Radical clarity on what’s really needed and the best pathway to get it done.

• What is honestly required to do your role well and to your standards of excellence??
• What are the expectations that you have for yourself??
• What are the expectations that your boss/stakeholders/board of directors, etc. have for you? Are you 100% sure about these expectations, or are some of them assumed? Do you need to have some clarifying conversations?
• Are there other ways to get everything done that don’t involve overwork?
• Could you work smarter, not harder?
• Are there ways you can take better care of yourself during periods of work intensity?

Two Assumption-Busting Stories

My all-time favorite story about a culture of overwork comes from a successful executive and single mom. She is a fast worker and was very clear that she could get all her work done in a 6-7 hour day. Meanwhile, all her peers worked late into the night and pressured her to do the same.?

So, she gamed the system. To be able to pick up her kids from school, she got all her work done and drafted answers to all her emails before she left work… but she didn’t send the emails. Instead, she waited until after her kids were in bed, and at 9 pm she sent all the drafts she had prepared earlier. This little trick heralded her all kinds of recognition from peers and leadership about what a hard worker she was, how dedicated she was, and how she was one of the best employees on the team.?

Many years ago, I experienced something similar, but in my case, I was too rebellious to buy into what I perceived as a nonsense work culture. So I left every night on the dot at 6 pm and worked a four-day workweek. But I did not sacrifice excellence. I worked hard and got everything done while I was in the office so I never took my laptop home. I won Employee of the Year.?

What do you do when the work really is too much?

What happens when you have a crazy convergence of demands, deadlines, or events? Like the product leader who has three product launches overlapping? Or the Executive Director whose initiatives are finally all bearing fruit and she’s traveling nonstop, but somehow still has to find time to lead her organization? Or the CTO who is under extreme pressure to fix critical and urgent problems? I’ll cover this in the next article, “What To Do When You Can’t Get It All Done.”

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Want support to create a culture shift for you and/or your team? Schedule a 1:1 conversation with me.?

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