Workaholism and the Inauthentic Self

Whoever tries to live faster, will ultimately also die faster. —Chun Byul Han

As we navigate our lives and careers, we often find ourselves with a constant eye on the future. Personally, I’ve felt the relentless drive to strive for more, engaging fully in the present to shape the plans, projects, businesses, or promotions I dreamed about. This pursuit of future goals not only defines our current state but also connects us to a larger societal framework and a broader sense of purpose. It's this vision of the future that fuels our ambitions and ignites our desire for meaning, pushing us to seek significance beyond the immediate moment, set expectations and ignite action.

However, when our expectations spiral out of control, our energy, focus, and efforts are confronted with an additional pressure. When our expectations are misaligned, our envisioned future seems too distant, creating a disproportionate sense of urgency. This excess of urgency can be understood as a desire to accelerate time. As we push and work harder, we become overly attached to our future self, leading to a neglect of the present moment.

And, once our future self-image becomes our main objective and focus, it takes absolute control of our present time. We become so fixated on our future identity that excessive work seems a reasonable sacrifice. This attachment to future expectations can endanger our well-being and lead us to misery as we allow our self-importance to overshadow all aspects of life. We become so self-absorbed that we see ourselves as the sole protagonist to be considered; everything external such as family and society are compressed and reduced into the importance of our own selves.

This is when workaholism can take over our lives. We develop the ambition to achieve our goals faster and essentially try to accelerate the passage of time. This desire to speed up life itself is a form of time abuse, eliminating its natural pace and space. A workaholic, striving to reach goals quickly, sacrifices the present moment to accelerate time. It desires to live more at a faster pace. According to Chun Byul Han in "The Scent of Time," “whoever tries to live faster, will ultimately also die faster.” This notion is counterintuitive to the workaholic’s idea that overworking will bring more life. In reality, rushing through life distorts the present moment, which is where true living occurs.

The poet does not lament that a beautiful afternoon has passed, because every time has a scent proper to it. Why should one lament the passing of an afternoon? The scent of the afternoon will be followed by the pleasant smell of the evening. And night, too, exudes its own fragrance. These scents of time are not narrative, but contemplative. They are not arranged into a sequence. Rather, they rest in themselves.—Hsieh Chin

If we look closer at the workaholic, he is consumed by work and finds no time for leisure or relaxation because these are deemed unproductive. The workaholic never "stops to smell the flowers," missing the patience and contemplation necessary to live life at the right time.

The Workaholic As An Inauthentic Self

One of the most fascinating concepts pertaining to the relationship between time and self is the idea proposed by Heidegger in his work Being and Time, and that is the concept that time is self. He proposes the notion of being constant with ourselves and reaching the state where we have no desire to live in the future, no desire to accelerate time, no desire to change the course of life. We are time; we live time. Time is, therefore, in perfect harmony with the self. Time is self.

Heidegger states that “the person who exists inauthentically constantly loses time and never has any.” And, according to Chun Byul Han, “the one who exists authentically has time always, so to speak. He or she always has time because time is self, and does not lose time because of not losing him- or herself”.

When we observe children, we can clearly see this concept in action, as they fully embrace and live in the present moment. They immerse in the now with joy and curiosity, not abusing the present time for a faster tomorrow. While they may look forward to future experiences, their focus remains on the present, embodying intention and emotion without the anxiety of accelerated time. A child lives his or her life authentically and has a full alignment between self and time.

Similarly, our elders, after navigating decades of life, understand the value of aligning self and time. They live authentically, and have intuitively shifted their focus from doing to being. They have learned that time is not a resource to be hurried but an experience to be lived and therefore embrace the natural flow of time. An elder’s self, too, is time.

Just as the person who exists inauthentically constantly loses time and never ‘has’ any, it is the distinction of the temporality of authentic existence that in resoluteness it never loses time and ‘always has time’. —Heidegger, Being and Time

When we look at ourselves, as active professionals, we often experience a shortage of time. This shortage of time is a symptom of inauthentic existence. Despite mastering productivity tools and time-management strategies, we abuse the present moment by cramming more work than the day should permit. This overworking exhausts the present leaving us with an exhausted self and the feeling of always being left behind. For the workaholic, there is no time to stop and smell the flowers; he is rushing and doesn’t even notice the flowers in the way. The workaholic has a distorted relationship between time and self, and therefore, lives an inauthentic life.

OK, now let’s get practical: how do we then manage the balance between our ambition, our effort, and the development of our skills? When we’re captured by our talents, we are driven to excel, to break records, and to create impact. And this drive is a gift, not something to be suppressed. At this point, the challenge is to learn to distinguish workaholism from high ambition. One way we can do so is by asking ourselves certain questions:

1. Does our work habits resemble addiction?
2. Does our craving for more work lead to future regret?
3. Are we believing great but false expectations?
4. Are we able to create boundaries between our work and our life to allow functional personal relationships to flourish?
5. Are we suffocating the present with so much work that it cannot absorb anything else?
6. And finally, if we’re pushing ourselves through intense work schedules to accelerate results, are we distorting our perception of effort?

Ultimately, only we have the answer to our own situation. If our close family and friends are concerned about us, or if we're concerned those relationships are being impacted by our obsession with work, it’s time to reconsider our relationship with work. Additionally, to be able to stop being a workaholic, the only way is to restructure our priorities, our values, our expectations, and our relationship with time. Learn patience; learn to let go; learn to trust our talents and to live authentically knowing that we are enough!

As final thoughts, I believe our challenge today is to learn to manage ourselves in this information age where we're constantly bombarded with data. We gather it and turn it into knowledge, but often lack the wisdom to know how to actually live our lives wisely. The problem is that knowledge without wisdom can lead us to misery because there's no set formula we can apply to aligning our priorities correctly when we are too obsessed with the future, our ego, and our distorted expectations. So, even though our culture glorifies youth, beauty, wealth, and influence, it's crucial to cultivate the wisdom to live in harmony with time. We should also rethink the role models we look up to and be sure we have a good mix of them. Sure, GaryV can show us how to hustle, but it's just as important—if not more so—to seek advice from our elders, like grandparents and wise mentors who have real insights into what truly matters. Sometimes, it's a conversations with our great-grand-uncle that will remind us to 'stop and smell the roses,' and that will allow the scent of time to enrich our lives.

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