There is a high cost to how much you've lost in your life to overwork. Set down your tools and redirect your energy into that which nourishes and rewards.
I wrote the poem below at a time when I was realizing the high cost of overwork and overburden in my professional corporate life. Have you calculated your own cost yet?
How many times did you say,
If I work just one more hour, or two, or three, or late into the night…
If I handle just a few more records, just a few more, just a few after that…
If I do just these few more tasks, and then these others, and then these other ones…
If I work a 13-hour day for just a few more weeks, I can handle that, I know I’ll make it…
THEN I will get ahead
THEN I will get it done
THEN I will feel on top of things...
…and that feeling of ever being "on top of things" --
of being caught up --
NEVER happened?
Not ever
Not in weeks months years decades as you ran hard to escape the tide.
Now you count the cost of all those miniature jewels of lost opportunity:
How your body lost its suppleness for the yoga you skipped each day,
Always promising you’d pick it up soon — right after you got things caught up.
How your running distance shrank and shrank for all the runs you skipped when you stayed late
Pushing the work project to completion to show what a performer you were
For the company that then laid you off without a second thought when they no longer had a use for you.
While always thinking, hey, it’s just one run — I’ll run more when I’m caught up.
And then it was another missed and another
As you tried to still catch up, but were never caught up.
Your running shoes grew dusty
While you sat working hard, believing
If I just work harder, longer, evenings, weekends…
THEN I will feel on top of things.
THEN I will be valued for all the work I do.
And it never happened.
Not for all those years,
and still not now.
Count the cost now of the breaths you have given up to overwork and overburden.
Count the cost now of the friendships you did not nurture across decades,
Staying late at your desk -- while others went out for wine and laughter.
Count the cost of the networking you did not do across the years, as you worked, late and alone, trying hard to catch up with an impossible workload.
Count the cost of your daily habits of meditation, yoga, running, gym workouts, as they all slipped into the past tense one by one.
Because you thought, I can skip that session, it’s just one, I’ll make it up in the future
I can do it tomorrow, the next day, over the weekend, some day when I'm caught up.
Just another hour, a few more weeks, a month…
A year...
Many years...
Someday.
Stop and set down your tools
Stop and breathe in the now
Stop and look up at the sky
Stop and realize who you are
Stop and realize that extra hour of work you're planning to do will not catch you up
It will not stop that feeling of running in panic before the tide.
And that the body that is crying out instead for movement and nurturing and care
Needs an hour of running MORE than it needs to work another hour of an already overlong day.
Ask yourself,
“If I miss this opportunity TODAY to run, to laugh, to engage with life --
WHEN will I make it up?
Or will the compound interest of what I could REALLY do with this time,
What I could create,
How I could be changing the world,
Wealth and wisdom, profit and peace, a real life truly well-lived,
Become NEGLECT, that grows as my compound interest instead?”
Stop and realize that when you stop overworking, it is all there for you
And in that moment realize
The overwork was never the answer
The answer is in you.
You are on top of things.
In this moment, reflect on your own areas of overwork, overburden, and overgiving. Who told you you had to give these things to survive? Who benefits from you giving yourself away so cheaply? What changes will you make today to stop this free overgiving, and take on the wisdom of your life-time-energy?
If you're giving, make sure you're receiving reward, not merely running in panic before the tide, or giving just to prove and over-prove you're a team player while others are off living life. If you're giving, make it for a reason, for the creation of the professional and the personal impact, wisdom, body of work you want to create for a world that needs what only YOU can provide. If you're giving, stop and draw a line in the sand that is your own boundary for recharging, refreshment, and growth.
How will you change this today as you #healworklife?
Be well,
Katherine
