Confessions of a Workaholic

How Leaving Silicon Valley for Las Vegas Saved my Life

About a year ago, I was living the startup dream in Silicon Valley. I had an amazing job at Evernote, where I was one of the earliest employees. It was an great environment to work in, respected by my colleagues worldwide but also surrounded by a group of people I genuinely *liked*. I never wanted it to stop, as this company where I had played an integral role from the beginning was growing more and more successful with each day, and I was being surrounded by people who constantly told me they needed me.

These are the traps of the workaholic:

You put aside everything for more work.

You always find time to work, and where there isn’t any, you make it.

You will put aside family and friends for work — although in my case, I actually solved this by having my family join the company, and many of my friends were there.

Worst of all, you prioritize work over your health.

In March of 2013, I broke my foot merely by walking to the office. I am in my mid-30s, so it should have been a warning sign; a healthy 30something should not break bones by tripping on a sidewalk, no matter how clumsy they are.

Over the next few months, even after the bone healed at a slower rate than expected, I started losing weight. It wasn’t extremely noticeable at first, but by November, coworkers started bombarding me with questions of “Are you tired?” and “Are you stressed?” and the worst one of all — “Are you sick?”

It honestly hadn’t occurred to me.

You see, I was busy working. During my convalescence with my broken foot, I was so busy doing an “important” project that I didn’t even take the pain medication prescribed, as the pain kept me awake through the night — I was able to finish the project in half the time, giving us more time to test it. (I am a huge proponent in testing products internally before releasing them.)

As soon as I was able to travel again, to the day, I was off and running. It was as if the accident never happened, and I was back with a vengeance. I didn’t have time to think about me, only the company, and the face time I’d taken away from them by my silly mistake.

Flash Forward to February of 2014. I finally got around to going to the doctor to check out why I had lost over 30 pounds (and I was only 140 to start with!) in the last 6 months. A friend came with me to make sure I didn’t shirk the questions, or the visit entirely because she knows me so well.

After a series of tests, it turned out I had two tumors blocking my intestinal track — thankfully they were self-contained at that point, but if we had waited any longer, and the doctor stressed the timeline in months, not years, it could have been a different story.

I recently had the chance to speak about this at Catalyst Week. Here’s the clip: