Your Job is Not Your Identity
Break free from workaholism and rediscover life’s joys. Your 9-to-5 does not define you. Who are you from 5-to-9?
I used to joke with my friends that I didn’t have a personality beyond being a workaholic. Because at the time, it was mostly true. I was an achiever at my job, but a huge failure when it came to work-life balance.
For the better part of the last decade, I’ve been heads down at work, focused on performing well, delivering results, and advancing my career. I thought that laying the right foundations, gaining a breadth of skills, and climbing the proverbial ladder as fast as I could in my 20s were all necessary to set me up for long-term job success.
And I still believe this to be true. But not to the detriment of my health and well-being, relationships, and life outside of work.
Learning to let go
It had to take several bouts of burnout and deteriorating mental health for me to finally wake up to the reality of my situation. That being a hardcore workhorse was not sustainable nor enjoyable. That there was more to life beyond the demands of my job. That as much as there was a 9-to-5, there was also a 5-to-9 — there were 16 hours in a day where I didn’t have to live and breathe my work.
So, gradually, I started to take my foot off the pedal. I deleted Slack from my phone. I un-synced my work email from my personal devices’ email apps. I kept my work laptop closed on weekends.
I reassured myself that if there was ever an emergency that needed my urgent attention outside of work hours on weekdays and weekends, someone in the company would have my number and could get in touch with me. And you know what? It has never happened. Not once.
When there had been issues that surfaced after work hours, we had systems in place such that there were “on-call” individuals on shifts who were responsible of handling these unforeseen events. So, I’d come back online on Mondays seeing that issues have been mostly resolved even if I was out, and even if they weren’t, then I’d help pick up from where they left off.
It took some time, but I eventually learned to not feel guilty when it came to these situations because the company’s systems and processes existed for this reason. It was, in fact, a good sign when my teams were able to self-organize without me instead of always expecting and being reliant on my presence.
Finding happiness and redefining my identity
Learning to let go and to stop bad work habits was one thing; actually making time to seek and try out non-work activities that I enjoyed was another.
After the purge, I initially felt antsy and restless because I was so used to being online. So, at first, I replaced my tendency to work after-hours with mindless scrolling on social media. But then I quickly realized that this was not doing my mental health any good either. I needed a different strategy.
I became intentional about creating rituals and exposing myself to various experiences. I set out a goal to read at least one book a week. I baked every weekend while listening to my favorite podcasts. I allocated a monthly “Experience” budget that would allow me to find and go to at least two events in the area that I was excited or curious about.
And now, I write. Religiously. Both nonfiction and fiction pieces. And I’ve recently started taking creative writing courses to further fuel my growth as a writer.
All these certainly did not happen overnight. It took months for me to fall into habits that gave me energy and fit my lifestyle. Along the way, I’ve learned a lot more about myself — interests and passions that brought me joy, hidden skills that were waiting to be unlocked, relationships that I was determined to strengthen, new life goals that I want to pursue.
I am not yet 100% out of the woods when it comes to eliminating not-so-great job habits nor expertly managing work-life balance, and I don’t think I’ll ever be. It’s an evolving process. I still go hard during my 9-to-5 (more like 8-to-6 on average, in reality), which I’d like to more tactfully manage in pursuit of a more sustainable career.
But it’s important to acknowledge that I have made great strides over the last year in loosening my grip on work and discovering other areas in my life that give me joy.
Hopefully, this is only the start — that over the next years and decades, I continue to do well at work without considering it the central part of my identity, and I get to find people and things outside of work that bring me happiness and make this one life worth living.
