Wow, did this resonate with me. In my case, I was suffering from depression, though I didn't realize it at the time. The extreme focus required by work distracted me from how miserable I was. I dreaded going home and constantly came up with excuses to go to the office on weekends.
One of my best memories from my career: I was sitting at my desk at 8pm "working" because I had "so much to do". When in reality I was just dreading going home. A coworker that I barely new dropped by my desk and said "Things aren't going well at home, are they? Me either." We proceeded to head across the street to a bar to share stories. It helped immensely at that time.
I make an effort to pay it forward. If you see someone in the office at all hours, especially when wfh is an option, odds are good things aren't going great for them. Even just a simple "How are things going with you?" over the water cooler can go a long ways.
This used to be a daily thing for me. I would stay at the office from 10 am to 10pm most days not really working but i just didn't want to go home.
It's definitely something I keep a sharp eye out for. Sudden increases or changes in hours definitely warrant a conversation. With COVID and WFH, I've had a few of those conversations as well. It's harder to catch the signals, but they're there. Changes in productivity, hours, etc.
Ignoring and distracting problems through side gigs...
But beyond that, I'd add Bertrand Russell's In Praise of Idleness and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324.
While all of them are tremendous food for thought, the third was the most stunning for me: it is remarkable to see the degree to which a medieval peasant, while having less access to technology than we do today, enjoyed in many ways a better lifestyle than we do in terms of holidays, working hours that meshed with actual human rythyms. As Russell spells out, the industrial revolution, which provided many material advancement, could have done so with a great improvement in everyone's lifestyle, but instead most of its benefits have been captured upwards.
Other things I can think of with structure usually have a kind of endless goal that can't be spent at your discretion. Rehab, fitness, organized religion. I've never done rehab, but it seems to overlap with fitness where even if you gamify it with achievements, its not like a game at all because you have to do the same achievement the next day and forever.
The earnings, advancement, structure and distraction do have their place especially when your personal relationships and life isn't going the way you want it.
If you don't have those personal issues, then yeah, you'd find it hard to relate to.
Rather than having nothing positive, I think it's having negatives that they can't otherwise control.
Not OP, but this critique revolves mostly around semantics and I don't find it useful or accurate. If, big if, they had something positive to look up to outside of work, they'd be less inclined to put all their energy into work. That'd be the case even with multiple negatives they couldn't control. In other words, it's the total lack of any and all upside outside of work rather than the existence of downsides that makes people feel powerless and depressed.
Back when I had a lot of emotionally turbulent events happening in my life, I was in the same boat as the parent comment you are replying to. Things in life going extremely sideways and leaving me heartbroken/depressed were what pushed me to that same kind of workaholism described above. Every single significant side project I wrote was during some awful-feeling events happening in my life. Those were also the times when I spent the least time doing "fun" things (e.g., videogames), because I just didn't feel like it.
That drive for me had nothing to do with the actual desire to make money or have career advancement, it was just a mirage. In fact, I would say I have more of the actual desire to make more money and advance in career when I am in "good times", but the drive isn't quite there. But when the "bad times" come, I have no actual desire for money/career advancement. I do however get that insane intrinsic drive to just get away from all the "bad things" in life at that time by diving deep into working/studying/etc. It wasn't about money, it was about doing something productive, because most of that work (at least for me) was just side projects that I didn't get paid a dime for, and neither was I expecting or cared to get paid for it.
So I think escapist workaholism needn't necessarily be for the boss man. Anything will do the job as long as it's sufficiently consuming.
I worked for other people during internships for a few years and after college for about 5 years before hitting a homerun. I've never done anything for a decade and would imagine being unfulfilled by that kind of conscription. I'm not the kind of person content with just a job, and I always loathed and scoffed at the surrogate "family" that some corporate environment and startup founders try to create.
This focus was very good for me though and neeted a 80k pay increase. However , I find myself not particularly wanting to get into a relationship again. Felt like a very painful experience. I'd rather make music instead .
Once I recognized the pattern it was easy to break, so when I find myself working longer hours or getting too emotionally involved in my work I take a step back and try to figure out why I'm behaving in this manner in hopes of preventing future burn out.
Totally normal and healthy, I felt like that when my relationship fell apart in 2014, didn't start dating again for about a year, met the woman I'm still (and plan to spend the rest of my life with) the year after that, the societal pressure to be in a relationship is real.
Just remember to take stock occasionally and seek professional help if you feel like something is wrong, otherwise enjoy your music.
Thanks for saying this. I had a partner who was divorced in 2019 as well, she really made it seem like she stayed in multiple crappy marriages to look good.
I'm grateful for a safe place to sleep and food, which is much more than I expected to have in my youth.
So I was spending longer hours in the office and now longer hours doing work from home. Also I am starting different business ventures that take me out of home. Those are the only things where I feel like I have some control. I can push back against my boss a lot easier than against my parents or wife.
It really helps to have someone independent who has both parties' interests in mind and who can a) see what is healthy in the relationship and what isn't, b) help with talking about invidivual needs, c) bridge the gap between the two people in the relationship.
Couple therapy is often portrayed as a weird thing for broken people in movies and shows. In reality it can be really empowering and rewarding for everyone involved even when it is not about impending doom. But, it requires being honest with yourself or being willing to learn to be honest with yourself. That shit is hard. As in seriously hard.
Agency is the opposite of stressors. Agency is the capacity to act with effect on one's environment. Sstress is the inability, whether through mental or physsical ability, excessive or nonsensical information, inability to manipulate or maneuver, or nonresponsiveness on the part of the environment, whether inanimate, animate, or sentient.
When faced with domains of no comtrol, individuals often seek domains of some control. This may be career, hobby, volunteering, sport, art, intellectual activities --- positive adaptations. Or "kick the dog" (or spouse, children, neighbour, scapegoat...) responses.
Surprisingly enough, because I was unemployed the day she was born, even if she hadn’t been disabled the birth would have been “free” (no out of pocket costs to me or my wife) because neither parent was employed when she was born.
Our friends and extended family disappeared as soon as our daughter was born. I don’t know if it’s American culture or what, but people get extremely uncomfortable around people who are mourning or going through trials in their lives. People sort of blank out then don’t hang out with you anymore, or even invite you to things. After all, you’re going through a lot, we’ll just give you plenty of space.
The hospitals do their absolute best to isolate you too, unless you wanna go talk to the psychiatrist and get some medication. Groups would come to volunteer and make food for the parents of the patients (Taco Tuesday every day, it was kind of awful), and they’d laugh and joke around and high five each other for being so great volunteering (or at least that’s how it felt), while interacting with us people eating as much as possible. Somehow it made me feel worse.
My wife got “tattled on” a few times by medical staff when she’d cry, such as when they said our daughter was terminal. It was infuriating that perfectly healthy grief gets you immediately referred to a psychiatrist.
Honestly being at work was nice because I could do normal stuff and have normal social interactions. At the hospital they constantly cycle the staff through, so you don’t have the same doctor more than two weeks, or the same nurse more than a couple days. I guess the trauma of being around dying babies is just too much.
With a couple of notable exceptions on my wife’s side of the family, we felt completely isolated and alone. I can’t say for sure but I think having a strong network of people who actually gave a shit (or even acted like they do) would have done wonders for my mental health. Then again I have a sneaking suspicion that would solve most mental health issues for a lot of people.
The whole ordeal has made me much more distant from my brothers and sisters and mother, unfortunately.
I experienced this last year after my (now ex) wife left me. I tried leaning on friends for support but they simply ghosted me. They had already started distancing themselves from me when they knew things were getting bad in my marriage; once we finally split for good, they became totally absent and unavailable. To be clear, these were just my friends; they didn't know my wife. I'm glad therapy kept me sane. Later in the year, I found a new and reliable friend in my manager, who was finally someone who would just listen to me and empathize.
In my situation, I found that family can be tricky. Someone in my family wanted to be supportive, but the problem was that they formed too many opinions around the situation. Instead of giving me space, they decided that the right thing was for us to get back together, without ever asking me how I felt or what I wanted (I just wanted to be done with it). So now I had to deal with my own shitty situation, while also managing their expectations. I eventually left them out of the loop; months later, when it became official (i.e. we had a decree), that person got really upset when I told them that it was final. It wasn't permanent and we're good now, but it was unnecessarily stressful for me to have to deal with that.
Best wishes for the rest.
Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this again.
Don't shame someone's escapism in the face of something life altering. You don't know his suffering, but try and come across more empathetic.
For me I felt completely powerless at the hospital. At work I got to solve “important” problems that were trivial in comparison to the things I had no control over, and was rewarded for doing so. It felt good to be useful when my life felt in complete chaos outside of work.
At one point I stayed up all night to wrap up a project that wasn’t even that important. My boss, rather than being happy with me, sat me down and said I needed to make sure to sleep and take care of myself, that I was going to burn myself out. I really appreciate him saying that in retrospect, even though I felt a little offended at the time. I try to balance work and home life, and have developed a great relationship with my daughter, now two.
In retrospect I wish I’d had the emotional stability to spend more time at the hospital, and to provide more emotional support for my wife who was saddled with going to the hospital almost every day.
Things are better now, our daughter is doing very well, but the workaholism can be because of external factors, as overworking made me able to ignore the other, more depressing parts of my life where I lacked control.