Learning to Give a Little Less

What You'll Find Here

Thoughts on un-learning workaholic behavior.

In this post, I am going to describe developing some new habits for Type A folks. I realize that this is easier said than done for high-performers. But these are important skills to master later in your career.

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REFLECTIONS

Hardworking by Nature

High performers with Type A personality traits are no strangers to hard work. In fact, it comes naturally to most of us to work hard until the job is done. We don’t quit. We don’t give up. We always have a little more to give and want to see a job done well. If not kept in check, these traits lend themselves well to being a workaholic.

Give yourself permission to give a little less of yourself to work

Even if things don’t go to the workaholic extreme, it can be difficult for high performance professionals to let work go and relax a bit. However, by the time you’ve been cranking with productivity for 25 or more years, you’ve gotten darn efficient at what you do. If you manage to get your week’s work finished in thirty hours, why stick around the office? I want you to start letting life take up more of your work time.

My older Americauna EE hens are learning to give a little less, laying the occasional tiny fairy egg

Steps to stepping away

Will anyone really care if you show up at your desk at 9:00 AM instead of 8:00? Probably not. Subtly block out your afternoons after 4:00 PM and call it “focus time”. No one else will notice. But in that time, you could get a lot of things accomplished. I’m talking about things that are a lot more important than some corporate shmuck job. Work on starting your own business, lift weights or do a spin class, trail run with the dogs or mountain bike, work in the garden or clean the coop. Work needs to adapt to your schedule, not the other way around.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Go be a high performer someplace else! You’ve given corporate America a quarter century or more of dedication. Dedicate more and more time to YOU, the people you love, and the things that bring you joy. You’re able to complete what your team, clients and company need of you in less time that junior associates can. So, ditch the workaholic’s guilt. Gift yourself back some time. Use this newfound time productively to better yourself and build your personal relationships, while mentally extracting yourself more and more from corporate career life. Break the muscle memory of being a high performer for your employer and redirect that energy toward building a life that is more authentically YOU.