I have what many people would consider a difficult and challenging job. I work for one of the world’s top five most powerful and recognized companies, in a high pressure role interacting with corporate vice presidents, communicating business strategies attached to billions of dollars in revenue, surrounded by high performers with type A plus, plus, plus personalities.
From the minute I hit my office to the minute I undock my laptop I run at 110 percent mental capacity. On any given day 50-100 e-mails might cross my desk. And no, there is no junk mail that makes it through our firewall – these are direct specific mails most of which I need to take an action on, usually within that day. The cultural at the company is always online, always on mail, always connected – so the expectation for replying to mail within hours is a company standard.
As if the e-mail load wasn’t stressful enough – I’m in meetings on average between 5-6 hours a day – at times I go days in a row packed back to back with meetings – no lunch, no breaks, no time to answer e-mail - I’m lucky if I can figure out how to pee and grab an apple off my desk.
The other day, when I was feeling partially spun up and exhausted – I counted that in a four week time period – I only had eight hours of non meeting time, divided into 30 minute chunks over 20 days. That’s not a lot of time to actually do my job, which requires time to think, process, write, build plans and find/motivate people to execute against them. That’s hard to do in 8 hours a month.
You might think by reading this I’m important at the company, maybe I’m a vice president or in a visible leadership position. You are mistaken – I’m a no body at the company – there are thousands of me here. Though I’m senior in my role and career – I’m in the sandwich world between the big money and the little money – the big thinker jobs and the little tactical jobs – the company wouldn’t miss me if I left because there are hundreds of people waiting in line to have my job – and they remind me of that to keep my head down and focused.
This isn’t new to me – I’ve been at the company for 4 years. I’ve lived this reality everyday for 3 years and 9 months without a single question or hesitancy to rise to the challenge. Then one day something changed…
1 comment:
Although it's a standard-issue corporate cop-out to say that work-life balance is as much the employee's responsibility as the employer's, I do wonder how much overscheduling and overstimulation are self-imposed. Would it qualify as an addiction? Are there people out there who simply cannot function without workahol?
I've seen many people burn themselves out in high-pressure, high-stimulus cultures, often because of peer pressure -- everyone they know is glued to their e-mail and scheduled to the hilt, to the point where it's actually a badge of pride to work too many hours, take on too many projects and give one-line lower-case answers to e-mails at 1 in the morning.
This is ironic for two reasons. First, I've found that people with these extremely unhealthy work habits are often the least productive in the organization, at least in terms of useful ideas produced per hour of labor. Second, those people tend to do rather well in their careers, because that behavior meshes well with the culture of macho self-sacrifice that often pervades such companies. (Often they're imitating the work habits of senior management, and like promotes like, at least in unhealthy organizations.) Both factors make these habits (or addictions) toxically self-reinforcing.
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