Fighting Workaholism: You Are Not a Success Machine

SUBJECT: As a social scientist, I'm intensely interested in addictive behaviors.

A lot of people watching this video right now,

they're watching it because they want an edge, and that's great.

I admire that.

You're strivers.

So am I.

But strivers in the striving process,

they open themselves up to one of the most deleterious,

addictive behaviors known to mankind, and that's workaholism.

People will work hard.

It will create dysfunction in their relationships.

They will exhibit hiding behavior, where they're sneaking around.

You don't believe it?

Well, ask yourself, do you sometimes sneak into the bathroom to check your email,

your work email?

Do you snap shut your laptop computer on a Sunday afternoon

when your partner comes home?

Yeah, yeah, well, you're doing it, too.

People get defensive when people question how much they're working.

Well, that's classic addictive behavior.

Now, I have found in my own work

that workaholism actually isn't the primary addiction.

It's a secondary addiction.

The primary addiction for most drivers is an addiction to success.

Success is achieving something of merit and being rewarded for it.

Many strivers, many of my students, me-- look,

I'm guilty here-- we feel fully alive when amazing things are happening,

and we're able to create value.

And we don't feel fully alive when we're not doing those things, quite frankly.

It's a real reward to see something come to fruition, to get that deal,

to finish that book, in my case,

to teach a class that goes incredibly well, to get that compliment.

A lot of that success addiction behavior is neurophysiological, as a matter of fact.

You find that people actually get dopamine in a way-- that's a neuromodulator that's

implicated in all forms of human addiction--

that they get dopamine,

specifically, when they feel that they're succeeding at work.

While they keep seeking those rewards, they keep seeking success.

And seeking success is hard.

You have to excel, and you have to excel compared to other people.

And that means you need to outwork other people.

And that leads to the work addiction.

So the underlying problem is success addiction.

Behind that, there's actually something even more profound,

which is a tendency to reduce yourself to nothing more than a success machine.

That's a problem.

That's a moral problem, as a matter of fact.

You're more than a success machine.

You're not a robot.

Neither am I.

But when you see yourself as the most excellent person, so very special,

you've objectified yourself.

You've taken away a big piece of your humanity.

Here's basically how I sum this up.

If you're exhibiting workaholic behavior, you need to deal with it.

But then the next question is, OK, how do stop.

How do I stop?

Is there a 12 step program?

Is there some detox center that I can get into?

And the answer is no,

although a lot of people do need to seek help from mental health professionals

for this.

The answer to this is to actually build your team on the people who

are going to give you the opportunities to do things

that are actually more satisfying than

that.

You need to actually take the people that you love the most,

and that perhaps you've been neglecting, and ask them,

what do you think I should do.

What do you actually think I should do instead of that?

For workaholics, the primary relationship, love relationship in their life, is with work.

That's not a good love relationship because work can't really love you back.

Work takes.

Work doesn't give.

That means usually, you need to cultivate the relationships with the people

that really can love you back.

Who are these people?

Well, I recommend that people actually start to develop a serious spiritual life,

a serious spiritual practice.

Whether it's a religious experience or not, that depends on different people.

Maybe that means reading the wisdom literature, getting in touch with the stoic philosophers,

studying the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, I don't know,

going back to the faith of your youth,

but something that gives you a relationship with the divine.

People who are married is doubling

and tripling down on the metaphysical beauty

that actually can and should be your marital relationship.

That might be the first time in years you've actually been able to work

on that.

With your children, that was a big one for me.

I'm telling you.

I can't tell you the number of times

that I spent that 14th hour in the office instead of my first hour

with my kids when they were little.

Why?

Because I had to be special instead of happy.

Right?

Workaholic special, that's for sure.

And they got revenge.

You know what they did?

They grew up, and I wasn't there for a lot of it.

Well, now, now it's not going to be that way.

I have deeper friendships than I ever had before,

and I recommend that people actually start to develop these real friendships.

The problem that CEOs have is they have lots of deal friends,

but not many real friends.

Deal and real.

You know the difference.

Deal friends are incredibly useful.

Real friends are useless.

They're just people who love you.

Cultivating those friendships can be the most exciting adventure

that you've had in a really,

really long time.

The bottom line is basically this.

What substitutes for work?

The answer is love with humans.

That's what it comes down to because happiness is love.

Full stop.

OK, how?

Give me the algorithm, man.

And I get it.

I want that, too.

And so I do have a lot of rules of thumb that I suggest.

Real friendship has to extend beyond your spouse, for example.

So real friends are people that you just love.

You don't need anything from them, and they don't need anything from you.

You really are not going to be getting the benefit

that you need from your relationships

if your only real friend is your spouse.

And that's typically the case with a lot of strivers.

So making real friendship, what we call companionate love with a spouse,

is critically important.

But you need at least one more, at least one more person.

And so working on that is critically important.

Only one more might be the right number for introverts.

Extroverts, on the other hand, need more friends than that.

Start with your spouse if you're married.

Then move on to one, or two,

or three people with whom you can make a real connection,

and start investing in that relationship.

And that means if that person lives in Atlanta, get on the plane, man.

Get on the plane.

Say, let's go do something for half a day.

What do you say?

And they'll be like, you're coming here to do that to see me.

And you're like, yep, it'll be super fun.

I'd guarantee that you actually do that.

But that's where the investment starts,

and those are the numbers that we're trying to talk about.

And anybody can do that.