One of the real challenges of this day even before the pandemic hit was that of letting work consume our lives. It’s a challenge that has accelerated over the past two decades as technology has advanced to the point where many of us can be accessible all the time. I have experienced it, certainly, and I remember first reading about how widespread it has been in White Collar Sweatshop (Jill Andresky Fraser) over a decade ago.
For people who are high achievers and/or have high ambition, this is a challenge on multiple fronts. Oftentimes, those of us who work continuously don’t realize what we are sacrificing along the way, but we are unquestionably sacrificing when it comes to things like health (physical and mental) and our relationships. Ultimately, this will hit our work product, too, whether we realize it or not.
If you’re a long-time consumer of Michael Hyatt’s work, the central ideas in the new book Win at Work & Succeed at Life, which he co-authors with oldest daughter Megan Hyatt Miller, are very familiar to you. Michael has spoken often of the ideas in the book, from working too much at the cost of relationships and health to how one can attempt to reverse that. Indeed, the podcast they co-host always starts by saying that it helps one win at work and succeed at life, an idea they now speak of as the “double win”.
You might think this sounds like an oxymoron in modern times. At times, it’s hard not to be cynical enough to think so. The message in the book, as well as much of their work today, is that it is not, though it also doesn’t come easily.
The cult of overwork has made us susceptible to being “always on”, as if we are working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It takes the form of answering work calls or e-mails at dinner or at an hour like midnight, putting a presentation together while your kids are getting ready to go to bed, and much more. One thing the authors point out is that while this culture is rampant, we don’t help when we go along with it. The first time we handle a request that isn’t a dire emergency at 8 p.m. on a weeknight sets everything in motion – now we’re seen as someone who can do that and ultimately gets counted on.
But our bodies are not meant to be “on” all the time. Indeed, even inanimate objects are like that as well – as just one example, having a microprocessor running at 100 percent utilization in an electronic system is not at all a good situation.
Many people intellectually know that they don’t like this idea. We know that occasionally there are tight deadlines for a release, and maybe a few days or a week where we might have to put in some long hours. We’re okay with this and accept it. But we don’t like this being counted on to be the norm, yet we also have a tendency to accommodate it, whether out of habit or a belief that to not do so is career suicide. Changing this does not come easily, and while it may at times feel like it’s impossible to find a job that doesn’t demand you be available every waking second, they do exist.
What does it mean to succeed at life? It’s different for everyone, to be sure, but the authors’ idea is that it generally consists of having time away from work that is spent with the people who matter most to us and being fully present with them, getting sufficient rest (there is an entire chapter on the subject of sleep) and enjoying life in activities we love that don’t involve achievement of some sort. They talk about an overall process of how to get there, and stress that while it can be done, it is not easy, but it is very much worth it.
A lot of this book, as well as their coverage of this in their podcast (I am an avid listener) and other writing, hits home for me, albeit in a different manner than the main theme of the book. I like to characterize myself as relentless. While I have not often felt like I had to work 60 hours a week or lose my job, even once working for an engineering leader who expressed appreciation for the times I got after something late in the evening, I have been known to take on too many commitments outside of my day job at the expense of other things.
The book may seem a bit repetitive since there are many examples given of overwork. However, this appears to be the authors’ way of using many different examples to point out the different consequences that come from it. They don’t hesitate to use themselves as examples, which adds to the effectiveness; one of Michael’s greatest gifts in his work is being vulnerable enough to share his own stories on these subjects in such a manner that you understand he speaks as the voice of experience on the subject, not someone preaching from on high. He shares times when his marriage was not well because of his constant work, as well as its health impacts on him over the years, time he missed with his five daughters and a stretch of his life when he didn’t have any close friends.
Related to that, the book is quite well-sourced, drawing examples from clients and others they know as well as from stories shared in business and other publications. Included in their client examples are people who they have helped right the ship in their lives after initially succumbing to the cult of overwork.
The basic message at the end of this is summed up near the end of chapter 3. It’s not that any of this is easily accomplished, and it’s something that will constantly require fine-tuning since our lives are in different seasons. But we have agency. Having our lives devoured by our work does not happen inexorably, nor does failing constantly at work if we focus on making sure our non-work lives are great. If we want a different result than either extreme, it won’t happen by accident, but rather, by being intentional.
Win at Work & Succeed at Life goes on sale Tuesday, April 20, 2021.