If you said ‘True’ to any two of the above statements you may have slipped into one or more of these work potholes. Lets find out which one

– Pothole 1: Passion turns into addiction

I had made this pit my home for a while and so I know it pretty well. There is a very fine line between passion and obsession. But honestly sometimes the line is a bubble, it bounces up and down and eventually disappears. The 8-hour shift becomes a 12 hour one, the phone call to family becomes an annual birthday call, hobbies become luxuries and friends become extinct. And because you don’t give non-work areas much time and attention, you don’t know how to do them well. And that becomes an excuse to not do them altogether. That leaves you to be a star only at your office which becomes your only source of dopamine (the achievement hormone). Dopamine is also an addiction hormone and so you move from passion to obsession to addiction. And like any addiction, you get withdrawal symptoms which show up when you are at social gatherings or holidays or while spending time with family.

– Pothole 2: Insecurities punish

And then there are some who at the core feel insufficient. You feel you are inadequate and have inadequate resources to thrive and succeed. Thus, you look for reassurances and validations from the external world (read bosses and colleagues). You are constantly worried about what the management is thinking about you and if you are meeting the standards of people that matter. And even if you are, you are ridden with doubt. So, you cope by pleasing others. And well what better way to please your superiors than sacrifice everything for work. You respond to work WhatsApp messages with lightning speed. You barely/never ask for leave. You respond to your emails while talking to your kids. The irony is you still feel anxious and inadequate.

– Pothole 3: Chasing ‘Success’

“I should get this promotion” “I should be head of department before 40” “I should have a salary higher than my colleagues”. Workplace is a Formula One Race Circuit for some. ‘If you are not winning, you are losing’. Everything is a competition. The race drives you, makes you a better performer and then burns you out. And if you are not a Ferrari or Mercedez, (even if you are doing well), you are miserable because you are not at the absolute top. You are busy proving a point to someone. The fear of failure doesn’t let you sleep and enjoy simple joys of life. Intimate conversations with close friends, playtime with children, hobbies, savouring the moment, elude you as you constantly have one eye on the track and one hand on the steering wheel. You think success will buy you happiness but it doesn’t because success is a moving target for you.

– Pothole 4: The vicious cycle of Work and no life

The last pothole is where you stay so busy that you forget to build a life in the first place. You are too busy to find the right person. And if you do, you are too busy to make it work. You are too busy to spend time with your children when they need you. You are too busy to make it to a friend’s parent’s funeral. You are too busy for that guitar. And before you know it, you are alone. You don’t have a family, your children don’t need you and your friendships have strained. So what do you do? Well between loneliness and work, you definitely choose work. You spend more and more time at your office and so there is no life left to really balance!

So if you have fallen in any of these ruts, here’s a reminder to hit the reset button and recalibrate. Don’t stay in this pit for too long as it gets harder to bounce out once you go deeper. Hold the hand of your loved one longer, play with your kids before they don’t need you, meet your friends before you lose one of them, remove time for your health before it rebels. Life is precious, let us not feed it to our work schedules.