On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others
Balance, or the lack thereof, is one of the most common pain points for the juniors I&#x27;ve worked with.<p>New college grads can really struggle with finding balance after transitioning out of college. The undergrad environment has well defined start and end points for each class and everyone gets the same or similar workloads, so it&#x27;s possible to calibrate off of peers and consult with advisors or mentors who have gone through the same system.<p>Not so with the working world, where there are always more objectives than time and you can&#x27;t always look to peers to calibrate your progress. Ambitious juniors often see this and decide to go all-in, working as hard as possible on as much as possible for as long as possible.<p>This leads to burnout in some, though not all, of the people who get swept away in it. We read so many articles about burnout and recovery from burnout that the topic of hard work evokes strong reactions online, as evidenced by this article and the comments section. However, as the author points out there are multiple sides to this story. Hard work isn&#x27;t always <i>bad</i>, especially if you find yourself enjoying it and learning a lot.<p>If I&#x27;m being totally honest, working hard in my early career paid off significantly down the road. Not necessarily in immediate dollars paid out by my employers at the time, but the network, reputation, and skillset I built along the way are extremely valuable to this day. I didn&#x27;t even hate the hard work or long hours at the time, because I made a point to surround myself with peers I liked and work I enjoyed. I also made an effort to get plenty of exercise and social activity, which can&#x27;t be neglected.<p>In my opinion, too many online discussions around burnout are centered on the idea that work is inherently <i>bad</i> and something that should be minimized as much as possible. An understandable reaction from authors who might be burned out, but framing everything this way has an unintended side effect: It normalizes the idea that work is inherently bad, and that hating your work is natural. This mindset tends to trap people in jobs they hate at companies they dislike with peers they can&#x27;t stand, all because they&#x27;ve been led to believe that this is the normal state of affairs. They focus too much on trying to tolerate it and manage their borderline burnout instead of trying to move their career in a direction where they can find a job they like.<p>In my opinion, we need to stop framing this as a debate about whether work is <i>good</i> or work is <i>bad</i>, and start talking more about finding a healthy balance and working toward jobs we like. No job is going to be fun all of the time, but if you&#x27;re hating every hour of work and counting down the hours to the end of the day every day then you&#x27;re probably in a below average job.