Workaholics Anonymous & Me

 

IT’S EASY TO miss the weekly meeting spot for Workaholics Anonymous in downtown Washington, D.C., home to some of the most overachieving disciples of overwork culture in the world. The neon sign above the unobtrusive glass door wedged between a high-end cosmetics shop and a nail salon in the trendy Dupont Circle neighborhood advertises “Psychic Readings.” Hiding in plain sight is a small square sign emblazoned with a D in a bright orange square for the innocuous Dupont Circle Club. 

The worn, creaking stairs lead to a warren of small, bare rooms where all manner of people come week after week to sit in a circle of wooden chairs and, in the fellowship of others in pain, share their secrets and shame, unburden themselves of suffering, and hope to heal. The club’s website lists AA for alcoholics, GA for gamblers, NA for narcotics users, SLAA for sex and love addicts, and a host of others. At the bottom of the list lies WA—Workaholics Anonymous.

I wanted to understand more about workaholism and work addiction. In so many cultures, people talk with pride about being dedicated to their work and the importance of hard work and doing a good job. So many believe that the longer they toil, the better work they produce, and that overwork is simply the price of admission if you want to be excellent at what you do. Many talk ruefully of health problems, stress, failed marriages, estrangement from loved ones, or even loneliness because work leaves them no time for the rest of their lives. In a culture that celebrates and rewards overwork, where do we draw the line between good, healthy work, overwork, and unhealthy addiction? I was wondering where to draw that line in my own life.

On the Monday evening I visited WA, a woman named Christine was running the D.C. meeting. She had invited me to attend. As long as I respected the group’s anonymity and understood that no one there spoke for the organization, only for themselves, then any self-identified workaholic in attendance was free to speak with me and share their story. I agreed to use first names only. There were only two people present that night. “You would think in D.C. there would be a lot of people looking for help. But a lot of people don’t know they’re suffering. Plus, it’s game night,” Christine explained with a shrug as she put the board game Ticket to Ride on a table in the middle of the room.

“People don’t think it’s important enough to come”—leisure, play, and fun being things workaholics struggle to make time for. Many saw game night—which fell on the rare fifth Monday of the month—as an unproductive waste of time.

“Hi, my name is Christine and I’m a workaholic,” the meeting began.

“Hi, my name is Jeff and I’m a workaholic and a procrastinator.” They turned to me.

“Uh, hi. My name is Brigid. I’m a reporter interested in learning about workaholism in overwork culture.” I hesitated, the curious yet impersonal veil of my reporter persona lifting. “I work too much. And I guess I’m wondering if I might be a workaholic, too.”

To find out if I fit the workaholic profile, they told me to look at page 2 in the Book of Recovery and take a twenty-question quiz.“Three or more positive answers indicates that there may be a problem with workaholism.” I circled thirteen.“Are there times when you’re motivated and push through tasks when you do not even want to, and other times when you procrastinate and avoid them when you would prefer to get things done?” Check. “Do you regularly underestimate how long something will take and then rush to complete it?” Check.“Have your long hours caused injury to your health or relationships?”

At the height of the pandemic, I was producing a weekly live podcast on Slate, “Crisis Conversations,” trying to understand in real time how Covid-19 was disrupting work, family, gender equity, and care, while being down two staff members and on a tight deadline to write and edit a series of major reports. And I was writing a magazine story, running the Better Life Lab, reporting for this book, and trying to navigate the bitter waters of helping my sisters and mother get her will, advanced health directive, and all the paperwork together to prepare for the end of her life. At 3:00 a.m. one night, an empty container of mint chocolate chip ice cream sat by my computer mouse, my shoulder ached, my butt was asleep from sitting for so long, and I began to feel dizzy. I became short of breath. My chest felt like it was on fire.

A few days later, I was in a cardiologist’s office. My chest still hurt and I was easily winded. The doctor ran tests and delivered the diagnosis: Costochondritis. An inflammation of the soft connective tissue between the ribs, likely brought on by acute stress. I wasn’t having a heart attack, but it felt like I was, all the time. I would come to call this period of intensive overwork my crucible of nails and shattered glass.

So, yes, I’ve let my long work hours cause injury to my health. And while I’m so grateful for my family and friends, I know I’ve let them down and they’ve sometimes felt they come a distant second to my paid work life. (My disappointed husband just set off to hike alone on a beautiful Sunday afternoon while I was writing this chapter, saying over his shoulder, “Aren’t you the one who says how important it is to play?”) But was I a workaholic?

I began, as Christine suggested, to reflect on my work story. My faults are many. I was certainly a driven overachiever in school. I am plagued by perfectionist tendencies, which have led to the pain of constant worry, procrastination, and pulling all-nighters at the last minute because I never feel ready or smart enough to tackle big things. I have that restless, guilty drive that is so common in the United States to do more, be more, accomplish more—the very American drive to “self- improvement,” instilled in our national culture from the earliest days of Benjamin Franklin’s “Project for Moral Perfection,” and the compulsion to be the very best you can be, though I’m often bewildered and unsure just exactly who or what that is. Starting my paid work career in the 1980s only a decade after women began entering the paid workforce en masse, I was definitely caught up in overworking to prove to my male colleagues and bosses that I belonged, that I wasn’t just a “skirt,” as someone once called me. I quickly bought into “ideal worker” notions that the longer I labored, the more dedicated and committed I would be and the better work I would produce. Once I became a mother, all of that was magnified, determined as I was to prove I could be both/and a great mother and a great worker rather than the more common options presented of either/or, or a muddling mediocrity at both.

Workaholics are seized by a compulsion to work, and may get an adrenaline charge from it, but they don’t really enjoy it. Was that me? Throughout my life, I’ve been plagued with doubt about whether I’m on the right path, doing the right thing with my life, doing enough, or missing the point. I can become paralyzed with anxiety. But I’ve always enjoyed learning, reporting, reading, writing, and sharing what I’ve found with others. Every day, it is my job to be surprised, outraged, or awed. As a reporter, people sharing their stories with me feels like they’ve given me their most precious gift. I love how those stories connect us to each other, shortening the distance between us and helping us better understand our lives in all their complexity, beauty, and imperfection.

To my mind, the lack of health and wellbeing policies drives the overwork and workaholic culture so pervasive in the United States, with all of the people working harder and harder to keep from falling behind, or spiraling into an unforgiving pit of financial hardship. It is no wonder that the fear of running out of money and financial strain shows up as the number one source of stress.

Thus the United States has created the ideal, anxiety-provoking external conditions to push someone with internal workaholic tendencies right over the edge. Just as time scarcity drives panicked busyness, money scarcity drives panicked overwork.

As the director of the Better Life Lab, I’m grateful that it’s my job to strive to make work, care, and home better and fairer for everyone. I have a sense of responsibility to the people who work with me. And though I’ve had to learn hard and sometimes painful ways of how to better manage a team, there is such joy giving others opportunities and watching them thrive. So yes, I do enjoy my paid work. At home, I don’t particularly love housework. But my unpaid care work is what makes me happy to be alive.

Still, it did seem that if I wasn’t working, I was at least thinking about it all the time. My evenings, weekends, and even vacations have sometimes been polluted with actual work, or feeling guilty that I should be doing some, so I can finally “catch up.” As if I am forever behind some elusive line of acceptable doneness. Why did I work and think about work so much? Was there always just too much to do? Were my expectations too high? Or was it fear driving it all?

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BRIGID SCHULTE ’84 is the author of the bestselling Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time and an award-winning journalist formerly for the Washington Post, where she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize. She is also the director of the Better Life Lab, the work-family justice and gender equity program at New America.

Excerpted from Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life by Brigid Schulte. Published by Henry Holt and Company. Copyright © 2024 by Brigid Schulte. All rights reserved.