Professional obsession. Everything in our culture suggests it a good thing.
Countless stories of iconic musicians, sports stars, business leaders, and politicians herald the idea that to be truly great, you have to get lost in your work to the point it becomes indistinguishable from your life.
Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers explains how the path to mastery is long-term immersion in something.
Best-selling leadership author Robin Sharma tells us “until your mission becomes an obsession, nothing will change.”
What all this seed-planting doesn’t explain is that for the vast majority of us, obsession won’t put us on a cereal box. It won’t get us a Wikipedia entry or a presidential medal.
At best, it will accrue glory to others. At worst, it will leave us spent, broken, and ultimately no happier than anyone can be after fundamental elements of their identity have been displaced or replaced by obligations.
My favourite film of all-time is Francis Ford Coppola’s landmark Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now. Nothing else yet crafted captures the prospect of war with such darkly beautiful accuracy. The madness war creates in the conduct of groups and in the hearts of individuals drips from every scene and resonates with every line of its torturously poetic script. This all takes places against a backdrop of creeping dissonance, contradiction, and savagery as we see man’s aspirations eclipsed by instinctual violence, his designs swallowed as he surrenders to his nature.
What we don’t see in the film is how it damn near destroyed anyone who dared get involved in its production, which spanned 238 days on location in the Philippines. One actor had a heart attack. Several were addicted to drugs. There was a lethal helicopter crash on set and another life lost during set construction. Actual corpses were nearly featured in the movie after being unwittingly purchased from a local grave digger. Coppola himself had a nervous breakdown, threatening suicide on several occasions.
This madness was a product of obsession. Coppola and his team were so intensely focused on creating an accurate depiction of the chaos of Vietnam that they became walking personifications of that chaos. They didn’t make a movie about the war. They became the war.
While most of us can’t lay claim to an experience so grand and profound as the production of Apocalypse Now, and are not subject to the unique vocational hazards of filmmaking, many of us can relate to getting so lost in our work that we become indistinguishable from it. We become our work.
But the really disturbing thing is that this is not an exceptional situation. We accept and even celebrate it, as we’ve been socialized to do. “Ah, you know John … he is his work.” It rolls off our tongues as a point of pride. Becoming your work is, to what should be our sheer moral terror, the natural consequence of striving to excel in our efficiency-driven work environment.
The nature of any large-scale organization is that efficiency becomes its primary yardstick to measure anything, including the productivity of its people. The governing perception (which I will argue against another time) is that there’s no money to be made or saved by providing individuals with a balanced and healthy work environment which recognizes their humanness.
The logic instead is that there is considerable money to be made and saved by squeezing more and more from each individual. And the more you earn, the more your organization will be emboldened to squeeze harder to ensure you add enough value to justify your cost. In a modernist environment, labour is an element of production, and humans are individual units of production.
This is not a slam on businesses. It’s just a statement of fact. Your work will take everything you give it, because the more you give the more efficient you are. Unless you have a truly exceptional boss, it’s unlikely you’ll have anyone proactively monitoring your contributions to ensure you don’t cross the line from healthy passion into unhealthy obsession. There is no speed brake. Unless you begin to break down and the quality or quantity of your work starts to suffer, no one will notice or care that you are overinvesting.
Acknowledging these truths forms a critical comment about the nature and culture of work in contemporary economies. But it’s not something that’s going to change. Therefore, awareness and individual countermeasures are the only hope of swerving the worst impacts of professional obsession.
Passion vs. Obsession.
This distinction isn’t taught, likely because there isn’t a sizeable perceived interest in it being widely understood. But it’s damn important, because caring about what you do will make you susceptible to crossing this line without recognition. Those predisposed to doing great work are most susceptible to overinvestment.
Passion is healthy. You care about your work. You take pride in it. You expend discretionary effort to get things right. You do more than is required. You are punctual and honest. You’re not a slacker and you don’t tolerate them. You show initiative and grow your portfolio over time. Teammates can feel your interest in work subjects radiating from your persona and your work. They see your focus, they know you’re dialled in.
Obsession is unhealthy. You can’t stop thinking about work, even when those thoughts are unwelcome. You are paranoid about minutiae, crawling with concern about leaving a stone unturned. Thinking about work stretches deep into your personal time, often keeping you fully or partially awake when the night is supposed to be over. You struggle with impulse control, doing work stuff during family time. You set aside time after work to work. You go in early and stay late, or go home on time only to continue your work day. You refrain from making weekend plans because you want that time open to catch up or get ahead. Trying to screen out work thoughts gives you a headache or makes you anxious; you combat this by taking notes or making lists to get those thoughts out of your head, but the consequence is you think about it all even more, worrying you forgot to note something. You maybe even drink or engage in other bad habits to numb your mind to this dynamic.
Now the really tricky part. It’s likely that your obsession will earn you professional recognition and reward much more substantial than you can achieve with mere passion. To the extent your obsession makes you more efficient as a unit of production, your willingness to obliterate yourself will be rewarded. This sends a signal of approval, and perhaps even takes the form of promotion and/or increased compensation. This will make you much more likely to repeat the cycle. Indeed, it’s likely that you got here in the first place by having obsessive behaviours reinforced, or by realizing that someone else was willing to obliterate themselves, placing you at a competitive disadvantage or perhaps even threatening your career viability.
Modern work cultures, driven by efficiency, are rigged to tempt you down a path of becoming your work. Which means you are no longer yourself. We each consist of a collection of things which comprise our identity; relationships, family, interests, pursuits, goals, professional aspirations.
But over the course of time, work has positioned itself as central to identity, with other pieces in orbit around it. This gives work the ability to fundamentally disturb the order in our lives if we give it too much gravity.
Let’s close with a little reflection.
Do you take your work home constantly? Are you checking work messages when you’re out at dinner or a football match?
Is your identity mainly a projection of your work title? When people describe you, do they struggle to provide non-work-related detail?
Has the number of relationships in your life decreased over time? Are your remaining relationships languishing, deteriorating, or stagnant?
Do you constantly feel pressure to work until you run out of time? Are you worried about being left behind professionally unless you abuse your personal time?
If you find yourself saying yes to these questions, you may be on the wrong side of the line … or at the very least, you may be in a work culture which is encouraging you to be unhealthy, whether it intends to do so or not.
But here’s the cold reality: if, Heaven forbid, you are hit by a bus on your way home from work today and your life ends, the organization where you work will not miss a beat. In very short order, your gap will be filled. In a few months, you’ll be a fading memory. In a year, no one will remember your name. And in a decade, no matter how wonderful your work contributions, no one will know or care about them, if the organization still exists.
If you cross the line from passion about your work into obsession over it, your well of opportunity will become a chasm. And it’s unlikely, no matter your aptitude or luck, that you’ll receive an industry award or be inducted into your company’s hall of fame. You’re more likely to win the lottery or be struck by lightning than become immortal in your chosen field of endeavour.
It’s far more likely you will live to feel regret, and to see in the eyes of those closest to you their disappointment at not getting more of you. Which is to say the actual you … not the work doppelganger who took control of your brain and invaded your personal life, foraging on pieces of your identity until there was nothing left to chew up.
When it comes to obsession. Don’t believe the hype; it’s a bad thing which has been undeservedly romanticized.
Know the difference between passion and obsession. Understand the warning signs you are becoming unhealthy. Don’t be passive in the face of those signs, even if it means you need to change organizations or careers.
Lay claim to and protect yourself. You’ll have to do this on your own, because everything is set up to encourage the opposite.
Tony Carr is a professional manager with three decades of leadership experience in military organizations and private enterprise. The views expressed here are his own.