Protect Your Life From Work

Or it'll k*ll you slowly.

Heyyyyy, long time no see!

I wonder if anyone’s seeing this after my long break from writing (and it’s not over). Let me know if you (A) want me to leave forever or (B) come back and write more frequently in the comments 😂

Anyway, the biggest reason for this break is that I was SUPER busy onboarding my new job 😔

Besides all the emotional turmoil of transitioning from a founder to an employee, the work itself is just really demanding. My boss is 100% a type-A person: super smart, super fast, sets high expectations, coaches well, and very hands-on.

No matter how thoughtful and patient he is when onboarding me, working directly with him makes me feel like I’m ALWAYS BEHIND.

So, as someone whose self-worth is deeply tied to work success and external validation, I GRIND like a good Asian kid trying to please his parents.

My work is also 100% remote, making the distinction between work and life 10 times harder to make.

I’ve dealt with this as a founder well for over a year. But having this grinder mentality as an employee is something new to me.

Boss vs Employee busy

When I’m the boss, I can decide WHEN to be busy. If I want to take a nap at 2, I can. If I want to take a day off to take my friends around, I can. Work is following my time, not the other way around.

(Of course, there are times when it’s just SUPER busy and I cannot practically do anything else. But I’m always mentally prepared in advance because such busyness is the result of strategic decisions I MADE.)

When I’m an employee, I don’t get to decide when to be busy. Specifically, for someone who is (1) a workaholic (ambitious and broken lol), (2) in a remote team, and (3) working with a type-A boss, this combo means I ALWAYS feel busy.

The past 2 months since I onboarded this new job have been the busiest time I’ve ever felt in my life.

2 kinds of busy

Tuan Mon once told me that there are 2 kinds of “busy” (that I’ll name and claim 😌):

1. Time Busy is when your schedule is SO packed that you literally don’t have time for anything else but work, eat, and sleep.

2. Energy Busy is when you still have time, but no energy left for anything else other than work, eat, sleep, and doom-scrolling 🫵 This is usually a side effect of time busy.

Writer’s note: You can get time busy without energy busy if the work you do is just time-consuming, but not energy-consuming - something like being a receptionist at a library’s front desk for 16 hours straight. And you’re not allowed to “do personal things” like reading or writing. (That honestly sounds like hell to me.)

For the past 1 month, I’ve been having this devil mix of both types.

I usually wrap up my final call of the day around 10:30 PM. I know I can still probably do something productive like journaling or reading, but either because (A) my brain is too fried for intellectual activities or (B) the time left isn’t sufficient for a “worthy” intellectual activity (by my standard), I never do anything.

I just lie down, get on my phone, and scroll.

thanks Dall-E

Tonight is a special day. Since I deleted Facebook and Instagram this morning, I’m now writing this for you and me 😊

This whole “working as an employee” experience made me realize 2 important things:

1) All the advice I wrote about “choosing to invest in yourself first” or “habit building” earlier is SO freaking hard to follow. I didn’t realize I was writing from the “freedom and flexibility” of a founder. Doing this when you have a demanding job is 100 times harder.

SO, be careful when taking advice from people who don’t share your circumstance or background.

2) For career-driven, ambitious people (like me):

If you don’t protect your life from your work, you’ll slowly kill yourself.

Protect Your Life From Work

I think it’s okay to be super ambitious about work, especially when we’re young.

I’d always prefer to be in a room full of ambitious people than a group of demotivated “zombies”. Ambitious people, those who want to move forward, are inspiring to be around.

BUT, I also think ambition, like most things, is only good in moderation. I don’t want to be too ambitious that the only happiness I can find is through work.

Because success and validation from work will never be enough.

Professor Brooks of HBS said this perfectly:

Work can’t really love you back. Work takes; work doesn’t give.

So what’s the solution?

Cultivate relationship with people who CAN love you back.

They are your family, partner, friends… For me, your relationship with work SHOULD NEVER be more important than your relationship with these people.

Protect your relationship with others from work.

There’s also your relationship with yourself - your dreams and hobbies.

A big dream of mine is to build a big, sustainable business of my own one day. And I want to do so while building a happy family.

So even though I’m not directly working on it, I know what skills I’m trying to learn, what kind of reputation I’m trying to build, and what types of people I want to network with.

I know that every time I’m doom-scrolling instead of reading, writing, or calling my family, I’m one step further away from that dream.

These things:

• spending time with your loved ones

• exercising to stay healthy

• making efforts to progress on your long-term dream

They are “things that matter” - in the long run, when “work” is done exploiting you.

When you’re 65, retired, and a lot uglier than you are now, I think a lot of things won’t matter:

• TOO MUCH MONEY: “having so much money so you can buy a new house whenever you want” won’t matter - you only need 1 house to live right?

• TOO MUCH FAME: “having 1 million followers on Substack” won’t matter (tho it will be quite crazy)

• TOO MUCH POWER: I don’t have a great example now but you get the point - it won’t matter cause it will never be enough :)

What matters to me at 65 are (I think):

1. Relationships: Do you have a few people who will love you unconditionally?

2. Health: Do you feel healthy and alive?

3. No regret: Have you tried your best to pursue a dream you believed in?

If my answers are YES to all of these when I’m 65, I think I’ve “made it”.

SO, to my workaholic readers, my ambitious, career-oriented friends, and myself:

Protect your time and energy to “do things that matter”. Because NO ONE will do that for you.

Block out time to work on your writing / exercise / join a football game / call your mom…

Protect these sacred time blocks like they are your real life’s HP.

There are many more important things in life than work.

Do things that matter in the long run.

Don’t let work take over and kill you slowly.