Work over well-being
This is kind of a catch-all reason. When work becomes more important than your well-being, you are likely to act in a way that neglects your own best interests for work.
What to do about it?
The best way to change it is to commit to making your well-being your top priority.
If you have experienced burnout or are experiencing burnout, your top priorities usually look like this:
- Work
- Others/Relationships/Family
- Yourself
Do not forget, that work is meant to improve your life and not the other way around. That's why I suggest switching your priorities to this:
- Yourself
- Others/Relationships/Family
- Work
Why do I suggest putting yourself first over relationships? Because you will be neglecting yourself the same way as you do with work if you do not make taking care of yourself a priority.
If you are not well, there's no way you can have great relationships.
For years I thought values are fluff and you don't need them
Do you remember how many times I burned out in my career? Yeah, not having values worked out great for me. Having energy, resting, spending quality time with my loved ones all came second after work.
However, values mean nothing if you only write them down once and never look at them again. They are only useful if your actions align with your values.
So even if my values were Health, Freedom, Passion, and Empathy, I was "slaving" away at work, I struggled to get out of my bed in the morning, and my physical fitness was at its lowest each time I burned out.
None of it changed until I aligned my values with my actions. Then the answer to whether I should work overtime became very clear - "Of course not! It ruins my health and takes away my free time."
Not surprisingly, I started to enjoy my job a lot more, while also becoming twice as productive when my values and well-being became my priority instead of work.