Work in the Fast Lane

by Maureen R. Johnston, MFT
(Originally appeared in my newsletter Sense and Psychotherapy, Spring 1999)

At a party recently, I found myself listening to a group of Silicon Valley professionals as they spoke seriously, energetically, and enthusiastically about the details of their work. At some point, the conversation drifted into talk of buyouts, stock options, and IPOs, and I was struck by the universal desire amongst the group, all of whom had been excitedly talking about their work only moments earlier, to use their imagined windfall to "get out."

Many of us have a bit of a love-hate relationship with our jobs, but the pace and intensity of high tech professional careers in Silicon Valley seems to magnify both sides of the equation. We hear the classic stories of endless seventy-hour weeks and read of people retiring by forty. All of us know people living on the thin line between over-achievement and burnout, if we're not doing it ourselves. Paradoxically, I often have the feeling that many of us aren't driving ourselves so hard only because we have to, but because at some level we want to. While I admire anyone with the drive to succeed in their chosen career, I wonder about the price many of us pay for working so hard, and what it does to our perception of work itself.

Given my upbringing, which contains more of the "Protestant Work Ethic" than I sometimes care to admit, I tend to think "work" is good for the soul. However, I have a hard time believing either that the immediate payoff ought to be a bigger house or a luxury car, or that the ultimate goal ought to be to escape from work entirely. I also like to think work ought to be able to coexist with community, but the pace at which we operate makes it very difficult to find time for family, let alone for our neighbors, our children's school, or our church. It is easy to fall into the trap of "I'll do that when...", as though all the extra time we've spent pushing our careers will suddenly reappear when we finally make the big break.

Even if, by some miracle, it did, what have we and our communities lost in the meantime?

Sometimes, I wonder if we have lost the sense that a career can be a journey of personal discovery and growth, and not simply a forced march to the promised land. It's easy to point a finger at "Corporate America" and bemoan the demands of living in a place where everything seems to move at hyper-speed, but I also think part of the blame must lie in each of us for buying into the game in the first place. If that's true, then acknowledging responsibility is probably our best hope. If we are, in some sense, "addicted" to work in the fast lane, then admitting this is the first step. There's no question that most of us do enjoy our careers on some level. The challenge is to find ways to make our work sustainable, so that we can thrive not only in it, but outside of it as well. We need to come to some sort of compromise, where we can find time for family and community and even play, not just work.

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