Caught up in the rewards and excitement, I became hooked on work. Until one day I couldn’t do it any more

Yesterday afternoon, I glanced up from my phone. “I can write an article for the Guardian tomorrow morning, right?”
My beloved raised an eyebrow. That eyebrow is like my personal Jiminy Cricket, a conscience check against accumulating too much work.
Not long ago I came to realise I was addicted to work. Career incentives combined with what was once enthusiastically called “ubiquitous computing” provided the peer pressure. I got caught up in the excitement and the rewards of achievement. Eventually I found I was hooked.
This week, as workers gain the “right to disconnect”, I wonder: what it will mean for addicts like me?
I take small comfort in the fact that I am hardly alone, for my experience points to a much wider problem.
More than a century ago, the sociologist Max Weber described a “Protestant ethic”, whereby people thought of profit as a moral consequence of meritorious achievement.
The Protestant ethic is what enables the wealthy to declare their good fortune to be a result of their “hard work” – while somehow failing to acknowledge that hard work has not exactly been profitable for everyone. Indeed, as we saw during Covid, the most essential workers barely profit at all.
This is because the concept of merit, and therefore achievement, is hierarchical. Some achievements – performing difficult, specialised surgery, for example – are deemed “higher” than others. This means that the Protestant ethic is not just about hard work; it also keeps us aiming for the next big achievement, the one currently just out of reach.
In this way, the Protestant ethic permeates our economy, producing work cultures that not only demand excessive work, but often enough also require our very selfhood.
Will the right to disconnect help address this?
As a late teen I saw a montage of medical students in a film whose title I don’t recall. Studying late into the night, quizzing one another, consuming coffee, experiencing that rollercoaster of despair and exhilaration that comes with learning, discovering and becoming. And it was rewarded, in the end, with academic and career success.
Most work, in fact, can be pleasurable. Packing the gear into the car early in the morning, digging, serving, making, repairing, shearing or stacking. The satisfaction of a well-added balance sheet, of a student who succeeded, or a patient who recovered. Work, like a good cardio class or an excellent gig, often feels good. These are the rewards we seek, beyond the paycheck.
For me it was academia, which seduces you with books, ideas and creativity – and then produces combinations of reward and punishment by which it sucks you dry.
As I finished my PhD, a colleague suggested that my excessive work hours contributed to an unfair benchmark. At the time, I thought I was being a responsible parent by enhancing my chances at career success. Ten years later, when my son had long left home, I found myself still starting work daily at 3.30am to reach a book deadline.
It turns out that work is pokies-level addictive. Indeed, it uses some of the same techniques. Rewards arrive randomly but these help to encourage us to entangle who we are with what we do. Even when it starts to damage us, how can we leave the machine, when it is surely just about to pay out?
Will a right to disconnect help with this?
The problem for me was not the calls, texts and emails from bosses and colleagues, nor the odd hours when they might arrive. These were not the causes of my overwork – though I suspect they might have helped me justify it.
And then, I couldn’t do it any more. I was exhausted, increasingly plagued by unexplained vomiting, and on the day my book was published my university announced job cuts. Managerial overspending, as usual, required costs be reduced in teaching and research.
Instead of entering the “spill and fill” by which the system proposed I gamble myself yet again, I took a voluntary redundancy.
Unlike other addictive substances, one can hardly go cold turkey on earning a living. So, now I look to Jiminy Cricket – the one that resides in my chest, as well as my beloved’s eyebrow – to help me make better choices.
“What’s the article about?” Jiminy asked. “How many words?” My beloved’s eyebrow relaxed and my inner Jiminy concurred. I clicked send.
But I know from experience that saying no – or more realistically, being judicious about saying yes – is just not enough. It might help ease things at the edges, but Jiminy is not the one in control of the system.
This is one reason a legislated right to disconnect is important. It is there to protect personal time from interfering bosses and excessive work hours, but it is also an important symbolic reminder. There is no limit to the demands workplaces will ask if given the technological and legal opportunity. The battle against excessive work, including via addiction, needs to be fought together.