When Did Work Become Your Only Hobby?
The moment work becomes the only thing you enjoy or do is the moment to ask whether you've lost touch with life, and with yourself.
Ask most founders what they do for fun, or how they relax, and watch what happens. There is usually a pause, then a laugh, and then an answer that turns out to be work. It is the one hobby almost everybody seems to share.
Underneath that pause sits a list of hobbies and interests that you keep saying you really want to do one day, but never get around to.
How work quietly becomes your only hobby
When you run a business you love, working relentlessly feels like your purpose. You started it because you were passionate about something you wanted to bring out into the world, so giving it everything seems perfectly natural. It does not feel like a problem, because it does not look like one. It looks like commitment, and you are enjoying every bit of it, right up until you are not.
The trouble is what fills the space around it. When work is your only hobby, it becomes the only thing you talk about, and conversations with people outside business turn flat on both sides, because they cannot relate to you and you cannot relate to them. The weekend stops being a weekend and becomes more work, and the phone is always in your hand: posting, checking what is trending, answering emails, and chasing the notifications and admin that sit behind the business.
“The only thing I talked about was work. There was nothing else to talk about. When I spoke to people who were not in business themselves, I started to find those conversations boring.”
Yanika Cordina, Founder of The Rather Odd Company
What losing touch with life really means
It rarely arrives as a crisis. It arrives as a list of things quietly pushed aside, typically hobbies and interests that you always wanted to spend time on, learn or take further. None of them were given up on purpose. They simply never got scheduled into your life, because your only hobby is work.
What hobbies and interests have you been pushing aside?
Founders are especially exposed, because the passion that makes you good at starting something is the same passion that makes stopping feel unnecessary. There is always one more thing to do, and it is always your own thing, which makes it very hard to put down.
Our founder, Yanika Cordina, always said she wanted to learn how to paint. It was always going to be one day, and one day never came, because work got the time first. Since working less she has taken painting up again and found her flow in it, which raised an uncomfortable and rather lovely question: why was she not putting any time and energy into this before?
“There is definitely more to me than just work. All the things you are passionate about can really work together to your advantage.”
Yanika Cordina, Founder of The Rather Odd Company
Why working constantly backfires
Working constantly without a break turns out to be counterproductive, and it can lead to burnout.
Working every day, through the evenings and into the early hours of the morning can seem doable at first, but it soon catches up with you, and you are left feeling exhausted. Your sleep is affected, your focus is affected and your motivation is affected too, and before you know it you have reached burnout and something has to change.
So here is a question worth raising. Could condensing your work into fewer days and fewer hours give you far more productivity, more motivation to get things done and better clarity?
“Having time away from work allowed me to regain my focus, and I go back to work much more focused, productive and motivated to get more things done.”
Yanika Cordina, Founder of The Rather Odd Company
What we believe instead
We believe there is a better way to work and to balance life. It means fewer work days that are more condensed and more focused, with real room around them for family, home life, hobbies and the things that make you who you are. It is part of how we run The Rather Odd Company, and we will share more about what that looks like soon.
What have you been saying you will do one day?
So here is a question worth sitting with. What do you keep saying you will do one day, and why has it not happened yet? Was the time genuinely never there, or did work quietly take it first?
There is no wrong answer, but there is usually a telling one. If something came to mind before you finished reading the question, that is probably the one that has been waiting longest.
What if working less turns out to be more productive? And what if the thing you keep saying you will do one day is exactly what your work has been missing?
If this struck a chord, you may be rather odd in just the right way. Join the Rather Odd Club, for like-minded people who do not follow the herd.
Join the Rather Odd Club
