Work is just work

I love work. It drives me. It’s exciting. Everything about building things with folks is a pure thrill. Like when I crack open a hard design problem and learn something!

This post resonates deeply with my own journey.

Anyway! I worry that I enjoy work way too much. I always want to talk about it, to discuss this new thing I’ve built or decision I made or upcoming project I’m working on next.

Early on in my career, when I was building my own startup with cofounders, I had an interesting relationship with work.

I liked what I was doing, and I enjoyed learning and growing. But I also had to wrestle with an unlimited amount of unknowns. Every day was data thrown at me, and I had to figure it out piece by piece (with a lot of help from my cofounders). I can’t tell you how many times I had to Google the exact steps to update MX records on DNS for clients and trying to figure out the differences between POP and IMAP for on premise devices. Also, the concepts of Cascading Style Sheets confounded me. Internet Explorer 5.5 was a complete nightmare, in fact version 6 was a breath of fresh air (despite it being the bane of web designers existence years later).

Even with all that, learning, growing, pushing, I didn’t feel driven by work in the same way as others I’ve met. I didn’t want to burn every evening tinkering and learning and driving myself forward. Work wasn’t the most important thing to me. In hindsight that might explain my odd career trajectory. But I’d already been learning and exploring and trying to figure out technology and design since 13 years old. I was years into this, and had the hunch that work wasn’t the most important thing I could do.

My wife and I got married young, and I found that having a best friend to hang out with and enjoy life with was a wonderful thing. I liked my work, but I also loved my life and the family we were building. Going home from the office was a joy.

When I listened to The Nvidia Way, I was struck by Jensen Huang’s work ethic. He’s in his 60s, and has put in long days and weekends for decades. It’s paid off for him financially and for many of the employees who work for him. They made work the most important thing, and the stock market has rewarded them.

But I’m also re-reading Creativity, Inc. (through 2025 conflicted eyes) and am on chapters 3 and 4 where an employee’s child nearly dies because of an exhausted parent working too much.

what kind of relationship do I want with my work? Is it ok to let my entire mood and personality be dominated by my job?

Recently I had a conversation with my brother (and cofounder), where we talked about those early days of work and startup life. He would put in all the extra hours and push and do everything he could to make the company grow. I cared too and worked as hard as I could, but didn’t put in the extra hours. Our priorites were slightly different. We both loved our families and loved our work, but I was trying to enjoy life more than work.

Years later I switched my priorities. Yes, I still loved my growing family, but I was pursuing career growth and found myself placing it forefront in my mind as the thing I must attain. I was trying a bunch of things at once, learning a lot, and pushing just beyond my capability to make things happen at another startup (this time without equity, don’t do that). I believed in the vision of the company and felt (misaligned) ownership to make things happen. I was working with an amazing team and we believed we had the chance to change things. We started to, some things went well, some things didn’t.

Then I burned out.

Hard.

The next few months were rough, and I had to learn all over again what it meant to understand where my priorities should be.

Through years of re-establishing what’s most important with my wife and family (I’m still working on this) and therapy, I switched priorites. Family comes first.

I’ve also gotten better at work, more efficient, more confident, able to get things done, make decisions, learn in faster iteration cycles, and find joy in the limited time I allow for work.

I’m still struggling with it. Too often I work too much. But my priorities have and are shifting, and I’m trying to keep them where they belong. At times I’m tempted to make work first, and I start to see results move faster. But the cost is great. The longer I spend with work as number one, the harder it is to pull back.

So I resonate with the struggles of others as they try to find their most important priorites. And though I’ve used priority as a plural, it’s not meant to be used that way as a word. We’re supposed to have a single priority, the first thing that matters.

Work continues, and life continues, and I work to juggle the two. If this is you you’re not alone. Reach out, I’d love to hear from you on your own journeys.

Via Robin Rendle.