3 ms·

What happened? Did you get promoted? Start a family? Lose a bad bet with the mafia?

• akvadrako 9y ago
  I would bet it's just because working is addictive.
  • JamesBarney 9y ago
    Yeah, not exactly the work. But the success work brings.
• JamesBarney 9y ago
  When I was younger I always did well at everything, winning lots of awards in physics, math, and state level awards in computers. So I was accustomed to doing well without trying. Not trying didn't work as well in college, because I had a 2.3 but that didn't bother me because I considered myself "smart". Assumed that employers would recognized I was "smart" and I'd do really well. Then my wakeup call was getting fired from my internship, realizing I had a shitty GPA, no idea how to code, and no guarantee I would graduate, or that I wouldn't end up homeless after I did. So every time I needed to do something and had that feeling of procrastination I'd reach down inside, imagine how much my life would be a failure if I didn't accomplish these tasks and then push. And it worked. I started getting a lot more done, my grades improved dramatically, and at my next internship I was a star. Then it was 5 years later, I'd done well at every job I had, but I was 25 pounds heavier, had stomach issues, my memory was terrible, I hadn't thought about anything but work in years, and my cortisol levels were abnormally high. I decided that I needed to slow down and I can't. Success is addicting, and now interwoven with my identity. And I've found that it's very hard to slow down. And when I do I start to get depressed when I don't do as well on projects as I'm accustomed to so I usually end up revving back up again promising myself I'll slow down for the next one. Not to say procrastinating is always great, but not procrastinating isn't just a bucket of pros without any cons.