Is Being a "Hard Worker" a Blessing or a Curse?

As far back as I can remember--at least as far back as elementary school or so--I've been a "hard worker." 

Somewhere along the way I decided that I was smart enough, but not as smart as I could be, so I concluded that in order to succeed and stand out in this world, I would need to rely on my ability to work harder than others; I decided that my ability to push past the point of exhaustion and my perfectionistic tendencies would get me where I wanted to go (wherever that was), so I dug my heels in and got to work.

And then I worked and worked and worked and worked. 

Fast forward to now, and my trust and belief in hard work has become a double-edged sword. My drive to keep going almost all day, every day, has helped me get to a point where I'm self-sufficient and living the kind of life that I want to live, but it has also left me feeling that it's never enough (and at many points, pretty depleted and overwhelmed, too).  

I think this is something that many women of my generation experience. I saw it acutely when I moved to New York after college. I remember having an epiphany one day after getting out of a meeting; The meeting was with with some buyers from a big media company, and it was a meeting made up entirely of smart, hard-working women, just like most of my meetings were in those days.

I left this meeting and started thinking about my experiences in the marketing + advertising industry in New York. I thought about my roommate and friends, all of whom were working their asses off, trying to prove themselves in their respective industries, and I realized that young, hard-working women were literally everywhere, and that they were running the city (or as Queen Bey would put it, "Who run the world? Girls."). 

[Let me be clear, this is not to say that there aren't just as many hard-working men out there, I'm just writing from the female experience.] 

Similarly, since moving on and into different fields (arguably, more female-centric fields), I've been amazed at all of the hard-working women that I've come across. The ones who stand out to me, those running small, unknown-to-most-of-the-world empires (and I call them that because on a small scale, they are!), are all women who know how to work and work and work and hardly ever stop.

They have a never-ending internal drive and I admire them for that. But I also know that this kind of drive is a dangerous, slippery slope. 

The lives of all of the hard workers that I know are a constant struggle to find balance. We fight the inner battle between wanting to work all the time (because we think that's the only way) and wanting to spend time with loved ones and actually live our lives. 

We [I] write blog posts about slowing down and enjoying the holiday season, and right after doing so, rush back to work and spend the next 7 days working 12-hour days and attending events in between those hours. 

Does our need to work harder than others come from some deep, innate need to prove ourselves because we're women? I'm not sure, but I believe it must be a part of the equation. I've had this drive for so long--and since I was so young--that I have no idea where it comes from; All I know is that it's real, and that I'm not the only one who has it. 

I think that whether or not this internal drive--this need to workworkwork--is a blessing or a curse, is up to the individual who experiences it. It can become the thing that causes you to work your life away, or it can become the thing that helps you create a life that enables you to live the way that you want to live. 

We have to power to choose which path this drive will take us down, but we have to be aware of this drive before we can work with it. I know that this need to keep going is a part of who I am (and I know it's a part of who many of you are, too), and I think that learning to work with it is the only way to be content. 

So what does this mean? It means that our real life's work is to continually check-in and try to find balance. To train yourself to stop working when, in the words of my dad (when I used to ask him what he thought of my projects or papers), "You passed A+ hours ago."

What do you think, all you hard working ladies out there? If you examine your internal need to keep going, where do you think it comes from? And how can you live your life so that this drive is a blessing, not a curse? 

Something to ponder as we move towards a new year...