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Excellent response random guy on the internet, particularly #4.
I'm in my mid-30's and can attest to going through both of these mindsets, but as different phases.
Work was life until a couple of years ago. Now running is a major priority again with lots of mileage, strength training, stretching, sleep, and destressing, that all comes with serious running goals. Push comes to shove, I am in phase where I'm completely happy to be a cog in the wheel.
I don't do a bad job at work, I do the best I can but all during 9-5. I never say yes to overtime, and I never even check my email unless I'm in the office. That is key.[/quote]
Yep. I work olive, not live to work. I watch the people at my day job who do nothing but work, and I think they are pathetic. They seem to be wrestling with some kind of internal conflict or have no friends/family/hobbies that bring them joy. And they are at the center of most conflict due to their horrid social skills. Some of them are navel gazers who wonder when their ship will come in, when they should quit, how they should "follow their bliss." These are the most tedious types. OP, you may or may not be one of them.
I work efficiently, leave and go home to PLAY. In my current job, I have a new team of people working for me, and I want to spread my philosophy of working like mad for 8-9 hours and leaving -- not taking work home or making work colleagues into faux families. When I sense that one of them is overworking stupidly, well beyond the point of diminishing returns, I recite the following poem:
If you put your nose to the grindstone rough,
And hold it there long enough
You'll soon forget there are such things
As brooks that babble and birds that sing
And then your world will be composed
Of you, your grindstone and your ground-down nose.