Hello, my name is Alex, and I am a recovering Workaholic. Do they have some sort of Workaholic Anonymous somewhere? When discussions about addictions come up, addiction to Work doesn’t make the cut, but i’ll tell you, this one is real. If my circle of colleagues, friends and acquaintances are a valid sample, then it’s an issue that may need more attention than it gets. People are hurting. In my case, the pursuit of an early retirement was a key driver. I say Was, because it turns out retirement isn’t so sexy after all. I have a few friends who’ve crossed that threshold, and also watched both my Dads in their retirement. It’s a lonely life, is what I can say. And having retirement money can only take you so far as far as social interactions and finding meaning goes. In fact those who seem to thrive in retirement are those who strictly speaking don’t retire.

A surgeon will retire into his private clinic, where he works 4 hours a day, 3 days a week. A teacher will end up in some education board, a Nurse will start a pharmacy and the list goes on. So essentially what really changes is the exit from a salaried job and the access to your pension. Entrepreneurs don’t retire, and they are even worse in the Workaholism pandemic. They will be billionaires who own Yatchs and homes all over the world but somehow still spend 16 hours a day at work in their Seventies, barely enjoying the fruit of their labor. A colleague of mine who’s a prime candidate for W.A told me the reason he works so hard is because he’s determined to never end up back in the poverty of his childhood. He’s done swell for himself. He lives in his own home. He’s built his parents a house. Yet he still goes at it, barely coming out for air, 6 days, sometimes 7 days a week.

I wanted an early retirement because I don’t buy into the premise of spending most of your active years toiling and moiling. I believed there was more to life than earning a living. So if I could make sufficient money by the time I was fourty, I would retire from a life of earning to a life of giving. It was quite noble actually. While others dream of travelling the world and exploring hobbies, I wanted to mentor young entrepreneurs and help them build great businesses. But here’s what ended up happening. With every year that passed, and I wasn’t anywhere close to the level of financial freedom that I’d need to live said early retirement life, I got more desperate. Remember that work for me was a means to an end, so I wasn’t getting fulfilment from it per se. I just wanted to do it, and make as much money as I could, as fast as I could. The initial game plan was to start a bunch of companies, grow them big enough to sustain themselves and consequently sustain me. With each failed business, and each passing year, the frustration grew.

Then I made the transition into employment because business was proving to be too erratic and unpredictable. Employment is a different ball game though. Your rise up the ranks is a function corporate policies and the whims of your boss. It’s like investing in stocks and praying that the economy doesn’t tank and the people in charge of the company you’ve bought into don’t screw it up. You can’t play the short term game in employment. Just like stocks. When you hear of people sleeping their way to the top, it’s a way of shortcutting the system, stacking the decks in your favour so you don’t have to wait on the house to favour you. Thanks to my Mother, my moral compass didn’t allow me to take short cuts, either in business or employment, and so I hustled. I hustled hard.

Enter the To Do List.

The professional success gospel is clear. Work harder than the next guy. Take more chances than the next one. And package yourself the right way to the right people. It’s proven. It works. For as long as I can remember, I woke up at 4am, worst case 5am. I’d be at my desk before 7am, and I wouldn’t be done before 8pm. I’d barely eat. I was every boss’s dream employee. I showed up, I raised my hand when one needed raising, I aced all the KPIs, often surpassing them. I wanted nothing less than the top position in my field. And guess what, if you want it bad enough, you get it. In the bible it says, if you worship it, you become it. Work became my idol. And when things weren’t working out, as they inevitably will some times, I would be an anxious mess. It would feel like my world was crumbling before my very eyes. I would be a nightmare to be around. The To Do List was my weapon of choice. Every Sunday i’d draft an elaborate plan for the week, complete with daily expectations for each day. Every day i’d wake up, look at it, and go to work. I wouldn’t stop until each item was ticked off. And if I finished everything in the list, it would mean I didn’t challenge myself enough that day, so the next day the list would be longer, stretching me to my bare bones. If I didn’t manage to clear the list, i’d beat myself up for being lazy. I’d tell myself to do better tomorrow, which I would, and the vicious cycle continued for years.

In 2020, through what i’ve now come to appreciate as an act of God’s mercy, I hit a ceiling. I was ready for a career shift, and I had positioned myself as such. Then Covid hit. No one was hiring. I remember I had applied for this fantastic job at a global Corporate, and I was so certain i’d be a top contender. Barely two weeks later they sent emails saying they’d postponed the hiring of the role due to the pandemic. Another positioned opened up at Work and was given to someone else who’d done a better job positioning themselves for it. Getting it would have been a major step up for me. It hurt. I didn’t register it then, but I wasn’t mentally well. I had created a great history of career shifts every 3 years. 3 years had elapsed since I took my current job so the clock was ticking. What’s more, I’d never had to apply for a job previously either. I always got poached. I believed I was that good, and for over 10 years the corporate world seemed to agree. So what was happening? I lost my zeal. Stuck in the house with nowhere to go, I lost it. My personal life fell apart as a result. I was genuinely lost. To Do Lists didn’t make sense anymore. Why bother? Heck, I might just die of Covid anyway. I never got diagnosed with depression, but I hear the hallmark of it is a state of utter hopelessness. I checked that box.

I thank God for this season of stagnation. That’s what I call the last 3 years. It was also a season of isolation. In the midst of asking many many Whys, and trying to find answers, I met people who helped shape what has become my current approach to life. The early retirement script went out the door. I’ve discovered that Meaning isn’t a future state. It’s a continuous, evolving state. I don’t have to be a retired millionnaire entrepreneur for me to mentor young entrepreneurs. I’m blessed with skills and gifts that help Corporates make millions, so why can’t those same skills help a startup get off the ground? And so with the help of a life Coach, I threw out the To Do List. I now operate with what I call the To Be List. It basically focusses on state of mind as opposed to activities. It tracks outcomes, leaving room for creativity when it comes inputs. There are many ways to skin a cat after all. That analogy has never made sense to me but it works perfectly here.

I might retire at 40, 50, 60, 80, it doesn’t matter. What matters is whether this very moment, I am in a state that gives my life meaning. Last week I had breakfast with a young lady who’s building this wonderful lifestyle business. She was in the midst of dealing with a HR nightmare at her young company, on a matter of integrity. She was traumatised. For two hours we tackled it, and she left more confident to go deal with her rogue employee. Next week another startup i’ve been supporting is launching their first line of shoes made for the Kenyan market. The founder has had many false starts in the past and is trusting that this will be it. It’s been a wonderful ride helping with their go to market planning this past year. As far as my To Be List is concerned, i’m feeling pretty good. Oh and guess what, I later got the career break I had been breaking my back for. God came through once again, and I was offered the job without competing for it. So far the To Be List is working out pretty well.