Dirty Little Secret About Successful People
Sometimes you work much more than you have to.
Sometimes it’s an excuse. “The greatest excuse of all,” a retired burn surgeon told me.
It’s a secret because NO ONE gets to weigh in on this. The overarching story is that your over-work IS the reason you’re successful.
How dare we — anyone who doesn’t live first-hand the impossible work expectations doctors face — try to tell doctors that maybe they should just say No.
Before you become outraged and bury yourself in more work, please read on.
Here are some of the ways high-achievers and especially doctors work against themselves:
Working harder rather than smarter: "Because work was the problem,” says Dr. Dominic Corrigan, a pseudonym for the founder of Physicians Anonymous. “I just worked harder -- until I just hit a point where I could no longer work."
Working without boundaries: You work 24/7, like my client, “Sam,” who falls asleep with his charts.
Working Distracted: Your attention is so divided, it's takes exceptionally long to finish a task, like “Bill.” He starts working on his charts, but then thinks, “I’ll just book this flight. And then I’ll get caught up on my laundry.”It’s hours later and he hasn’t finished his charts and he feels like he got hijacked and accomplished nothing.
Avoiding Work: My other client, “Ruth”, knows that if she dedicates a little bit of time over the weekend to work, it will put her ahead of the game Monday morning. But she just avoids it altogether, enjoying — or trying to enjoy despite the looming stress of procrastination — her family and much needed relaxation.Avoidance ultimately leads to more stress and more work. No one knows this better than the Avoider.
But the real secret is this: Work is always the excuse, always the “legitimate” thing that postpones going home to face a family that may see you as a stranger, or keeps from finding an intimate relationship altogether.
It’s a vicious cycle.
The perfectionist will always have a job; that "one more thing" before heading home.
Work becomes a place to lose yourself -- and so the cycle of burnout and workaholism grows deeper. After a while, you don’t know how to get off the work train.
This is where coaching for physicians comes in.
Coaching can’t get you scribes and MAs. Coaching can’t get rid of insurance hoops to jump through.
Coaching helps with something far deeper and lasting:
✅ Change your relationship to work, help you draw clear boundaries.
✅ Learn when enough is really enough each day.
✅ Re-integrate into your home life so work is no longer a way to hide from a much messier problem than work: personal relationships.
This is the very definition of work-life balance.
It looks different for each of us, and believe me, NO ONE is going to tell you how to be a doctor. But coaching can help you find your sweet spot, where you can leave work at work and truly come home to your life outside of work at the end of the day.
Changing your relationship to work requires getting underneath the story about work.
Physician burnout has been exacerbated by the EMR and Covid, but they didn’t create physician burnout.
So while a coach can’t solve the structural problems of medicine and its culture, a coach who “gets it” can radically change your relationship to work, so you can start saying Yes to what really matters to you.