My default setting has always been work.

I don’t just mean ‘I’m ambitious.’ I mean that, left unchecked, I will choose work over almost anything else: rest, walks, cooking, even making plans for the weekend. For a long time, that felt like drive. Eventually, it became a liability.

When work is both necessity and hobby

When I was younger, work was non-optional. We were scraping by. Earning was how we paid for life, and there wasn’t much slack in the budget. At the same time, I genuinely loved work.

I’d join professional associations, volunteer for committees, and treat those environments almost like hobbies. I’d write, blog at night, throw myself into projects because it felt good. Work was where things made sense. There were goals, feedback loops, and clear wins.

That mix, necessity plus enjoyment, built a deep groove: if something needed doing, I did it; if there was a free hour, my instinct was to fill it with work; if I wanted to feel productive, I opened the laptop. Over years, that became my identity: the person who always works, always has another project, always keeps things moving.

Success didn’t reset the default

Then success came. The financial pressure eased. The business grew. The external need to work constantly lessened.

The internal habit didn’t.

I didn’t know how not to work anymore. When the urgency lifted, the behavior stayed. Sitting down to work felt natural. Not working felt like something was wrong or broken. ‘Relaxing’ felt inefficient, like time leaking through my fingers.

The deepest cost showed up in my health.

The cost to my physical health

It was easier to sit behind a computer and work than it was to go out and walk. Walking felt inefficient. It took me away from my thought processes and my flow. It interrupted the streak I was on.

Eating healthy felt similar. Healthy food required preparation, planning, cleaning up. Work was as close as the laptop lid; food was a whole process. Ready-to-eat meals and ordering out were faster and easier than chopping vegetables.

The reality was simple: my body wasn’t getting what it needed. Sleep, movement, nutrition, all the things that make it possible to keep operating at a high level were regularly downgraded because they didn’t align with my default choice: just keep working.

It wasn’t a dramatic crash. It was a slow erosion. A creeping number on a scale. Small health flags that were easy to ignore because work still ‘worked.’

Losing creativity about life outside work

Another cost snuck up on me: I started to lose creativity about what to do outside work. Working became such an easy default that I didn’t know how to intentionally go have fun. It’s not that I never had fun, I did, but I wasn’t good at creating it. Weekends would arrive and I’d feel stuck. What should we do? Where should we go? What would be enjoyable?

When I was a kid, ‘fun’ was different. I had siblings. We went outside and played. There weren’t a lot of planned experiences or highly curated weekends. We didn’t have a roster of activities; we had open space. As an adult, especially as my daughter got older, that lack of reference mattered. I didn’t have a big mental library of “things to do.” And I hadn’t been building one, because my default was always: if in doubt, work.

So I’d sit there trying to think of something to do, and nothing came. Work was easier. Work had clear next steps. Work didn’t require imagination in the same way.

The irony is that creativity is central to good work too, but the kind of creativity I had trained was for solving business problems, not for designing a human life.

The seven domains and the areas I let slide

Inside Infinite Edge, we talk about the Seven Domains of a Healthy Person: physical, emotional, spiritual, relational/family, character & leadership, career/business, and financial.

If I’m honest about that framework and my own story, Career / Business Health was always front and center. Character & Leadership stayed strong; I care deeply about integrity and showing up under pressure. Physical Health was the domain I quietly let slide.

My life wasn’t falling apart. But the shape of it was skewed: one domain towering over the rest, several sitting below the standard I actually want for myself.

The point of the seven domains isn’t that every area has to be equal. It’s that every area deserves a minimum standard, a floor you refuse to fall below.

For a long time, I didn’t have those floors defined. The default was simply: work comes first.

Learning to raise the floor

I’m still not a ‘balanced’ person in the Instagram sense. I’m not suddenly spending three hours a day on yoga and watercolor and spontaneous adventures.

What has changed is this: I’m starting to define what “good enough” looks like in each domain, not just in business.

I’m learning to treat movement, cooking, time with my daughter, and unstructured fun as part of my performance system, not as distractions from it.

I’m trying to actively create experiences, not just wait for them to happen around the edges of work.

It’s uncomfortable. It feels inefficient. It often goes against my instincts.

But I’m clear now that if I keep letting certain domains slide because work is easier, I’m not just risking burnout. I’m risking becoming someone whose life is narrower than they intended, even if the business story looks impressive.

For me, this is the real work now: not proving I can keep working, but proving I can live in a way that matches what I say I care about.

That’s the journey I’m on.