Success at work can stimulate a dopamine hit, the same way social media and alcohol can. “Though it isn’t a conventional medical addiction, for many people success has addictive properties,” the happiness expert Arthur C. Brooks wrote in 2020. “People sacrifice their links with others for their true love, success. They travel for business on anniversaries; they miss Little League games and recitals while working long hours.”
Such impulses are undoubtedly a symptom of America’s culture of overwork. Derek Thompson coined a phrase to explain that phenomenon. Workism is “the belief that work can provide everything we have historically expected from organized religion: community, meaning, self-actualization.” The trouble with relying on work alone for fulfillment is that it’s usually not enough—and that becomes especially clear when promotions don’t go your way, or when the missed moments outside of work start to stack up.
“Success in and of itself is not a bad thing, any more than wine is a bad thing,” Brooks explained. “But both become tyrannical when they are a substitute for—instead of a complement to—the relationships and love that should be at the center of our lives.”
