Pressure & Performance Series — Part 3 of 8
Part 1: The Hidden Pain of Overworking and Self-Neglect
Part 2: Work Habits That Lead to Burnout and the Bottle
Part 3: How Long Working Hours Hurt Sobriety ← you’re here
Part 4: Managing High Stress Without Alcohol
Part 5: The "Whatever It Takes" Approach to Decompression Without Drinking
Part 6: The Social Pressure Trap: Drinking to Fit In at Work Events
Part 7: Financial Pressure: A Dangerous Excuse to Drink
Part 8: Work-Life Balance: Rebuilding Enjoyment Outside of Work
Working late can feel responsible. We finish one more task, answer the message and keep going because there is nobody telling us to stop.
Then we finally close the laptop and feel as though we've earned a drink. And the longer we've worked, the more that drink can feel like something we've earned.
Long hours can set us up for drinking
By the time we finish, we may be hungry, restless and tired of making decisions. We also want to feel different straight away because work has taken up the whole day.
Alcohol does that. But it can also get in the way of sleep and leave us starting the next long day with less energy.
So we use alcohol to end the day, then work harder to make up for how the night affected us.
More hours don't always mean better work
There's a point where we're still at the desk but not doing our best thinking. We reread things, avoid the difficult task or make a decision we need to revisit tomorrow. For high performers, this is easy to hide because the work still gets finished.
Many of us are capable of working long hours. The question is what those hours are costing us and whether they're helping as much as we think.
A useful sign is what happens to the work near the end. Are we making decisions or only moving things around? Are we producing something worthwhile or staying because stopping feels uncomfortable? The answer may change from one day to the next.
We can still choose a late finish when it genuinely matters. But it should be a decision, not simply what happens every day.
Decide when work is finished
A business or demanding role will always offer more work than one person can finish.
So we may need a finish time that isn't based on everything being done. After that, we only deal with a real emergency.
Write down what is unfinished and what happens first tomorrow. That makes stopping a decision, not something that only happens once we're exhausted.
It also helps to look after the basics before the finish time arrives. Eating at a normal point, standing up and taking one proper break can stop the last two hours feeling like something we have to recover from with alcohol.
And if a finish time keeps getting ignored, look at what is pulling it later. It may be one client, one habit of answering everything immediately or work we keep avoiding until the end of the day.
When a drink becomes the reward for working late
Sometimes the promise of alcohol helps us tolerate hours we shouldn't be working.
We tell ourselves we can keep pushing because we'll have a drink afterwards. Then the late finish becomes our reason for drinking.
Without that bargain, we may see the hours differently. We might still choose a late day when it matters. But it doesn't need to become the reason we drink every night.
A clear evening and decent sleep aren't time taken away from work. They help us do the work again tomorrow without needing alcohol to finish every day.
— Brent
→ Next in this series: Managing High Stress Without Alcohol