Work vs. Real Life: Which You are You?

by J. Brown

Earlier this week, a coworker said something to me that's bothered me all week long. We were debating whether or not I owed it to her to be more talkative at work, despite the fact that our actual work requires very little interaction with one another. In defending her argument that we should interact more consistently, she said, "I spend more time with you than I do with my own family."

Wow.

The sad part about it is, she's absolutely right. During my four-year stint as a teacher, I would often point out that my students spent more time with me than they did with their actual parents. What I failed to realize was that I was simultaneously spending more time with them than I was with any of my family or friends. In fact, most of us probably spend more time at work or doing work than we spend doing anything else. Something seems wrong about that equation, but I'm not sure any of us really know how to fix it. 

I've always tried to maintain a separation between my work self and my real self. As a teacher, I was able to delineate a clear separation between "Joel" from "Mr. Brown". (Trust and believe, these were two decidedly different people.) Even now, working an office job, I like to think that I save some parts of my true personality for outside of work. My belief has always been that the workplace is for work, and I can enjoy my actual life after I clock out. More and more, though, I'm wondering how feasible that actually is.


A full-time, regularly-employed adult works roughly 40 hours a week. Add in the hours that you work off the clock, commute time, and any additional time you spend on work-related tasks, and chances are that about 25% of the total hours in the week are dedicated to work. When you factor in the time spent sleeping and eating, there isn't a lot of personal time left. It's a wonder we find any time to do the things we love; some of us probably don't find time at all. The Work You and the Real You are in a constant battle for time.

The old saying goes, "If you find a job you love to do, it won't even feel like work." That's a nice thought, but that isn't a reality for most people. I'm willing to bet that if you gave everyone in the country a chance to pick any profession we wanted, there'd be a very tiny percentage of us that would actually pick the jobs we currently hold. A lot of people hate their jobs; most people simply tolerate it. If that is the case - and it is - how can people maintain their Real You if they spend most of their day in a state of unhappiness?

Another thing to think about is the notion of necessity. The average employee does only what they need to do, and little else. Furthermore, most of us were hired at our jobs because we possessed a specific work-related skill set. If your Real You skills don't coincide with your Work You skills, and you're spending all of your time at work, you run the ever-present risk of letting those Real You skills go to waste. For instance, if you were hired for a position because you're really good at managing data, there probably isn't a lot of time for you to show off how well you sing. If you have a passion for painting but you spend countless hours at work staring at a computer screen, the brush and easel are going to take a backseat. How long before you're just another data guy and you no longer even consider yourself a painter? If you're not careful, your job can quickly come to define who you are; not only to other people, but even to your own self-identity. That's a scary thought.

Additionally, there's the initial point of my coworker's argument, which refers to workplace interactions. If your coworkers spend more time with you than anyone else, is it true that they actually know you better than anyone else? I guess the answer to that depends on whether or not you've maintained a separation of the Work You and the Real You. And if you have, doesn't that just mean you spend a majority of your day denying your true self?

Now, don't get me wrong: I LOVE being employed. I've been without a job, and I've had jobs that I hated. Neither of those scenarios is my current reality, and I'm grateful for it. With that said, my current job is time-consuming, and I have to be strategic about how I maintain my Real You. 

In my opinion, my greatest personal skill is creative writing. Over the past seven years since I've graduated from college, I've completed a lot of personal projects that have allowed me to exercise my way with words (two blogs, seven mixtapes, one drama screenplay and a ghostwritten autobiography). On the other hand, though, I've had a ton of ideas that were started but never finished (a documentary, a pilot season for a sitcom, a comedy screenplay and countless others). I realize that in order to check all of those things off my list, I need to find ways to carve out more time for my Real You.

So, what's your Real You missing? And how are you going to make sure your Work You doesn't consume it for good? I don't know about you, but I like maintaining my separation. Despite what my coworker says, I like keeping some parts of me to myself. That privacy keeps my Real You protected. Even if I spend more time being my work self, I still think that other half is more important.