Casually mentioning canceling a doctor’s appointment or skipping something personal to take on more work has become the new humblebrag. It’s rarely treated as a big deal, and often, it’s delivered with self-deprecating pride: “Oh, I’ll just cancel my doctor’s appointment to crank this out,” or “I was up until midnight finishing that deck.” These aren’t just updates, but quiet auditions for “Most Dedicated Employee.”

Many of us hear those lines, or say them ourselves, and think, “Wow, that’s commitment.” But what we’re really doing is reinforcing workplace culture that rewards exhaustion instead of impact. Too often, self-sacrifice is confused with value, and that mindset is burning people out. 

The result is burnout factories dressed up as high-performance cultures. 

And this isn’t just anecdotal. According to Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report, nearly 60% of employees report feeling emotionally detached at work, and nearly 1 in 5 say they’re miserable. That’s not high performance, it’s slow, silent collapse. 

If you want to show up with focus, creativity, and resilience (at work and in life) it starts by putting down the invisible sword too many of us keep falling on. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

We’ve been conditioned to admire the person who “pushes through,” the one who skips lunch, works late, or shows up sick. We’ve equated overextension with excellence and decided that making ourselves........

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