My Son Says I'm a Workaholic. He's Not Wrong.

My son Canon told me recently that I'm a workaholic. He's not wrong. I've worked a lot, my whole life, and there are pieces of that I regret. I don't recommend losing yourself in work.

But there's a distinction I've been trying to explain to him, more for myself than for him really: not all work costs you the same thing.

Take Texas Drift Academy. Money and time, I haven't gotten much return on either, if I'm honest about it. But I've built it because I enjoy building it. I'm learning constantly, drift cars, driving instruction, a business model I never came from. That's a different kind of tired than the one I feel doing something obligatory that just drains me.

Somewhere in there I realized my actual north star was never ROI. It was energy. Not by design, just by noticing which ventures pulled me forward and which ones I dreaded opening my laptop for. TDA was always in the first pile.

There's a line from Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz's book The Power of Full Engagement I keep coming back to: "Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance." I'd add my own footnote: it's also the currency of whether you actually want to keep showing up tomorrow.

Workaholism is doing the thing that drains you and calling it hustle. I'm lucky to be doing things that fill me up and able to call it a business.

Which of your projects is quietly costing you more energy than it's giving back?