I'm a recovering workaholic and people pleaser. I've been in the corporate world for about 15 years now, and I've always been the one to work 70 hours on a crunch deadline, cancel my vacation, and take on multiple crazy projects. During the pandemic, while working full-time and also home-schooling my children, I had a full-on deconstruction due to the exhaustion and stress.
At my newer role, I delivered a massive, terrible project earlier this year that other, more senior (and well-paid) coworkers had failed at completing the year prior. I do have better boundaries now, and I refused to do other work while doing that project and I basically decided to take the rest of the year on easy mode afterward because it was so bad that my mental and physical health was impacted.
My boss sensed this shift, and started dangling a “senior” title and promotion to try to get me to kick it up again, hoping I would work at frantic project pace forever now. It would come with a $10,000 to $15,000 raise at most. He was FLOORED when I wasn't really that interested in it. At $15,000 a year, which I probably wouldn't even get, divided by the extra 20 hours per week they would want out of me, works out to about $14 an hour AT MOST. And it could just be a carrot dangle, with no raise coming anytime soon. He can do math too, how has he not figured out this isn't a good deal for me? Why would I be excited to trade my little free time for $14 an hour? He was like “Well, most people are interested in and motivated by growth.” I left it at that, but I wanted to say “Most people are interested in and motivated by money, and this is negative money-return for me.”