I knew something was wrong when I decided that reading any fiction book not on a prize list was a waste of time.

I'm an avid reader, and until recently, I never cared about the "quality" of the book. If it looked and smelt like a book, I'd have a go.

But recently, I started to judge books according to what I could "learn" from them.

Most non-fiction books were acceptable: after all, all the big chief executives and even former US president Barack Obama usually list titles like The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die and New Power.

As for fiction, you couldn't keep me away from the Stella or Orange Prize — I figured proactively supporting female writers while also learning from their craft was both productive and necessary.

But this process has taken much of the joy away from reading just for … pleasure.

I am now at the point where I mostly see reading as another aspect of my work, and as a writer, everything can become work if you don't watch yourself.

There are any number of business books promoting success. ( Supplied: Unsplash/Daria Nepriakhina )

How did I get here?

Looking back, I can trace my growing obsession with so-called "self-optimisation" to my time working at a communications start-up.

This was my first role outside of a newsroom, and I knew nothing about start-up culture.

My colleagues very quickly became my family, and we would spend all day — and even a few nights — working together to try to achieve the best (and often impossible) results. Our company would often pay for dinner, we had a bar installed in the office, and even had a wine budget.

It may sound exciting, but in hindsight, this is typical of start-up culture: shower your employees with awesome "perks" and ensure they spend as much time as possible in the office, working.

Late-night phone calls with overseas clients and early morning starts (necessary to reach morning radio and media) were just par for the course.

Start-ups can promote a culture where workers spend large amounts of time at work. ( Supplied: Unsplash/Annie Spratt )

And it started to creep beyond work. I would get up at 5:00am to look through emails, do a bit of work before going for a swim and then ride my bike into the office. It was all about being the best version of myself: fit, productive, successful.

I'd come to worship at the altar of "successful" executives whose daily habits include "setting aggressive deadlines"; making sure that the mental break you get during exercise is "used effectively to visualise success"; and "triangulating data and preparing for sudden movements".

The figureheads of my industry were people like Elon Musk, who tweeted that "nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week", or Elizabeth Holmes, whose employees at the now-disgraced biomedical start up, Theranos, routinely put in 12- to 16-hour days.

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But the problem isn't limited to start-ups. BuzzFeed culture writer Anne Helen Petersen produced a searing analysis of how the need to be relentlessly productive has made burnout a prolific affliction for millennials.

Earlier this year, The New York Times addressed "hustle culture" and the rise of "performative workaholism", with journalist Erin Griffith writing that "hustle culture is obsessed with striving, relentlessly positive, devoid of humour and — once you notice it — impossible to escape".

In an increasingly secular world, it's become akin to religion in providing purpose and meaning to people's identities — and companies are happy to exploit it.

It is manifest in the #ThankGodItsMonday movement (an "antidote" to #ThankGodItsFriday) which tries to convince us that "every single day of the week is as fulfilling or as important as the weekend".

Like any religion, workaholism demands evangelising — in this case, extolling the virtues of your job on social media to anyone who'll listen.

But this "work-life blend" means anything we say on our social media must be closely aligned with our work-based "personal brand", making us feel like we're constantly on the clock.

And if you're not — well, maybe you're just not cut out to be successful … right?

We're stressed to breaking point

Focusing solely on work can lead to burnout and stress. ( Supplied: Unsplashed/Jeshoots.com )

This constant need to be productive and to chase success takes its toll.

Joshua Wiley from Monash University has studied the impact of chronic stress for years and says that when it comes to burnout, some people are more susceptible than others.

"We've found the more work is part of who you are and how you see yourself, the more likely you are to experience stress," Dr Wiley says.

Perfectionists, he says, set very high standards for themselves, and can be overwhelmed by what others would consider only small setbacks.

"Objectively, they could be doing better than most people at work, but perfectionists set their own targets, which tend to be very high and sometimes unrealistic."

Who does this benefit anyway?

So who does all this workaholism actually benefit? As NYT's Griffith writes: "Despite data showing that long hours improve neither productivity nor creativity, myths about overwork persist because they justify the extreme wealth created for a small group of elite techies."

Perhaps the most dangerous element of overwork is that those who can't get left behind.

Claire Cain Miller recently dissected how Western women are more highly educated than ever, yet the "jobs that require those degrees have started paying disproportionately more to people with round-the-clock availability".

And while the proportion of Australian fathers using flexible working arrangements to care for their children has doubled since the mid-90s to 14 per cent, it's still mothers who bear the brunt of child care — meaning they just can't compete in a world obsessed with working ever-more.

Peterson echoes this, writing about the "second shift" that women perform when they get home from the office.

Compounding the problem, "women experience depression twice as much and anxiety four times as much as men", says Jayashri Kulkarni, professor of psychiatry at The Alfred Hospital.

"When we look at the environmental factors, along with carrying the burden of being primary carers, women have the added expectations of performance in the workplace, performance in the home, performance also as the key drivers of social networks, as well as the pressure to look good," Professor Kulkarni said.

"Then there is the tendency to ruminate on your failings, which women also do more than men," she says.

Adding to the burden, a 2013 study found women "tend to perceive that they have to make greater efforts to prove their worth than men".

But it's not just women who suffer: men are also being expected to work longer hours to prove their worth, and burnout is afflicting more and more workers.

In a feature for The Economist, psychoanalyst and author Josh Cohen writes: "In our attainment society, we are constantly told that we can be, do and have anyone or anything we want. But … limitless choice debilitates far more than it liberates."

"In our high-performance society, it's feelings of inadequacy, not conflict, that bring in depression. The pressure to be the best workers, lovers, parents and consumers possible leaves us vulnerable to feeling empty and exhausted when we fail to live up to these ideals."

People need to find a way to switch off and resist the temptation to keep working. ( Unsplash: Carl Heyerdahl )

Breaking the cycle

So how do we fight this expectation to be relentlessly productive?

It may seem counterintuitive, but letting yourself be bored, encouraging contemplation and daydreaming can spur creativity. A 2014 British study, which gave one group of subjects a boring activity, and the other group a creative task, found that those who were first given a boring task were subsequently more creative.

In her book, Bored and Brilliant, Manoush Zomorodi explores the notion that boredom is actually the key to being more creative — and healthier.

"When you get bored and you're not focused on an activity but you're either lounging … or doing something super repetitive that doesn't need your brain to be engaged, that's when you ignite this network in your brain called the default mode — when you do your most original thinking," Zomorodi told GQ.

She argues "boredom is the gateway to mind wandering", which technology and social media try hard to interrupt by promising to help with productivity.

"It's almost like we're confusing productivity with reactivity: the more reactive you are and the more output there is, that is productive. But actually, to do the deeper work or to find solutions to problems that are in your life, your community and society, it's harder," Zomorodi says.

Professor Kulkarni agrees.

"The definition of productivity has changed — we're now more focused on the timing of what has to be done — on money and time," she says.

"Email, texting someone, engaging in meaningless meetings: all this rapid activity means we're training ourselves to become hyperactive at one level, but not actually producing great, well-articulated and well-thought-out pieces of work.

"We can't all continue running around like grasshoppers on speed".

As for me, I'm trying to learn how to slow down and not consider every moment I'm not working to be a waste of time.

Untangling the mess my need to work has made of my brain will take years — and a lot of deep thought.

Caroline Zielinski is a freelance journalist based in Melbourne.