Many of us have a work-first mentality, but is it pervading your personal life too? Christobel Hastings looks at what happens when the boundaries start to blur…

Five years ago, a few weeks before I left my full-time job to go freelance, I read a piece of advice that would change the course of my life. The advice in question was slap-bang in the middle of a Sunday newspaper supplement that I was flicking through absent-mindedly: “Don’t become emotionally attached to companies that don’t care about you”. The words had been highlighted in bold for a very good reason: the more I stared at them, the more they seemed to address me directly from the pulpy page. You there, they shouted. Why are you giving your all to a company that doesn’t care about you?

For the next week, I contemplated the question. Then, having failed to come up with decent answer, I handed in my notice, and started pursuing the thing I actually wanted to do in life: writing. Over the next few years, that advice served as a North Star whenever I was uncertain about the direction of my career. It helped me detach from office politics, embrace new and sometimes scary opportunities, and invest more time in my personal life: reconnecting with old friends, crafting with zeal, and finally reading the tottering stack of books on my bedside table. 

Read the full feature here.