When I give a speech at a corporate event, I often ask those in attendance, “Do you know how to tell if you’re doing the job?” As heads start whispering back and forth, I provide these clues: “If you’re up at 3 A.M. every night talking into a tape recorder and writing notes on scraps of paper, have a knot in your stomach and a rash on your skin, are losing sleep and losing touch with your wife and kids, have no appetite or sense of humor, and feel that everything might turn out wrong, then you’re probably doing the job.”
Bill Walsh - first paragraph of first chapter “How to Know if You’re Doing the Job” in “The Score Takes Care of Itself”
[Ed: for some reason American Football provides a rich vein of life out of balance in the demented pursuit of success. cf Vince Lombardi’s famous maxim that “Winning is not the most important thing, it’s the only thing”. Lombardi’s work obsession rivaled that of Walsh and left a crippled family according to his biographer who observed that his wife became an alcoholic almost unnoticed by Lombardi and his son was largely neglected and harboured bitter resentment towards his famous father.]