As I continued to grow in my career, something else was happening that I didn’t immediately recognize. I was doing less of the things that made me Jasmine. I traveled less. I spent less time with friends and family. I worked out less. I cooked less. I read for pleasure less. And I made less time for the things I genuinely enjoyed, the things that had absolutely nothing to do with my professional identity.

Meanwhile, my career was growing. There were more responsibilities. More people depending on me. More problems to solve. More opportunities to lead. More accomplishments. More professional development. More reasons to keep going.

From the outside, that looked like growth. And in many ways, it was. But looking back at that period of my life through the lens of behavior analysis has made me curious about something else:

What contingencies was I creating along the way?

When Work Becomes Really Good at Reinforcing Us

There is nothing inherently wrong with ambition. Meaningful work can provide tremendous reinforcement: accomplishment, financial stability, recognition, mastery, belonging, praise, opportunity, status, and the satisfaction of becoming increasingly competent at something that matters to us.

We work.

Something valuable follows.

So we work some more.

But sometimes work can serve another function.

Life outside of work isn’t always reinforcing. Sometimes it’s uncertain. Sometimes relationships are complicated. Sometimes we’re lonely, overwhelmed, bored, grieving, uncomfortable, or trying to figure out what comes next. And work gives us somewhere to go.

Something to solve.

Someone who needs us.

Something we already know how to be good at.

If working temporarily reduces our contact with something aversive, continuing to work may also be negatively reinforced.

That doesn’t mean every ambitious person is using work to escape something. It doesn’t mean working hard is inherently unhealthy. And it certainly doesn’t remove the responsibility organizations have for creating environments that encourage—or even reward—chronic overwork.

It simply means that, as behavior analysts, function is worth examining.

Research on workaholism has similarly examined excessive investment in work, preoccupation with work, and the ways working can become disproportionately important compared with other areas of life. For some of us, then, work may become particularly powerful because it can do two things at once:

It gives us access to things we want while sometimes helping us avoid things we don’t.

That’s a powerful contingency.

But What Happens to Everything Else?

This is the part I’ve been thinking about most. Because while my professional repertoire was expanding, parts of my personal repertoire were becoming smaller. Every additional hour spent working had to come from somewhere.

Sometimes it came from traveling.

Sometimes from working out.

Sometimes from cooking.

Sometimes from reading.

Sometimes from time with friends and family.

And none of this happened dramatically.

There wasn’t a particular day when I decided that work would take priority over everything else. It happened gradually.

Maybe we don’t lose ourselves all at once. Maybe our lives narrow one contingency at a time.

As a behavior analyst, it would be tempting to say that I had placed my hobbies “on extinction.” Technically, that’s not necessarily what was happening. Extinction requires discontinuing the reinforcement that previously maintained a behavior. Real life is considerably messier. There may be competing contingencies. Increased response effort. Fewer opportunities to engage in an activity. Environmental constraints. Changes in motivating operations. Or simply fewer occasions to engage in behaviors that once reliably contacted reinforcement.

But eventually, the result can sound something like this:

“I used to do that.”

I used to cook.

I used to work out.

I used to read.

I used to travel more.

I used to see my friends more.

I used to have hobbies.

And if enough things become things we used to do, eventually we have to ask a much bigger question.

When “What I Do” Starts Becoming “Who I Am”

Our careers are supposed to change us. We develop expertise. We become more confident. We acquire new skills. We assume greater responsibility. We build professional relationships and communities. Our work can provide meaning and purpose.

I’m proud of being a behavior analyst.

I’m proud of being a leader.

I’m proud of the education, experiences, knowledge, and skills I’ve worked hard to acquire.

The problem isn’t that our profession becomes part of our identity. The question is whether we’ve left enough room to continue developing the rest of it. At some point:

“What do you do?” can quietly become “Who are you?”

And we may not realize how much of ourselves has become attached to that answer until something changes.

A position ends. A promotion doesn’t happen. An organization changes. We burn out. We change careers. Eventually, we retire. If our reinforcement, social relationships, daily structure, sense of competence, recognition, and identity are overwhelmingly attached to our professional role, what happens when that role isn’t available in the same way?

That isn’t only an existential question.

It’s a behavioral one.

Maybe We Need More Than Rest

When we talk about overwork and burnout, we frequently talk about rest. And rest absolutely matters. Research on recovery from work has found meaningful relationships between psychological detachment from work and outcomes including exhaustion, fatigue, sleep, life satisfaction, and well-being. Research has also examined recovery experiences such as relaxation, control, and mastery—activities outside of work that allow us to learn, challenge ourselves, develop skills, and experience competence in other areas of our lives. That last part interests me. Because maybe the goal isn’t simply to become better at recovering from work so that we’re rested enough to return to it. Maybe we need to ask a different question:

How many different ways does your life allow you to contact reinforcement?

Develop a Bigger Life

What if taking care of ourselves also means deliberately building behavioral repertoires that have nothing to do with our professions?

Travel somewhere because you’re curious.

Cook something because you want to taste it.

Move your body because you enjoy how movement feels.

Read something that will never help your career.

Take a class you have absolutely no intention of monetizing.

Create something.

Host dinner.

Learn something you’re terrible at.

Spend an afternoon laughing with people you love.

Get dressed up when you have nowhere important to go.

Find something you love enough to do badly.

Maybe our lives need multiple sources of reinforcement—not simply one incredibly powerful one called work.

Behavioral activation research has long examined relationships among activity, avoidance, environmental reinforcement, and engagement with meaningful life activities. I’m not suggesting that picking up a hobby is a clinical intervention for occupational burnout. That would be far too simplistic. But the underlying behavioral principle gives us something worth considering:

Our environments help determine what we have opportunities to do—and what reinforcement we have opportunities to contact.

Maybe we should become just as intentional about creating environments that reinforce the rest of us.

I Had to Start Finding Jasmine Again

This is where the conversation became deeply personal for me. At some point, I realized I had spent years becoming increasingly clear about who I was professionally while becoming less intentional about who I was outside of work.

And there’s a lot of me outside of work.

I’ve always loved fashion.

Not simply clothes. I love curating an entire look. Thinking about how pieces work together. Playing with proportions, accessories, textures, and details until something feels like me.

I love fragrance. I love experimenting with scent combinations, layering fragrances, and discovering how scent can become part of how I express myself.

I love skin care and hair care—the products, the routines, learning what works, and the ritual of taking care of myself.

I love recipes and cooking. Finding something new I want to make. Creating a meal. Sharing food with people I care about.

I love traveling.

I love reading.

I love working out and moving my body.

I love spending time with my friends and family.

I love discovering things simply because they interest me.

None of those things have anything to do with being a behavior analyst.

And that’s exactly the point.

Those parts of me didn’t disappear as my career grew. I just gave myself fewer opportunities to engage with them. More of my time, attention, energy, and available reinforcement became organized around professional achievement. Eventually, I had to ask myself:

When did I stop making as much room for the things that made me Jasmine?

Finding My Way Back Doesn’t Mean Becoming Less Ambitious

I don’t want a smaller professional life.

I still have enormous goals.

I still want to learn.

I still want to lead.

I still want to build.

I still want to contribute to this field.

But I also want a bigger personal life.

I want to curate a look simply because I feel good wearing it.

I want to experiment with fragrance combinations because scent brings me joy.

I want to spend entirely too much time figuring out what works for my hair or skin.

I want to try a new recipe.

I want to travel somewhere simply because I want to experience it.

I want to read something that will never appear on a reference page.

I want to move my body.

I want uninterrupted time with the people I love.

I want to discover interests I don’t even know I have yet.

And I want some of the things I do to remain completely unproductive.

No business plan.

No credential.

No monetization strategy.

No measurable professional outcome.

Just reinforcement.

I want to continue developing Jasmine, too.

And perhaps that’s one of the biggest things this season of my life has taught me:

Professional development should not require personal disappearance.

And Then There Is the Rest of You

I’ve spent much of my career thinking about how we develop people professionally.

How do we build competency?

How do we develop stronger clinicians?

How do we teach people to lead?

How do we build systems that help people perform well?

Those questions still matter deeply to me.

They’re part of why I’m building Pierra.

But while building Pierra, another question has started becoming equally important:

What are we doing to develop the person who exists outside of all of that?

The person with preferences.

Curiosity.

Style.

Rituals.

Interests.

Relationships.

Creativity.

Pleasure.

A body that deserves care.

An identity that doesn’t need to produce anything to be worth developing.



That is development, too.

And there’s a part of Pierra I’ve been quietly building around that idea.

I’m calling it The Muse Series.

It isn’t separate from how I think about development.

In many ways, it’s the other half of it.

I’m not going to explain all of it yet.

There’s time for that.

For now, I’ll let that marinate. 🌸

Develop the professional. But don’t place the rest of yourself on extinction.

Research Referenced

Bennett, A. A., Bakker, A. B., & Field, J. G. (2018). Recovery from work-related effort: A meta-analysis. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 39(3), 262–275.

Headrick, L., Newman, D. A., Park, Y. A., & Liang, Y. (2023). Recovery experiences for work and health outcomes: A meta-analysis and recovery-engagement-exhaustion model. Journal of Business and Psychology, 38, 821–864.

Mazzucchelli, T. G., Kane, R. T., & Rees, C. S. (2010). Behavioral activation interventions for well-being: A meta-analysis. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 5(2), 105–121.