Nobody calls an athlete a workaholic

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There is a workout on my calendar at 5am and nobody has ever asked if I am okay.

Same calendar, Thursday, 10pm, reading something I don't understand yet because I decided I need to understand it. Someone sends me a link about burnout.

Same person, same hours, same intensity, and two opposite verdicts.

I want to know who signed off on that.

Because when you train obsessively for a race, you get a word like discipline. When you study obsessively to be the best at the thing that pays your rent, you get a diagnosis. I have asked before why the industry kept shipping while you stopped learning, and I think this is part of the answer: we made the learning sound like a symptom. Nobody has ever pulled me aside to say my swim volume was a cry for help. Plenty of people have implied it about my reading.

Focus on Thiago Avelino

Nobody calls an athlete a workaholic