I'm a workaholic, so I ignore the signs of fatigue and just keep

In the bare-truth confession of Keke Palmer—“I’m a workaholic, so I ignore the signs of fatigue and just keep going and going, and then conk out when I get home. It can be pretty stressful.”—we hear the drumbeat of our age wearing ancient shoes. The words are plain, but they carry the ache of a people who worship the sun of productivity and forget that night was made for healing. To be a workaholic is to mistake fire for food: it warms for a while, then consumes. The sentence is not a boast; it is a bell—calling us to remember limits as sacred, not shameful.

The ancients knew this law of breath and boundary. Farmers honored the fallow; sailors trimmed canvas when the wind roared too loud. To ignore the signs of fatigue is to sail past safe harbor because the shoreline looks ordinary. Yet ordinary is what saves us. The eyelids that grow heavy, the thought that stumbles, the temper that quickens—these are not enemies but envoys, bearing the message: turn back, drink water, lay your head down. When we refuse them, we do not outwit weakness; we betray wisdom.

There is a story hammered into American lore—the tale of John Henry, the steel-driving man who challenged the machine and won the contest, then lost his heartbeat. His feat glitters; his ending warns. To keep going can carve a legend; it can also carve a grave. Across the sea, the Japanese named the same peril karōshi—death by overwork—so that a nation would not pretend it was a rumor. In both histories the moral is the same: the body keeps ledgers the ego cannot audit, and the debt comes due.

Consider, too, a gentler parable. A monk in a desert monastery once sought to pray through the night without pause. At dawn he conked out in the refectory, spilling water and pride in one soft crash. His elder said only, “Even bows unstrung must rest, else they will not sing.” The monk learned to close his eyes as an act of faith, not failure. In time his prayer grew deeper because it grew slower. To get home and fall into sleep like a stone is not rest; it is collapse. True rest is chosen before the cliff, not after the fall.

What, then, is the origin of this relentless hunger? Often it is love misdirected—love of craft, family, future—twisted into compulsion by fear. We sprint because stillness terrifies us with its mirrors. We stack hours like bricks against the weather of doubt. But the city we build without windows becomes a prison. The admission “It can be pretty stressful” is the soul tapping the wall, asking for a door.

Take the lesson plainly: honor the creature so the calling may endure. Let the body’s small prophets speak. Replace the creed of “keep going” with the covenant of “go wisely.” In practice this means setting stopping rituals as strictly as start times—one hard line in the late afternoon that says “no more,” one brief walk between tasks to break the fever of momentum, one glass of water for every cup of urgency. Let the bed be cleared of glowing altars; let the phone sleep outside the room where you do.

And make a rule of mercy you can keep: when you hear the signs of fatigue—the squint, the sigh, the thought that forgets its key—step away for ten deep breaths, stretch the spine like a bow unstrung, take food that grows from soil rather than from wrappers, name one thing you did well, and close the book. If a season demands long labor, pair it with long recovery; plan the rest with the same ferocity as the work. Tell a friend your limits so they can guard them when your pride will not.

At last, carry this counsel like an amulet: you are a lamp, not a bonfire. Burn steady so that those who love you can find their way home. Refuse the flattery of collapse; choose the dignity of rhythm. And when the old impulse rises—to ignore and keep going until you conk out—answer with the older wisdom: I will stop while I still shine, so that tomorrow I may shine again.