''My name is Tony, and I'm a workaholic.''

So what to do? What not to do? My near-wall encounter convinced me that I need to be even more vigilant about building periods of recovery into my life -- about creating clearer and firmer boundaries. My challenge is to work smarter rather than longer and to resist technology's seductive call to stay forever connected. As the Workaholics Anonymous literature simply but trenchantly suggests, I have to resist adding any new activity in my life without also subtracting an existing one that requires equal time and energy. Put bluntly, I have to be prepared to make some choices and some sacrifices in the service of my deeper values.

Ultimately, the challenge is not mine alone. So long as our culture rewards and reveres those who work endless hours, and denies that there is anything costly about such choices, any individual attempts to shift the balance will remain an uphill battle. Might it be time, inside and outside corporate America, to question systematically whether the benefits outweigh the costs of permitting work to occupy more and more of our lives?

Tony Schwartz is the author of What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America (Bantam Books, 1995).