I never thought I’d follow a dieting fad. I always prided myself on being the type of laid-back person who worked as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted. But recently, I noticed I was working nearly nonstop. When I wasn’t literally working, I was thinking about work. As I’ve gotten older, my body just can’t absorb that much work anymore.

Then, a friend of mine—I swear, a perfectly normal person who would never do anything dangerous or unhealthy, who would never starve her employer of work—told me about intermittent working.

The basic idea is that you pick a certain time segment of the day, such as 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and work only during those hours.

I know, I know. When you first hear about intermittent working, it sounds impossible.

At first, it was really hard. I craved work every hour of the day and night. But within a week, I was already experiencing the benefits of intermittent working. My bloodshot eyes faded from red to dark pink, and my back hunch started to unfurl. I found myself forming new thoughts—ideas and concerns that had nothing to do with performing wage labor.

I even started talking to my family. Taking an interest in my kids was, unfortunately, not as engaging as I’d hoped. But once I started listening to audiobooks during their violin concerts and taking THC gummies at their volleyball games, I found I was only mildly tempted to leave and run to the office to get a jump-start on the next end-of-quarter review.

Only a month into my diet, I managed to sit through twenty-five minutes of my kid’s jiu-jitsu tournament without sending a single work-related message from my phone.

Still, I felt sheepish about trying such a fringe diet. I didn’t want my coworkers to know. When they would schedule meetings for 8 p.m. because “that’s the only time that works for everybody,” I would just attend. It felt easier than admitting I was restricting my work hours.

Since finally telling everyone I was intermittently working, my bosses remain the biggest obstacle to my diet’s success. They’re worried that if I only work eight hours a day, I won’t be able to fit enough work into each week. They entice me to binge-work by flooding my inbox with after-hours emails. If I don’t respond, they text or call. I’ve shown them all the research that proves that intermittent working is safe and effective, but they’re still concerned for my health.

To ease my colleagues’ and supervisors’ minds, sometimes I’ll shift my working window earlier or later, or schedule emails to auto-send in the middle of the night. That way, imagining I’m working constantly, they can finally stop worrying, convinced I’m healthy and normal.

Each night, I can feel my cravings for work subsiding more and more.

I slip up now and then, though. I’ve asked my husband to go into the basement to check his work email; it’s simply too torturous to watch him work after hours right in front of me. Sometimes, when he takes conference calls late at night, I feel deeply jealous of his carefree work-anytime lifestyle. I’ll sneak to my computer and reorganize my to-do list or even proofread a few reports.

Just a little taste to tide me over until the next morning.