1、You Might Be a Workaholic If.Some Signs You Might Need to Pull Back on WorkBy TORY JOHNSONJune 14, 2007 Its a frequently asked question: Do we live to work, or work to live?A growing number of Americans are finding that they live for work, and some of them are popping up at Workaholics Anonymous mee
2、tings nationwide.Unlike people who simply work very hard, which quite frankly is most of us, workaholics never punch out. They always feel like they are on the clock, 24/7, physically, mentally and emotionally working.They are more genuinely enthusiastic about work than anything else in their lives,
3、 even family and friends. Theres nothing that person would rather be doing than working.And were not just talking about Fortune 500 executives; nurses and construction workers, among others, attend Workaholics Anonymous meetings to try to kick the habit.What Are the Trouble Signs?If youre a workahol
4、ic, you cant stop thinking about work. Work issues distract you from relationships and those thoughts speed through your mind as you lie in bed at night. A part of you is always longing to get back to work. Nothing not eating, socializing, sleeping is as satisfying.Heres a good way to think of it: A
5、n ordinary hard worker will be on the job, thinking about shopping with friends. A workaholic will be out shopping with friends, but will be thinking nonstop about work.Workaholics are very controlling. They cant delegate and are not usually interested in being team players. They are perfectionists
6、and nothing is ever good enough for them. Workaholics would rather handle everything themselves, which doesnt always produce the necessary results because often we need the input and help of others.A workaholic also has a troubled personal life. Typically workaholics dont have many friends or hobbie
7、s. Their personal relationships are in disarray. They have difficulty with intimacy because work is always on their minds. And of course, there is a ripple effect in the families of workaholics.Research done by the University of North Carolina found that couples in a workaholic marriage tended to ha
8、ve twice the divorce rate as those who were in nonworkaholic marriages. We know that all marriages take work, but thats not the type of work that a workaholic wants to focus on.Further, there is the effect on the children. Research has also found that children of workaholics have a higher rate of de
9、pression and anxiety mainly because that workaholic parent has placed severely high expectations on his or her kids, which links back to that desire for perfection.And there are health concerns for workaholics, caused by the extreme levels of stress they suffer. They often eat poorly, dont exercise,
10、 and in short, they take poor care of their physical and emotional well being.Solutions to Kick the HabitLike any addiction, its challenging to kick and the person needs a support system to help. First, a workaholic must recognize and admit the problem.Take this quick personal survey: Ask yourself,
11、on a scale of one to five five being truly satisfied how youd rate your satisfaction and happiness in each of these key areas of your personal life: Your family? Your friendships? Your health? Your hobbies? Your spirituality?If your total is not 12 or more points, you have to take a hard look at you
12、rself. Its probably time to reconsider your priorities and to replace some of your work time with life time.On its Web site, Workaholics Anonymous suggests 20 questions to ask yourself to determine whether you may be a workaholic. Among them:Do you take work with you to bed, on weekends and/or on va
13、cation?Is work the activity you like to do best and talk about most?Have your family or friends given up expecting you on time?Do you get impatient with people who have other priorities besides work?Have your long hours hurt your family or other relationships?Do you think about your work while drivi
14、ng, falling asleep or when others are talking?Answering yes to one or two might not be the sign of an addiction, but a pattern of yes to three or more of these questions might mean its time to make changes. But of course, with all addiction, making those changes is easier said than done.Make time to
15、 relax. Since workaholics are so detail oriented and focused, they should schedule time off to relax and play. Use this time to find new ways to find happiness and approval and satisfaction outside of work. Look for other benchmarks to measure your overall well-being such as achieving fulfilling per
16、sonal relationships - being a terrific, reliable partner, parent, and/or friend - or even trying a new hobby that offers a complete diversion from work.Learn to delegate. Recognize that none of us can be successful or productive at work on our own. This is hard for these perfectionists, so they can
17、start small, such as sharing small tasks with co-workers to start whether its folding shirts in a retail store or managing the office staff. Slowly, the workaholic can see that he or she can begin to let go and still get the job done.A Workaholic Economy FOR THE first century or so of the industrial
18、 revolution, increased productivity led to decreases in working hours. Employees who had been putting in 12-hour days, six days a week, found their time on the job shrinking to 10 hours daily, then, finally, to eight hours, five days a week. Only a generation ago social planners worried about what p
19、eople would do with all this new-found free time. In the US, at least, it seems they need not have bothered. Although the output per hour of work has more than doubled since 1945, leisure seems reserved largely for the unemployed and underemployed. Those who work full-time spend as much time on the
20、job as they did at the end of World War II. In fact, working hours have increased noticeably since 1970 perhaps because real wages have stagnated since that year. Bookstores now abound with manuals describing how to manage time and cope with stress. There are several reasons for lost leisure. Since
21、1979, companies have responded to improvements in the business climate by having employees work overtime rather than by hiring extra personnel, says economist Juliet B. Schor of Harvard University. Indeed, the current economic recovery has gained a certain amount of notoriety for its “jobless” natur
22、e: increased production has been almost entirel decoupled from employment. Some firms are even downsizing as their profits climb. “All things being equal, wed be better off spreading around the work, observes labour economist Ronald G. Ehrenberg of Cornell University. Yet a host of factors pushes em
23、ployers to hire fewer workers for more hours and, at the same time, compels workers to spend more time on the job. Most of those incentives involve what Ehrenberg calls the structure of compensation quirks in the way salaries and benefits are organised that make it more profitable to ask 40 employee
24、s to labour an extra hour each than to hire one more worker to do the same 40-hour job. Professional and managerial employees supply the most obvious lesson along these lines. Once people are on salary, their cost to a firm is the same whether they spend 35 hours a week in the office or 70. Diminish
25、ing returns may eventually set in as overworked employees lose efficiency or leave for more arable pastures. But in the short run, the employers incentive is clear. Even hourly employees receive benefits such as pension contributions and medical insurance - that are not tied to the number of hours t
26、hey work. Therefore, it is more profitable for employers to work their existing employees harder. For all that employees complain about long hours, they, too, have reasons not to trade money for leisure. “People who work reduced hours pay a huge penalty in career terms,” Schor maintains. “Its taken
27、as a negative signal about their commitment to the firm. Lotte Bailyn of Massachusetts Institute of Technology adds that many corporate managers find it difficult to measure the contribution of their underlings to a firms well-being, so they use the number of hours worked as a proxy for output. “Emp
28、loyees know this,” she says, and they adjust their behavior accordingly. “Although the image of the good worker is the one whose life belongs to the company,” Bailyn says, “it doesnt fit the facts. She cites both quantitative and qualitative studies that show increased productivity for part-time wor
29、kers: they make better use of the time they have, and they are less likely to succumb to fatigue in stressful jobs. Companies that employ more workers for less time also gain from the resulting redundancy, she asserts. “The extra people can cover the contingencies that you know are going to happen,
30、such as when crises take people away from the workplace. Positive experiences with reduced hours have begun to change the more-is-better culture at some companies, Schor reports. Larger firms, in particular, appear to be more willing to experiment with flexible working arrangements. It may take even
31、 more than changes in the financial and cultural structures of employment for workers successfully to trade increased productivity and money for leisure time, Schor contends. She says the U.S. market for goods has become skewed by the assumption of full-time, two-career households. Automobile makers
32、 no longer manufacture cheap models, and developers do not build the tiny bungalows that served the first postwar generation of home buyers. Not even the humblest household object is made without a microprocessor. As Schor notes, the situation is a curious inversion of the “appropriate technology” v
33、ision that designers have had for developing countries: U.S. goods are appropriate only for high incomes and long hours. Paul WalluhAre You a Workaholic?Theres a big difference between working hard and being a workaholic.Working hard involves being organized, focused, getting a lot of work done, knowing when to stop, and having a life other than work. Workaholics, on the other hand, are often disorganized, always find reasons for working more, feel lost without work to do, hide from problems through work, dont know how or when to relax, bring work home from the office, cant
