Workaholism Can Kill You!

Workalism is an addiction. It is an obsessive compulsive disorder.  It is not the same as working hard or putting in long hours. In effect a person suffering from workaholism, referred to as   a workaholic, allows work to take over and destroy his or her personal life.  The Japanese call it ‘karoshi’ which means ‘death by overwork’ and estimated to cause about 5% of Japan’s stroke and heart attack deaths in employees  under age 60. The Dutch call it ‘leisure illness’ and estimated to affect 3% of workers who get sick on weekends and vacations when they stop working, as they try unsuccessfully to relax. The Americans call it a ‘respectable addiction’ which is dangerous nonetheless and affects millions of Americans workers or non-workers. Africans call it ‘executive stress’ which doesn’t necessarily mean it affects only top ranking executives but also flow down to low level employees who work 24/7 without time to relax.

Hard work or workaholism

People who work hard are likely to have breakthrough innovations in areas such as medicine, telecommunications, engineering, lifesaving vaccines, life improving technologies and so on. The positive thing about hard work is that, in general, there is always a balance between work and personal life. While working on innovations, ‘hard workers’ can’t wait to go out there for a game of tennis or a leisure that rejuvenates their senses.

On the other hand, workaholics continue to ruminate over work left undone while trying to relax. Workaholics’ obsession with work is all-encompassing which disallows healthy relationship, social pastimes, or even take toll on their health. They have no time to play the role of father – no time, or a loving husband – too busy, and when you really get down to it, its evident that poor attention given to their family is not because they have to be at work, but because they feel they must be. Friends, family, and their health are ignored with shocking consequences. When it’s time for vacation, they cleverly turn it down so they don’t miss work.  If they then manage to go on vacation, they’re not fully immersed because they’re still thinking about work. Workaholics don’t believe they’re doing anything wrong until there’s a sudden heart attack or the wife walks out of the marriage.

Compulsive addiction to adrenaline

There is a case of Mike a 44 year old accountant, very successful, dependable and effective worker. Since the company he works for relies on him a great deal, he took this as an unsigned agreement to run the company 24/7.  He travels every week outside his domain with no time to nurture any personal relationship. He stood his dates up several times, forgot to return calls or to say the simplest endearment words.  He thought he was a regular guy until an attempt to start a close relationship failed for the seventh time. The seventh botched attempt jolted him to reality about his obsession to work and the damage it’s doing to his social and personal life. One thing that’s clear is workaholics tend to seek out jobs that allow them to exercise their addiction, high stress jobs to keep the adrenaline rush going even if they work from home.

Blame it on childhood

Research shows that childhood is the source of workaholism. Many workaholics are the children of alcoholics or from another type of dysfunctional family, where workaholism is used to put the lid on a situation spiralling out of control.  They could also be offsprings of ‘perfect looking’ families where parents are perfectionist, driving their children hard and expecting unreasonable results. Some children give up on their parents expectations of them, while others continue to show excellence in everything to get their parents endorsement.

However no one can be perfect. Anyone who strives for perfection is vulnerable to workaholism, since a situation is created where the person continues and never stops because the goal post is always being shifted farther. This explains why workaholics, despite the amount of hours put into work, jeopardising their health and personal relationship, are often unproductive employees

Workaholic methods

Generally workaholics tend to be less productive as it’s hard for them to become team players. They don’t trust coworkers. They often don’t like delegating hence overload themselves with work and in the end become disorganised.

Experts identify four separate workaholic working methods:

• The bulimic workaholic feels it’s perfection or nothing. Bulimic workaholics frequently fail to start projects, and then struggle to finish by deadline, which means working into exhaustion with messy results. 
  
• The persistent workaholic is the worker that thrives on adrenalin rush who frequently engage in more work than can reasonably be done. In a show of being a master juggler of many roles, they often work with too much speed and too preoccupied to do detailed and thorough analysis.
  
• The attention-deficit workaholic often starts with excitement but stops midway and never finish a project mainly because they lose the excitement for a new project. They regularly enjoy the brain storming part of a new project but soon get bored with the necessary important details or follow through.
  
• The savoring workaholic is unhurried, painstaking, and excessively meticulous. They don’t like to let go projects and are not team players. They frequently have trouble letting go of projects and don’t work well with others. These are often flawless perfectionists, regularly missing deadlines because it’s not flawless.

Don’t kill yourself with work

What can you do if you think you might be a workaholic? Counseling is often recommended for workaholics. The bottom line is to identify a need for a work- life balance in your life. There's no doubt that working hard is fantastic, but it’s important to be able to put a lid on and enjoy the other areas of your life such as friends, family, interests, recreation and fun.

Unfortunately many companies regularly confuse workaholics for hard workers, as such encourage them on their path to slow death. The truth is that Companies endorse workaholism because the perception is that it shows hard work and commitment. Though workaholism is currently the major addiction in many Companies, there are possibly no employee assistance programs for it. Rather workaholic seems to be rewarded.

Photo Credit: Creative Commons.