How To Deal With Work Addiction? 6 Effective Strategies
Work is dignifying and we need it to be able to survive, which is why food costs money and money, in most cases, is obtained by working. The ideal is to enjoy our work, which satisfies us and fulfills us, although we will always have to make some sacrifice and do something we don’t like, but that’s life.
It’s okay to be a hard-working and responsible person, but with a limit. It is one thing to meet work objectives and another to make them take up our entire schedule. Some people can develop a true addiction to work.
In the paragraphs below Let’s see what is meant by work addiction and we will see how to cope with it with some tricks that we can incorporate into our work life.
Work addiction can be defined as the excessive and pathological need to fulfill work responsibilities, working more hours than necessary or investing extra effort in work tasks. The workaholic person dedicates most of their day to work, something that is detrimental to their free time, which could be spent with family, friends, devoting it to their hobbies or self-care.
In recent years, awareness about work addiction has been raised but using the term of English origin “workaholism”, a combination of “work”, that is, “work”, and “alcohol”. This addiction in itself has nothing to do with alcoholism, but it can be compared to the addiction that alcoholic people have with respect to this substance. In the case of workaholic people, their addiction is behavioral rather than a substance, as is the case of people addicted to sex, shopping, video games…
It’s not called work addiction for nothing. People who suffer from this problem have a dysfunctional relationship with work, not being able to detach themselves from it, feeling true abstention from detaching themselves from work, feeling great anxiety and worry about the fact that they are not carrying it out. Overwork and poor management of it brings with it physical and mental problems consequences of symptoms such as stress, work dependency, emotional instability, irritability…
As with substance addictions, in work a tolerance process occurs. There comes a point where the workaholic person, despite putting in a lot of effort, is not happy with the result they have obtained, even if it is a good one. This means that you have to work harder and harder to feel good, having to dedicate more hours and efforts, to the greater detriment of both your personal and social life and self-care.
How does the workaholic phenomenon arise?
Each person is different and what may have pushed them towards work addiction is very varied. However, it is considered that a common pattern in workaholic people is having grown up in a family where love was given based on the success, achievements and academic performance of their children. It is not unusual to find workaholics who say they grew up in an environment where they had to earn the love of their parents whether it was having good grades at school or obtaining recognition and prizes in sports competitions, instrumental concerts, dance, chess…
Furthermore, in a society marked by the conception that the more productive one is, the better, this becomes the breeding ground for this dysfunctional relationship with work to emerge. Socially, a person who proves to be hardworking is valued very positively, even when their overwork is taking a toll on their physical and mental health. This social appreciation does a disservice to the workaholic, who seeks acceptance and admiration from his or her closest social environment.
As with many behavioral addictions, work addiction goes very unnoticed, being an underestimated and little recognized phenomenon. The psychological discomfort suffered by the workaholic person is difficult to assess. The diagnosis is made only when physical symptoms, such as not sleeping well or having stomach pains, and psychological symptoms, such as extreme anxiety, become very evident.
This prevents an effective diagnosis and usually occurs when the person’s physical and mental discomfort is already in an advanced stage, or when they have suffered a serious illness such as a heart attack or panic attack. You urgently need to take a complete break from work.
As we have mentioned, work addiction brings with it stress and anxiety, problems with family, friends and the personal sphere by not devoting enough time to them. The workaholic person cannot stop thinking about work tasks even when on vacation or trying to fall asleep in bed, which brings lack of rest and insomnia.
Work addiction is a serious problem that must be treated with the help of a specialized psychotherapist. Some recommendations to maintain a healthy work-life balance for workaholics are as follows:
1. Modify scale of work values
A first step is to try to modify the scale of values about work, trying to stop giving it more importance than it requires. Life is full of things to enjoy, such as family, friends and recreational activities. To be happy, we must give greater prominence to the small pleasures in life and let work take up only the necessary time and effort.
For this reason, we must make an effort and spend more time with our loved ones, enjoy our hobbies and forget about work for a moment. Sport can also be of great help to us, combating stress and anxiety about returning to work while we carry out an activity that, thanks to endorphins, gives us a feeling of calm and mental well-being.
2. Limit the number of tasks
One of the main problems of people addicted to work is that they do not know how to set limits, accepting as many tasks as they can under the belief that the more they work, the better valued they will be. It is true that doing some extra tasks can be good for us to earn a little more money or get our boss or colleagues to do us favors in the future, however, we cannot expect to do absolutely everything.
3. Work, at work
To the extent possible, We must limit the time we spend at work and dedicate ourselves to work tasks only in the office. Non-working hours, weekends, holidays, and other times where we don’t have to work and don’t get paid for it are not the right time to fill it with more work.
Very important: if the computer is our main work tool, let’s not use it after work to achieve a complete disconnection.
4. Avoid perfectionism
Human beings are imperfect by nature, so obsessing about doing everything absolutely right and great is practically impossible. Naturally, we will have to carry out the tasks with a certain decorum, style and well done, but we cannot dedicate more hours than necessary to finish something that can already be done well with less time and effort.
The goal is to deliver good quality work, but you cannot continue perfecting it in an unlimited way.
5. Better a little and good than a lot and bad
Efficiency is not measured by the time we dedicate to something, but by how well we do it. You can be very productive by dedicating the minimum amount of time necessary to someone. We must fight against the belief that by sacrificing our free time we become better workers, and internalize the fact that what is already well done does not need more tweaks or extra effort to improve.
Working long hours decreases productivity, destroys our creativity and affects personal relationships.
6. Delegate functions
A problem that workaholics have is that they do not trust their coworkers and prefer to take on all the tasks before delegating. This is a big mistake, because in addition to affecting our health and taking up time, it worsens relationships in the office as others feel that we do not value them.
We must assume a reality: If the rest of the workers are with us, it is for a reason. They are people with skills, experience and ability to do the tasks that this job requires, so it is totally convenient to delegate tasks to them and avoid taking away those that they have already assigned. This will improve the social environment and will take a great weight off our shoulders.
Knowing how to ask other colleagues for help is not a sign of weakness but a good way to avoid reaching extreme fatigue and ceasing to be productive.
