Why did I choose to write about workaholics? The main reason is that the general picture about these people is bad, but there are a lot of them around us and very often we admire them. They are doing exactly what they love work and they can never have enough of it. Although they spend most of their time working, surprisingly they are happy. They show so good results in what they do. But the consequences are great. Family life is disrupted, intellectual horizons narrow and the consequences to the workaholic’s health are severe: fat, lack of exercise and stress.
Why do people become workaholics? When a person becomes workaholic is there a way back? How should people around him act in order to keep both him and themselves happy? Lets start explaining what workaholics are, how they act and then we’ll get answers to this questions. The definition of workaholism from a dictionary would be someone who has a compulsion to work all time and a workaholic is someone who loves to work or who is addicted to work. How can this people work throughout the whole day and be happy and never tired knowing that they sleep only for 4-5 hours a day.
Perhaps the main reason for this is that people evaluate themselves more on measurable things such as personal achievements and financial worth not emotional wellness. People often tend to feel guilty if they are not constantly being productive, as they tend to consider relaxation a waste of precious time. They need work to feel good. Workaholics are people who put the work on first place. Usually they need to prove themselves to the their colleagues or their bosses so they would praise them. Sometimes workaholism occurs because the person works to avoid the pain.
Workaholism is addiction and all addictions are in a way avoidance of pain. They work just to cover the pain and not deal with it. Some of the workaholics became what they are because of greed. They can never have enough so they want to work as much as possible. Sometimes the hard workers are being referred as workaholics. While hard workers are ready to work some extra time to finish a project or to meet a deadline, the workaholic uses all his extra time to work. Workaholics dont have hobbies except if they are related to the job such as golf games with business partners.
Everybody thinks that the workaholics are over doing with their job and they think that they are never work enough. How did this people get addicted to work? Nobody can tell exactly how but there is a theory that workaholism starts at really early stages of life. Marilyn Machlowitz says in her book Workaholics supports this theory and says that this whole process starts when children play games that are connected with real time jobs or they play games connected with getting money such as selling lemonade or old magazines.
She also says that children of workaholics are about to become ones in their later life development. The addiction to the child of a workaholic is not passed actively. The workaholics dont tell their children to work or not to work a lot. The reason is that children often want to be as successful as their parents. Machlowitz later on in her book also says that some children think if they dont show the best results in school their parents will not love them and therefore start working more than they should. But however it is not only the childhood that makes people workaholics.
Although it might be the best period to make person think like a workaholic, the adult phase of life is the most important. The most common target of workaholism is people that have high responsibility jobs. Their motivation is fear. Workaholics on high positions just hate to fail and feel inferior to all other workers that are bellow them. Therefore they are double-checking all possibilities that are available for a certain task that they are responsible for. But perhaps the most common reason for workaholism is fear of laziness.