Let’s face it, we are often required to work beyond our capacities at our workplaces. While all of us have different capabilities of handling work pressure at our offices, most of us might experience burnout and get exhausted with the constant work pressure. So most of us prefer to work according to our capacity and not stay for extra time at work. We might give an excuse that being workaholic can ruin our personal lives and make us forget other important work. But it is a debatable topic since many believe that being a workaholic is actually good for your career and can improve your chances to climb up the corporate ladder getting promoted faster than your peers. The culture of workaholism is so prevalent across all the industries today that it has come to the point of normalization, i.e., everybody is expected to be a workaholic.
So it is first important to identify whether you qualify to be a workaholic. The first sign of being a workaholic is that you have a compulsive feeling of working all the time, even at the cost of their health. They prefer to check their emails even during the holidays and don’t enjoy taking vacations since it will hamper their work. They also have a habit of keeping a monthly calendar at their office desk. In short, a workaholic is someone who thinks about work all the time and neglects his social and personal life at the cost of it. Being a workaholic can actually take a toll on your health, both physical and mental. Employees who put in 55 hours or more of work in a week have 33% higher chances of having a stroke, according to a survey conducted by the scientists at University College London.
But first, you must identify whether you are a workaholic or just spend too much time at work. There is a fine line between the two, and both are detrimental to your health. It not only damage your social ties slowly but also can hamper your work productivity itself. Here are some prominent questions which you can ask to judge whether you are a workaholic or just like to put in long hours of work at the office.
- Does your work make you happy and do you find inner-motivation to do your work?
- Is office work taking up a considerable amount of your personal time?
- Do you like to keep a lot of work to yourself even when you can distribute it to others?
- Do you feel constantly exhausted due to work? Is your health being affected due to work stress?
If the answer to most of these questions is yes, then you can qualify yourself as a workaholic. You should take these as a warning signal and cut back on your work and find more time for relaxation. Otherwise, you will slowly but surely face burnout and worst, even chronic depression which will have a detrimental effect on your other activities as well. So you must identify these symptoms fast and understand that constantly obsessing over work has more negative impacts rather than positive ones. Your boss at the office would prefer you to work efficiently and show result consistently rather than continuously slogging yourself at work. Sure, you might get a morale high while being productive at work, and you might think that it is the only thing which I need to be good at. But in the long run, you will realize that running after career goals and being overly-ambitious constitute only a small aspect of our lives, and there’s much beyond a career in life. So if we want to achieve overall well-being of ourselves, and truly gain success in life, we must learn to keep a balance between our professional and personal lives. And realize that professional achievements are not the defining terms of success in life.