Workaholism: Hazards and Benefits

Does your job feel like a real-time experiment in the human costs of constant, unrelenting overcommitment? Was your last job like this as well? Do you dream of someday having a manageable workload? Do you fantasize about working for yourself?

Consider for a moment the possibility that it is you who keeps recreating impossible jobs for yourself. Consider the possibility that again and again, you re-create the habitual pattern AND that there may be other choices you could make at any given moment.

For many of us with a native tendency to overwork, overdo, and overcommit (and I count myself in this population), we will continue to recreate the scenario for ourselves until we own our own part in it and stop doing it. It's not about the job. It's about how we DO the job, our relationship to the job, and what else we do or don't have going on in our lives.

I'm not saying there aren't workaholic organizations. There are. And I'm not saying we aren't a workaholic culture. We are.

But I'm also saying that if you want to step out of this cycle, you'll have to address and take responsibility for your own part in the pattern. I have seen people leave intense jobs in organizations in order to create a saner life by working for themselves, only to find themselves eventually working the same crazy hours, under the same level of stress and angst that they had in the job they fled. You can be a workaholic anywhere, even in your own home office. In fact, when you have a home office, you don't ever have to leave work to go home!

Sometimes the task at hand is to figure out what standard is appropriate to the task. Often, the twin brother of the Inner Workaholic is the Perfectionist, who insists that every thing we produce must be absolutely stellar. One of the hallmarks of highly effective people is that they know when to go the distance and produce an A+ outcome, and when it's a responsible allocation of resources to simply go for a B+ result.

This month I have been in this conversation with a number of my clients and friends. I have been struggling with my own relationship with my work. When do I say, "Enough for today!" even when the tasks aren't finished? And when do I say, "Hang in. Another couple of hours will make a big difference!"?

I think the answer is unique to each of us, and unique to where we are in our lives. In my work with clients I have learned that it is never just one thing that needs to be examined, and there is rarely a simple answer -- if it were simple, it would have been figured out long before the person called me in to help. But I have seen people make big changes that endure, even while continuing to work the same job.

Copyright 2006 Sharon Teitelbaum. All rights reserved.

Master Certified Coach Sharon Teitelbaum is an authority on work life balance and an expert life coach to busy professionals, high achievers, people at midlife, and working parents. Her book, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: Restoring Work-Life Balance, is a strategic, tactical guide for maintaining a sane and balanced life, distilled from her experience coaching hundreds of people.

A sought-after keynote speaker and workshop leader, Sharon has addressed such diverse audiences as Harvard Medical School Faculty, financial advisors at Merrill Lynch, and Mothers' of Twins Clubs. She has been featured in national publications including The New York Times, Working Mother Magazine, and Forbes.com. Sharon works with individual coaching clients throughout the US and internationally by phone, or in person in the Boston area, and always offers an initial consultation at no charge. Married for thirty-plus years, she is the mother of two fabulous grown-up daughters.