You have to be dedicated to your job, but it should not entangle you with the thistles of workaholism. HR professionals all over the world are deeply perturbed about the growing emergence of workaholism. They periodically advise their employees to follow the work-life balance doctrine.
In today’s competitive job market, one is always eager to surmount other professionally and in this process, work occupies a central part of the lives of many of us. All our emotional energies are directed to achieve excellence in our jobs. Sometimes, we are trained or advised to produce marvelous output sacrificing conjugal and social lives. Work shackles us in all our endeavors. Most of us always sink in the slough of work pressure. Work dominates all our thinking whether we are in the office or at home. It is not true that all of us are workaholics, but definitely, a sizeable portion tends to be workaholic and is not able to discriminate social versus professional lives. Workaholism is so deep-rooted in their marrows that they hardly able to recognize such behavior. HR experts indicate that men are much more afflicted with this syndrome, but even women employees also become a victim of this unbridled rage of workaholism.
Glamorous harborage:
Today’s ambience of offices is so attractive that it allures you to stay for long hours to carry out your assignments. The well-decorated office, air-conditioned environment with bright sunlight at daytime, the lustrous and garish composition of neon lights at night time invite you to concentrate more on your work and slowly making you a workaholic. A lot of attention is paid to beautify the office space. Cafeterias are the places where you visit to laze around with a cup of tea are neat and clean and healthy. The overall ambiences of these cafeterias have a tremendous impact on your mood and you get rejuvenated after waddling there for a break. Many multinational companies provide the amenities of gymnasium, tennis court or swimming pool. By indulging yourself in physical exercises, you can distract your attention from the office frustrations for a while and freshen up yourself. With all these facilities encapsulated with the soothing cozy sitting arrangement tend to breed overwork. This work culture thus demands a punishing and tiresome nearly 12 to 14 working hours a day, as a routine. And then, by your sheer bad luck, if you happen to stay in a mega city where commuting time takes minimum 3 to 4 hours, then you have hardly any time for your family and other pursuits.
Now, to support this type of lifestyle where you are governed by the total mechanism, people often come with the excuse that workaholism is the only answer to survive and offbeat the fierce competition in the workplace. Further, it would be unfair to pin the rap for workaholism on the stresses and strains of modern lifestyles and cultural norms. It is not possible to overcome all these stresses and strains just by exerting yourself in heavy work. There are definitely better ways to find the remedies of these stresses except to immerse you into work. You should not shirk away all other responsibilities under the wrapper of workaholism. It is proven that many intellectuals, as well as commoners, evade their emotional vagaries crept up out of social and family relationship and involve themselves into a huge workload and tend to be workaholic. These people spend progressively more time at the workplace to buy their mental peace, relaxation and in this process, experience a greater sense of security and comfort. In the workplace, they find more enjoyment because there is a clear-cut demarcation about what is needed from them and what they can do to achieve the same. On the contrary, performance appraisal in social life is not that clearly defined and identified and so people fled away from this instinctive social life cycle and only to emerge into workaholism.
How workaholism works:
As per the observation, workaholism is a social disease. Initially, you will not be able to judge its consequences. It greets you slowly and once you are addicted, you won’t be able to come out from its affliction.
If you take the cognitive science application, the learning system is a part of this science which governs our mind to focus attention on new things. You will find an inter-alia relationship between workaholism and learning system. People usually put a maximum time to learn new things and get bogged down under its influence. This is further induced by a neural network. The neural network will pattern your mind to aggravate more and more for learning new things which ultimately make you busier day by day. Then, you will slowly overlook all your other activities and decide to concentrate only on work all the time. This will ultimately engulf you to this addiction.
A person who tends to be a workaholic, find the same as an end in itself. Often they make excuses that it is in our family culture. From the very beginning, we are taught accordingly. But, this is a complete fallacy. Workaholism, unlike alcoholism, has no genetic relationship. It depends on the nature of the individual. Workaholism is a learned behavior. The more you show your proclivity to this doctrine, the more you will be sunk in its slough. Some people have the habit to maximize their output so deftly that they always want recognition and in this process, they forget their other schedules. They always try to increase their output with an intention to be decked with more praise, and honors and after a period of time, they are classified as workaholics. And ultimately they program their lives, habits, interests, and behavior so as to hear the buzz of recognition only.
The only mission in their lives is to follow 3A principle which is a combination of appreciation, accolade, and Admiration. They asseverate that successful magic wind is workaholism.
Addicted behavior:
Workaholism is considered an addicted behavior. Alcoholism and drug usage are also addicted behavior but these are directly related to physiological dependence whereas workaholism is completely attached to your habit pattern. The worldwide data survey report shows that there are support groups for workaholism in different parts of the world. The workaholics’ international network profess that workaholism is a typical pattern of acquired behavior to do more than it is required within one’s purview of social and health norms. The human resources functionaries must enforce the sufferer with proper edifications to “set your work culture skillfully”. After carrying out research, it is found that at least 8% to12% male and 5% to 8% of female workers are proven to be workaholics. The industry wise statistics derived from various figures from the research are furnished here-below.
Workaholic Pattern End Result
Male Female
IT Sector 12% 8% Burnout, deterioration of health, family squabbles, social stigma, the decay of mental peace at times.
Addition to workaholism
Medical 11% 7%
Financial 10% 6%
Other industries 8% 5%
In the IT industry, people show more tenacity for workaholism at the cost of health and family lives. The medical profession also follows the said problem. In this segment also the eminent doctors, particularly the surgeons perform their duties with a lot of dedication for their patients but again sacrificing their own health and social lives. Financial institutions are another sectors where people burn midnight lamps to complete huge accounting and financial statements to keep pace with the whims and fancies of the volatile market conditions and business dynamics only to invite problem for their health and social lives. People from other industries also resort to workaholism, but by and large, the majority of the victims are from the above types of professions.
In the final analysis, workaholism is a choice of an individual. It can be prevented by making a proper choice at an appropriate time in one’s life. The curing is depended on the fact that inappropriate choice of workaholism can also be reversed. The success map to recover from this creed requires lots of support from spouses, kith and kin and particularly from the expertise of human resources. The only thing, the victim is to believe that the recovery path is not full of potholes. He has only to draw a line between the work schedule and the other social and family-related responsibilities. He has to inculcate the habit to pass on time with his family members gleefully without any inkling of the office assignments. He must learn to celebrate various occasions of festivals with friends and family members. All these things are to be done to distract away from the attention of workaholism.
It is true that work is worship, but workaholism is not an oblation, rather it is detrimental for health and wealth. Some people will not accept, but this is the fact.
