Are You A Workaholic?

<...To be safe, make sure you relax this weekend!...>

Why not every weekend?

A workaholic might not recognise the concept of a weekend...

So being industrious and hard working now is a mental illness?

I think you are mixing terms.

I think you can be industrious and hard working without being a workaholic.

I've had positions in the past that demanded much of my time and energy and caused many sleepless nights. I didn't have to look for excuses to work, it was a start-up and we burnt through $10 million get our first product to market.

when I first out of college, we were working over time, were we could easily gauge the quality of work as to hours worked per week.

We never worked a 40hours, so no base line.

But the quality really began to drop after a 48 hour week. 49 hour week was useless, a lot of rework and screw-ups on the drawings. but the company still wanted us to come in, because the time was billable to the government.

And as kids fresh out of college with student loans debt, we jumped at it.

Start ups are always very time intensive, especially if you are the one putting up some of the $$. You want to ensure that your money is spent in the correct places or on the correct items to maximize the possibility of success. The best way to conserve the cash in start ups is to do the work yourself. One just has to know when to let go of the start up mentality. It took me about 10 years to let go, but I finally did, after hiring and training some very competent people.

I'm sure that everyone thought I was a workaholic as I was in every day of the week and weekend. But in the 70 -80 hours a week I was in, I had my "therapy" - maintenance - nothing better than a feeling of accomplishment.

Things are different now. I have managed a good work/home life balance.

Apparently so. If you are not making money (home shed) while doing this working instead of watching mindless garbage on TV, does that count as working also, if so, then I am a true blue workaholic. I had to quit drinking beer a long time ago, so working is about all I have left I enjoy, or at least stay concentrated on in my frustrated efforts.

Here's my check list from 12 years ago.

• You think of how you can free up more time to work.At times I could actually feel the time dripping away

• You spend much more time working than initially intended.I always felt it was me being inefficient, until I talked to another Manager, I was just short of help. And the true reason it was taking more time, is because of change orders, and upper management never would incorporate the change to reflect in the schedule.

• You work in order to reduce feelings of guilt, anxiety, helplessness or depression.I never knew this, but I always had anxiety... in reflection, at times, it was the only thing I may have, so I used it as a motivational tool. Doing so is self consuming.
  Never been depressed until after my health issues. People who knew me then and now, always felt I was a happy decent guy, but Quiet, but I always had a serious look or demeanor.
  

• You have been told by others to cut down on work without listening to them.My dad told me that, I just didn't think he understood. Fortunately, I had good friends, that actually pulled me away from work for extracurricular. I had a problem about letting people down.
  

• You become stressed if you are prohibited from working.Never liked loose ends, I always needed to resolve them
  

• You deprioritize hobbies, leisure activities, and/or exercise because of your work.Yep, just push myself a little longer, if one of my friends depended on me to help them out by filling in Basketball, Lacrosse or volley ball. I'd figure right to the minute to leave work and show up in time to play.
  

• You work so much that it has negatively influenced your health.Most Definitely.

This is difficult, because, I actually enjoyed my work.
In all, I always enjoyed my work, I actually thought the challenge was enjoyable, maybe not at the time, but looking back as to how I accomplished it.
And now, I really enjoy a more balance lifestyle, actually vacation (taking 2 weeks off starting Friday) with no real consequences

I scored a zero.

That's the first step is admitting your a Zero. :-P

Admitting it? Heck, I have strived for it for years and quite often defy others to prove me wrong!

Yes, that the attitude, because the up side is the only direction you can go is up.

I like to think of it as being the first in a long line of generations of workaholics who has beat the disease and not just beat but beat it hard!

It takes a hard determination to stay this way though being I know that if I try to accomplish one thing today I will feel that it's okay to accomplish two things tomorrow and , well heck, since I could handle two things a day maybe I can handle three accomplishments in a week or two and before you know it I have a normal 40+ hour a week job and am looking for overtime and it's back on the work wagon like the generations before me.

No thanks! It's too risky so I am going to stay in bed where I know I am safe from work addition.

Ha! It's not at all unusual when I work in bed. I do everything on my laptop, both work and play.

Actually that's not true. Just today I spent almost 6 hours working in the yard.

a virtual yard, or the one outside?

Very definitely a real one! I've got just over a half acre, but just above me are several tens of acres of brush & trees, and another half acre of brush & trees on the opposite side, so I'm always working to reduce the fire danger. Fortunately, we got slightly above normal rainfall this year (not so, farther south), but of course that means a good crop of weeds to be removed and composted.

brush & trees

sounds like my girlfriends garden last year.

We went on vacation to Washington DC at the time we normally weed her flower garden. When we returned, we never really did catch up.

This year, we just leaving on our vacation tomorrow, and made sure the garden is taken care of (mostly) before wee leave.

Embrace the laziness, it is the mother of all technological advances.

That is because you are tired. I meant to say a tire burner. Think of the tiremanity!

Only if I need to be. I could answer yes to a number of those questions when the workload gets very high.

The missus will complain when I spend too many hours at work.

However, once the workload drops back to normal, then it's no. Besides, they pay me straight-time for any overtime, so I don't usually complain about extra work as long as it doesn't become the routine.

I'm a Restoholic...

I actually love my job and the work associated with it. We are capped at 60hrs per week, I usually do 55 which is my normal work week. The only problem is that because of having so much responsibility it erodes at my effectiveness. When I leave here I am the guy in the family that fixes everything, your phone, your laptop, your washing machine, the house wiring etc. I have to say that I love it! My skills are my gift and I share my gift with many. I'm not stressed out and find the time to spend with family and friends. I know that I have somewhat of an addictive nature but feel it's being channeled appropriately. I also listen to the Mrs when she tells me I need a break lol

Anybody here read Infinite Jest? Whenever somebody starts talking about addiction it always pops up in my brain.

"Charles Tavis knows what James Incandenza could not have cared about less: the key to the successful administration of a top-level junior tennis academy lies in cultivating a kind of reverse-Buddhism, a state of Total Worry."

I found myself in a state of Total Worry a couple years ago and have worked hard to get away from it. When you start thinking you are indispensable, maybe it is time to dispense for a while.

It seems to me that a good Engineer is the opposite of a workaholic, since the whole POINT of engineering is 'directed laziness:' getting the most result for the least effort. If you have to do the same thing over and over, then design a machine to do that work for you, so you can spend your time and energy on something more important, like relaxing, or designing a machine to do that OTHER repetitive task for you, this freeing up even MORE time.

I have always felt a good engineer is a lazy one.... in other words, if there's a better, faster, easier way, a good engineer will find it.

Even though this may be true, the demand of a good engineer is great.

Of course, because the fruits of that laziness goes beyond the Engineer himself, to the workers who have had their jobs made easier by the new machine/procedure. That increases Productivity, which improves the income/wage ratio.

I don't know about that, There were times, I develop programs that took the tedious responsibility from the operator (a job that nobody wanted) and to the computer program.

One program cut 4 hours job to about 5 minutes. My so called supervisor now took the responsibility of this leg of work. And charged to 4 billable hours.

He'd start the program, and took a 4 hour break. so for 3 hours and 55 minutes his terminal was standing idle.

A lot of people came to me and asked if I could develop a program to do the remaining 5 minutes, so we could send him out the door.

I did actually came close, but because all the time was billable to the government, The company told me its not good for the company kept this guy. I moved on.

Billable to the government! That's where our taxes go. I, for one, would like to pay a little less in taxes.

Let's re-engineer the government.

Yes, By first starting over with a declaration of independence?

I think most would agree, but, the only real way I see that can be done is by becoming an (elected or appointed) part of it. And ♫ ♫ when you become that part of it, it's a down hill slide☻

Having worked on military contracts in the ship yard... on a 14 hull Minesweeper contract, there should be a 15th hull floating somewhere. And that's the lean one.

Interesting. I started saying that I was 'creatively lazy' a long time ago, to describe just that attitude.

Over ten years ago, I realized I was a workaholic. 80 hour work weeks were the norm and when it got busy I'd be at the office for 90 - 95 hours. The cleaning people would kick me out of my office and I found a conference room in the back where I could finish up my paperwork. I actually stashed supplies in the credenza in the conf. room!

For years, friends told me that I had to stop and that life was too short. I didn't listen and I just kept going. Soon, I stopped going on bike rides (very therapeutic). Very bad!

As I think back on it, I realize that I was raised to succeed and be the best I could - nothing less was acceptable. So, when I became an adult, I just kept pushing and pushing and pushing. I didn't get sick or have health issues, so I'm happy about that. I do realize that a big chunk of my life was spent on work - the question is was it worth it?

So now, I mosey into my home office around 9:00 am and I keep busy, but I don't kill myself. I do notice that I find ways to keep busy, even though my main business doesn't take as much of my time (maybe 40 hours a week now). I have the rentals, I play the market, I volunteer in my community and I sit on a couple boards. It's closer to 60 hours a week for everything and my life is a lot more balanced. I also realize that I enjoy working and being productive. I see nothing wrong with that.