Workaholism – The respectable addiction

Churchill said, ‘men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened’.

If you have stumbled across the article and hurry off ‘as if nothing has happened’ it will be shame...

What might have started out as an intrinsic enthusiasm to progress a career, to climb the corporate ladder or to build a business can often end up with a person developing perfectionist and obsessional traits.

If these traits become habitual then choosing work over other aspects of life can soon turn into a compulsion to work.

And for those men that progress from a habitual to a compulsive demeanour, they can often find that their continued weighting of work creates significant challenges in their lives, particularly when married, and with children.

Workaholism is seemingly most prevalent in Type A’s; those men that are hyper competitive and obsessively outcome orientated – the same men that undoubtedly go on excel in their corporate companies or build hugely successful businesses.

But workaholics can forget work-life balance because most of their time, they’re instead experiencing the harsh reality of work-life conflict. 

If you curious about workaholism, or think you might be a workaholic, read on…

To remove the ambiguity and uncertainty, let’s get clear, workaholism is defined as a ‘compulsive desire to work’ and a definition of an addiction is ‘compulsive engagement despite adverse consequences’.

The term that stands out, that links these two definitions and that can be used to assess your attitude toward work is ‘compulsion’, for clarity, a compulsion is an irresistible urge to behave in a certain way.

If you have a compulsion, an irresistible and consistent urge to work, then it’s likely that you have progressed from having a passion for your profession to becoming a workaholic (?).

The term workaholic came into existence in 1971 in the book ‘The Confessions of a Workaholic’. A time when many of our fathers generation would have been in the ‘thrusting’ stage of their careers and since then, has gone on to become a somewhat socially respectable and marital-ly, acceptable addiction.

According to the findings of recent survey that covered 2,000 employees across the UK (commissioned by SPANA), it found that:

57 % of those surveyed checked their emails during the weekend, that 40 % feel they cannot switch off after work and that 20% checked their emails whilst in bed.

A sign of our collective attitude toward work is when we ask someone ‘how are you’ and they reply curtly with ‘busy'. This coupled our ease of accessing work through our devices and the convenience of dialling into super-fast broadband means that for many, ‘busyness’ has become a subconscious badge of honour.

And although not openly promoted or praised, still prevalent in many a companies culture is the belief that being first in and last out of the office, and firing emails at obscure times are the key metrics that determine whether someone is a hard worker, or not.

As a society, I cannot help but feel we’re underestimating the seriousness and impact of workaholism in a socioeconomic sense. 

But progressing the conversation around workaholism in an objective manner is a study from the Bergan University, Norway.

The study looked at the choices and decisions people made around work attempted to pin down exactly what lead people to developing a compulsive attitude toward work. The research team studied over 1,100 people and developed the Bergan Work Addiction Scale (BWAS). 

The BWAS is diagnostic test to assess attitudes toward work and consists of 7 yes or no questions; I invite you to give it a go:

1.    Do you think about how you can free up more time to work?

2.    Do you spend much more time working than initially intended?

3.    Do you work in order to reduce feelings of guilt, anxiety, helplessness?

4.    Have you been told by others to cut down on work but you don’t listen?

5.    Do you become stressed if you are prohibited from working?

6.    Do you de-prioritise hobbies, leisure activities or exercise because of work?

7.    Have you worked so much that it has negatively impacted your health?

How did you get on, what are thinking around your choices and your attitude towards work?

I see the BWAS is a useful sense check, however, I also acknowledge that at times it may be necessary to prioritise work; the key differentiator between having a passion for work and being a workaholic is seemingly found in the word 'compulsion'.

Steven Bartlett, millionaire millennial, founder of Social Chain and the host of Europe’s Number 1 Business Podcast with 5M+ downloads, The Dairy of a CEO talks regularly about his ‘compulsion’ to over index work and the adverse impact of this is his life, particularly in terms of his health and in his closest and intimate relationships.

As a gender, Steven included, it appears many modern day professional men have/are aligning their identities to what they do and go on to derive their self-worth from how well they do it.

Take a moment to make this personal, ask yourself:

Who am I without my career..? 

Or, if you're a business owner:

If my business was taken from me, who would I be…?

Take a moment from general malaise or busyness of life to ponder these discomforting questions… Ask yourself them again, and this time, really answer them...

Over the past few years, I’ve worked with a number of 'technically successful' clients that would have never considered themselves to be workaholics, instead they’ve viewed their attitude toward work as demonstrating their desire to fulfil their potential or often, to simply provide for their families. 

But for many of these men, the outcome of their actions, and their tendency to over index work is always the same, they come to me:

Lacking balance, experiencing unhealthy levels of stress, their wellbeing has declined and their relationships have become distant.

Maybe the alarm bells are ringing for you, maybe you have never considered yourself a workaholic, but if you're feeling slightly uncomfortable reading this, perhaps there’s some inconvenient truths to be faced.

The more we converse and normalise the conversations around the difficulties many modern men are experiencing, the more we can collectively reduce the stigma men attach to seeking support or admitting they have an issue with something.

I'll leave you with this, I was once told by a man far wiser than I:

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Yours in becoming better. 

Dan Stanley

Founder of BetterMen