Deadly workaholism: 9 steps to cure an ailment
Working for me is a drug, and a strong drug is supposed to destroy me. At lunchtime, I look through my work email on my smartphone. At night, waking up next to my wife, thinking about sales schedules for the season. Ask me when I last had sex, I won’t remember. What joy does food, drink, children bring? I have no idea. But I can’t live without stress and I’m trying to control everything. I’m dying of fatigue ahead, so I have to save myself. The course of treatment I formulated after talking to the doctors should help. It’s only nine points. Let’s be honest, who has time for, say, 12?
Step 1: Admit that work is killing you
It’s hard, yeah. You know, the bosses are paying us a lot of money, encouraging addiction. And everybody else thinks that being able to work until you fall face to face on a company keyboard is a quality that needs to be envied. Especially if you’re a middle manager. Or a regular magazine editor. You want to get promoted, so you’re gonna work until you have a stroke right during a brand promotion meeting. Is that okay?
Step 2: Imagine that there are more important things in life
I recently realized that I’m missing my kid’s birthday again. Because in the last days of October we have a room to which to make a mountain of everything – just at the end of this month and my son was born. Why the hell are you spending the weekend at the computer again when everyone else is hanging out with the family, going hiking in the woods or just walking? No matter how many millions you make, you can’t buy a second life, and you almost fucked up the first one. Doesn’t mean you have to quit everything and skip the editorial on Tuesday. I’ll tell you what to do: Learn to lead, delegate and upload the work of others. Think strategically, and you grab your coat and leave work early.
Step 3: Accept the fact that you can’t control everything in the world…
We workaholics want everything to be done perfectly. So we’re trying to control everything we can reach. But it’s an endless process: you see the problem, you deal with it, the other one is ready. You’re like a dog that’s hunting for its tail – quite a meaningless picture, if you think about it.
Step 4: Understand that work is a way to block problems
I recently conducted an experiment. He turned off the phone and sat on a bench in the yard. It was the longest two hours in my life. No one tried to figure out the details of the asset deal. No one had to be scribbled for poorly done work. So unnecessary thoughts immediately got into my head: am I doing this? Am I a good father? Well and all that. Honestly, I thought I’d lose my mind. I realized that somewhere deep inside of me I am broken and I use work to patch this gaping hole. Well, psychologists have long noted that workaholism is a way to isolate yourself from what you fear in life. For example, from the inability to communicate with people and build relationships.
Step 5: Find Something Useful That You Can Immerse Into As Work
Someone buys a bike for 100 thousand rubles, puts on a helmet and pedals for six hours, driving from Konkovo to Vykhino – it becomes hardy, like an Olympic champion. Another option is to master all the nuances of building a country house (I used this one) or start helping the children of Africa (but be careful with the latter, I have seen more than once workaholics turning from fixated businessmen into manic philanthropists).
Step 6: Pay attention to the people you forgot about while working …
Play hide and seek with your child, take your wife to a restaurant. And look at your parents – finally talk to your father, he is waiting for the second year to discuss the CSKA staffing pool with you.
Step 7: … but do not think that you will quickly fix everything
An important point: you do not communicate with your loved ones to feel how good you are. You just need to admit your mistakes to them. If you doubt that you can behave correctly, just be silent and stay at home, feel how vile you behaved.
Step 8: Find Something That Enjoys You Like Work
Perhaps this is the most difficult. For example, I have not yet matured. I don’t even know how to approach. But I believe that someday I will see the dawn, which will cause me the same delightful feeling as an article laid out on time and exactly as I originally imagined. I really hope so. Well, right with all my heart.
Step 9: Transfer this treatment to your workaholic friends
This is exactly what I am doing now – I ask you to sit down, take a deep breath and hold your breath. Try to see your future behind the veil of office affairs. Take this first step. But check the mail first. You know, you get paid too much to sit and read a magazine like this all day.
What is paid to workaholics
You can understand how we become robots. You have been raised since childhood that a man must bring money to the house. It is clear that in the end you disappear for days at work. Just thinking about how to step to the next step in the career ladder. But will you die in the end? Here is what awaits you if you continue in the same vein:
1. Heart attack
Men who work 60 hours a week are twice as likely to have a heart attack as those who work 40 hours (source: Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan).
2. Obesity
Harvard Business Review magazine reports: half of the workaholics lack exercise, and 2/3 lack sleep. As a result, you get fatter. It just so happened: people who sleep less eat less too, but still gain more weight than their normal life colleagues.
3. High blood pressure
People working more than 50 hours a week have a 29% higher chance of having high blood pressure, which in turn is a serious threat of death from a stroke (source: University of California, USA).
4. Divorce
Workaholic wives are less attached to their husbands than spouses of those men who are calmer in work (source: University of North Carolina, USA).
5. Difficult children
Workaholic fathers are much more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety (source: University of North Carolina, USA).