Every employee knows that if you want to keep your job and achieve your career goals, you will need to work hard to keep up with your company’s demands. It would be best if you were ready to take on more responsibilities and make sure you are always prepared when you are called to help out.
While working hard is good, some take this to the extreme that everything they think about and do is work. These people are what we call today workaholics.
But, how can you tell if you are taking work too far and could be considered a workaholic?
Here are some signs you can look for as you do your job:
You are uneasy when you are not working
Whether or not you like your job, workaholics would keep doing their tasks because it makes them feel safe and give their life meaning. If you are not working, you feel guilty, uneasy and helpless, as if life doesn’t have meaning anymore.
Work is king, the rest can follow
Do you tend to decline family outings? Put off filing for a paid or sick leave? Do you also work during holidays? If your answer is yes to all of these, then you are a workaholic.
For workaholics, work is king, and they will prioritize it over personal events and even their health. As a result, their priorities are always skewed to put work above their well-being. They also do not take their time to build relationships, whether inside the workplace or not, only preferring to work.
Free time and breaks don’t exist
Since work is king for workaholics, “free time” and “breaks” are not in your vocabulary.
You are always online to help out your coworkers, and you don’t mind going back to work even if you are taking your break. Workaholics also ensure that their actions will lead people to rely on them rather than let others do part of the work. As a result, all their time will be solely used for work and not for anything else.
You deny you are a workaholic
The term “workaholic” is not something people like to be associated with because it sounds like you have an addiction to work and don’t have a life after it.
If you are a workaholic, you deny this vehemently and blame your desire to get a promotion; you have uncooperative coworkers and others. Experts say that if one denies being a workaholic, they don’t want to admit that they have a severe problem they are trying to mask by working nonstop.
You aren’t happy with what you are doing
If you work hard because you love what you do, you are not considered a workaholic. However, you are a workaholic if you are not very happy with your work, but you still exert a lot of effort into it and let it dominate your life. Workaholics tend to use work to prevent negative thoughts from coming forward when they are not working even though their work is not something they like.
If you tick most or all of the signs we listed here, you are most certainly a workaholic. While it is ok to prioritise work if you have a career goal you want to achieve, it is vital that you give yourself time to rest and live your life without putting work as the centre of everything. Even if you reach that goal you want, if you don’t give yourself time to relax and pursue other things, you may not be able to enjoy the spoils you worked so hard from.
Remember, there is life outside work, and it is only a tiny part of you.
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