Excuse Me While I Live A Little
| Category: Personal Development For Marketeers | Date: 2002-08-01 |
Sub-title: “The Curse Of Work-a-holism and How To Overcome It”
Excuse my digression from my regular writing of marketing articles and let me apply my psychology degree to a matter at hand that many people tend to forget. . That is that we were not meant to work all of our waking hours. Please excuse the length of the article, as there is much to be said about the subject matter.
Back in the late 1960’s the rock group The Byrds came out with a song called Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season). It’s lyrics came at a time when the world was undergoing the turmoil of the Vietnam War and reminded people that what was going on at the time was just a part of the evolution of time passing by and that the war to would pass in its time. The lyrics of the song are based on the Bible Verse taken from Ecclesiastes 3:1-9: The words taken from the Bible in one translation are as follows:
1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. 9 What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?
Do any of the following situations remind you of yourself?
1 Lately, your job has taken up much of your time.
2 Youve even started bringing work at home and you keep working until the wee hours of the morning.
3 You spend Saturdays and Sundays with your head bent on your work.
4 And youre supposed to spend these days with your family, or friends, or for your relaxation!
5 No longer do you work in order to live, but you now live in order to work.
6 Work is now the center of your daily life, while the more important things have been relegated to the trunk of your car; or in the backseat, if things are still not that worse.
7 The only time you dont think of work is during the three or four hours a day that you spend sleeping.
8 You devote 16 hours of your day each day to working furiously: making money, reaching goals, working on giving your families the best, planning and mobilizing yourself for success.
If you have a combination of more than three of these situations occurring in your life it is most likely that you’ve become a workaholic.
Yes, there is a time to work, but there must also be a balance. There must be a time to relax. What can cause another wise seemingly sane person to become a workaholic? It is like alcoholism a disease in many ways.
If someone’s home life is unhappy they might rather than spend time going to a bar after work hours instead spend time after regular work hours doing more than necessary just to avoid going home for the evening. They may take work home with them and seclude themselves from their spouse or other family members with the excuse that the work has to be finished. This can become a pattern, since it is a way of avoiding situations that are not easily dealt with by the “work-a-holic”. Money problems, can lead to a person becoming obsessed with working. Once it starts, the
work-a-holic personality feels as if they must continue to work or things will not get finished. The workaholic likes to shoulder the weight of the world. But this can lead to
stress.
Stress is different things to different people. To a mountaineer it is the challenge of pushing physical resources to the limit by striving to achieve a demanding goal. To the homeward bound motorist it can be the hassles of heavy traffic and obnoxious exhaust fumes. To the student it can be exam pressure.
Take a piece of paper and write the word stress at the top. Now write down all the words and images that come to your mind as you think about this word.
Most people respond to the word stress in negative ways. They see it as a destructive, debilitating force. Negative stress is DISTRESS. It is the stress of losing, failing, overworking and not coping. Distress affects people in a negative often, harmful manner. We all experience distress from time to time. It is a normal, unavoidable part of living.
To often those who become the obsessed workaholic go on and on until they experience the defeat at the end of the road often known as BURNOUT
Too much stress leads to burnout, a condition called BURNOUT, which is characterized by emotional and physical exhaustion.
The main symptoms associated with burnout are:
Chronic fatigue.
Anger at those making demands on you.
Self-criticism for putting up with the demands.
Cynicism, negativism and irritability.
A sense of being besieged.
Hair-trigger display of emotions.
A combination of all of these symptoms indicates that stress of working more than you should is wearing you down and that it is now time to take strong stand to do something about it.
Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day is an expression used a lot as an excuse of not getting a project finished. “Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day”, has been used as an excuse by people who don’t complete their tasks. It has also used by those trying to console those who have not finished a task or are trying to hard to complete a project in a certain amount of time. If you are of the Christian faith then you hopefully
subscribe to the creation story of God creating the Universe and the earth in 6 days. In Genesis 2:1-3 it is written “1: hus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2: And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done. 3: So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation.”
We are not as mighty as God and yet according to this Biblical text even God rested after working. Who are we to put ourselves above God and not take a break from our work? We don’t want to work ourselves into the condition of “burnout” so what can we do to overcome the obsessive-compulsive habits of workaholism?
Here are some tips to help overcome being a workaholic:
EIGHT HOURS OF SLEEP! Make it a point to get at least eight hours of sleep and plenty of rest. While food has substitutes in the form of natural medicines or artificial
foods, there are no substitutes for sleep and rest. Dont believe that you can always "catch some sleep or rest later." Your body cannot make up for lost sleep or rest time because it is not physiologically possible. I used to work the overnight shift and sometimes didn’t sleep well the next day. Sometimes it wouldn’t affect me that night however it would always play turmoil two nights later after sleeping much of the prior day.
STRICTLY FAMILY ON WEEKENDS! Resolve to make Saturdays and Sundays strictly for family time. If you are single and don’t have a family locally make plans to spend this time with close friends. And stick to this
MAKE SURE THAT YOU EAT! Proper nutrition is essential to avoid BURNOUT. Make sure you get food in your stomach. Workaholics are known to be food-skippers. If you cant afford to get off your desk or from doing paperwork, have
food delivered to you. Its always a good to have sugar free or sugar low snacks in your desk drawer to use when you need a quick pick me up.
CONFINE WORK to your office. Dont bring your work home (unless you work at home and then you can’t avoid this). Keep those files in your office desk where they belong. If you work from home, keep your work in the confines of your home office. Keep them there until the next day when you start work. Work only within your working hours and environment. Set a working schedule and STICK TO IT!!!
EXERCISE! You must plan the time to exercise. You body needs to be conditioned, and working non-stop unless you have a very physical job isn’t the answer. Since most workaholics tend to have their behinds stuck on their chairs, its even more important that you get some exercise.
PLAN YOUR DAY AND YOUR WORK. Work on only one or two things at a time. Write down the projects that need to be worked on immediately or are urgent, keeping the least ones at the bottom of your list. After youve done this, be guided by
this list. Turning this activity into a habit will also help you manage your time better, be more organized, and accomplish more.
WORK TO LIVE! Always keep in mind that you work so you can live and have a comfortable life. Always remember that you dont live to work. Working is just one of the many useful and fruitful activities you do that enables you to live a good life and give your family (or any of your dependents) their needs. Dont make work your life.
If after trying to follow the suggestions given here in this article you still find yourself prone to be obsessive compulsive about your work then maybe it is time to look for
help from outside sources. Possibly your city has a Workaholics Anonymous organization. Much like Alcoholics Anonymous they utilize a 12 Step Recovery Program to help deal with the obsessive-compulsive tendencies of the workaholic.
I don’t know about you but I for one enjoy relaxing, so now that I’m finished working on this article, please excuse me while I live a little!!!
About the author.
Keith P. Stieneke is a professional network marketer and Internet marketing consultant with experience in psychology, professional writing and network marketing. His Internet endeavors can be witnessed at opportunityassistance.com and at the positive and
motivational literary site
http://www.inthespiritofthebuffalo.com. You can subscribe to his newsletter Opportunity Assistance Online by sending a blank email to:
OpportunityAssistanceOnline@infogeneratorpro.com
webmaster@opportunityassistance.com
http://www.opportunityassistance.com
Excuse my digression from my regular writing of marketing articles and let me apply my psychology degree to a matter at hand that many people tend to forget. . That is that we were not meant to work all of our waking hours. Please excuse the length of the article, as there is much to be said about the subject matter.
Back in the late 1960’s the rock group The Byrds came out with a song called Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is A Season). It’s lyrics came at a time when the world was undergoing the turmoil of the Vietnam War and reminded people that what was going on at the time was just a part of the evolution of time passing by and that the war to would pass in its time. The lyrics of the song are based on the Bible Verse taken from Ecclesiastes 3:1-9: The words taken from the Bible in one translation are as follows:
1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. 9 What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?
Do any of the following situations remind you of yourself?
1 Lately, your job has taken up much of your time.
2 Youve even started bringing work at home and you keep working until the wee hours of the morning.
3 You spend Saturdays and Sundays with your head bent on your work.
4 And youre supposed to spend these days with your family, or friends, or for your relaxation!
5 No longer do you work in order to live, but you now live in order to work.
6 Work is now the center of your daily life, while the more important things have been relegated to the trunk of your car; or in the backseat, if things are still not that worse.
7 The only time you dont think of work is during the three or four hours a day that you spend sleeping.
8 You devote 16 hours of your day each day to working furiously: making money, reaching goals, working on giving your families the best, planning and mobilizing yourself for success.
If you have a combination of more than three of these situations occurring in your life it is most likely that you’ve become a workaholic.
Yes, there is a time to work, but there must also be a balance. There must be a time to relax. What can cause another wise seemingly sane person to become a workaholic? It is like alcoholism a disease in many ways.
If someone’s home life is unhappy they might rather than spend time going to a bar after work hours instead spend time after regular work hours doing more than necessary just to avoid going home for the evening. They may take work home with them and seclude themselves from their spouse or other family members with the excuse that the work has to be finished. This can become a pattern, since it is a way of avoiding situations that are not easily dealt with by the “work-a-holic”. Money problems, can lead to a person becoming obsessed with working. Once it starts, the
work-a-holic personality feels as if they must continue to work or things will not get finished. The workaholic likes to shoulder the weight of the world. But this can lead to
stress.
Stress is different things to different people. To a mountaineer it is the challenge of pushing physical resources to the limit by striving to achieve a demanding goal. To the homeward bound motorist it can be the hassles of heavy traffic and obnoxious exhaust fumes. To the student it can be exam pressure.
Take a piece of paper and write the word stress at the top. Now write down all the words and images that come to your mind as you think about this word.
Most people respond to the word stress in negative ways. They see it as a destructive, debilitating force. Negative stress is DISTRESS. It is the stress of losing, failing, overworking and not coping. Distress affects people in a negative often, harmful manner. We all experience distress from time to time. It is a normal, unavoidable part of living.
To often those who become the obsessed workaholic go on and on until they experience the defeat at the end of the road often known as BURNOUT
Too much stress leads to burnout, a condition called BURNOUT, which is characterized by emotional and physical exhaustion.
The main symptoms associated with burnout are:
Chronic fatigue.
Anger at those making demands on you.
Self-criticism for putting up with the demands.
Cynicism, negativism and irritability.
A sense of being besieged.
Hair-trigger display of emotions.
A combination of all of these symptoms indicates that stress of working more than you should is wearing you down and that it is now time to take strong stand to do something about it.
Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day is an expression used a lot as an excuse of not getting a project finished. “Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day”, has been used as an excuse by people who don’t complete their tasks. It has also used by those trying to console those who have not finished a task or are trying to hard to complete a project in a certain amount of time. If you are of the Christian faith then you hopefully
subscribe to the creation story of God creating the Universe and the earth in 6 days. In Genesis 2:1-3 it is written “1: hus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2: And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done. 3: So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation.”
We are not as mighty as God and yet according to this Biblical text even God rested after working. Who are we to put ourselves above God and not take a break from our work? We don’t want to work ourselves into the condition of “burnout” so what can we do to overcome the obsessive-compulsive habits of workaholism?
Here are some tips to help overcome being a workaholic:
EIGHT HOURS OF SLEEP! Make it a point to get at least eight hours of sleep and plenty of rest. While food has substitutes in the form of natural medicines or artificial
foods, there are no substitutes for sleep and rest. Dont believe that you can always "catch some sleep or rest later." Your body cannot make up for lost sleep or rest time because it is not physiologically possible. I used to work the overnight shift and sometimes didn’t sleep well the next day. Sometimes it wouldn’t affect me that night however it would always play turmoil two nights later after sleeping much of the prior day.
STRICTLY FAMILY ON WEEKENDS! Resolve to make Saturdays and Sundays strictly for family time. If you are single and don’t have a family locally make plans to spend this time with close friends. And stick to this
MAKE SURE THAT YOU EAT! Proper nutrition is essential to avoid BURNOUT. Make sure you get food in your stomach. Workaholics are known to be food-skippers. If you cant afford to get off your desk or from doing paperwork, have
food delivered to you. Its always a good to have sugar free or sugar low snacks in your desk drawer to use when you need a quick pick me up.
CONFINE WORK to your office. Dont bring your work home (unless you work at home and then you can’t avoid this). Keep those files in your office desk where they belong. If you work from home, keep your work in the confines of your home office. Keep them there until the next day when you start work. Work only within your working hours and environment. Set a working schedule and STICK TO IT!!!
EXERCISE! You must plan the time to exercise. You body needs to be conditioned, and working non-stop unless you have a very physical job isn’t the answer. Since most workaholics tend to have their behinds stuck on their chairs, its even more important that you get some exercise.
PLAN YOUR DAY AND YOUR WORK. Work on only one or two things at a time. Write down the projects that need to be worked on immediately or are urgent, keeping the least ones at the bottom of your list. After youve done this, be guided by
this list. Turning this activity into a habit will also help you manage your time better, be more organized, and accomplish more.
WORK TO LIVE! Always keep in mind that you work so you can live and have a comfortable life. Always remember that you dont live to work. Working is just one of the many useful and fruitful activities you do that enables you to live a good life and give your family (or any of your dependents) their needs. Dont make work your life.
If after trying to follow the suggestions given here in this article you still find yourself prone to be obsessive compulsive about your work then maybe it is time to look for
help from outside sources. Possibly your city has a Workaholics Anonymous organization. Much like Alcoholics Anonymous they utilize a 12 Step Recovery Program to help deal with the obsessive-compulsive tendencies of the workaholic.
I don’t know about you but I for one enjoy relaxing, so now that I’m finished working on this article, please excuse me while I live a little!!!
About the author.
Keith P. Stieneke is a professional network marketer and Internet marketing consultant with experience in psychology, professional writing and network marketing. His Internet endeavors can be witnessed at opportunityassistance.com and at the positive and
motivational literary site
http://www.inthespiritofthebuffalo.com. You can subscribe to his newsletter Opportunity Assistance Online by sending a blank email to:
OpportunityAssistanceOnline@infogeneratorpro.com
webmaster@opportunityassistance.com
http://www.opportunityassistance.com
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