How to Overcome Work Addiction

In the mind of a workaholic, the life seems only to work, work and work. They have more enthusiasm and strong physical stamina to work late every day. What is the difference between workaholics and hard workers?

Hard workers usually increase their work rhythm of a particular time, such as  during the deadline, preparing presentations and making year-end reports. After that time-period elapsed, the work rhythm is back to normal.

Workaholics have a consistent high work rhythm. Workaholics will feel guilty if they are not working. For each of them a task is critical that must be completed as soon as possible. All the energy and time of workaholics are used for works. Can you see the difference?

Are workaholics also perfectionists? A perfectionist very emphasizes the importance of the work quality, even to things that are very detailed. Workaholics tend to prefer quantity or the large number of works performed. Their work quality is classified as moderate or even below the standard due to lot of works to be completed. As we all know; the human physical endurance has a limit. The fatigue will reduce the concentration and work creativity so that the job performance is declining.

For workaholic employees, they usually have poor relationship with the colleagues. They feel other people are too relaxed so that the colleagues are insisted to follow their rhythm works. The presence of a workaholic in a team work can even be harmful. The big potential conflicts can arise and there will be also the lack of team cooperation. Usually a workaholic will be deported by other members of the team.

There are not only problems in the work place; most likely workaholic's social life can be also disrupted. They don't have enough time to socialize because most of their time is taken to work.

It is very obvious that this addiction should be handled seriously because the negative impact for themselves and their environment. Here are ten 'yes or no' questions to help assess whether your colleague or yourself classified as a workaholic or not.

•    Do you feel always be pursued during the times in the office/ at home?
•    Are you happy with the lot of list of tasks to be completed?
•    Did you begin to forget the birthday date of your spouse, parents, children or friends?
•    Do you hate holidays because you can not work in the office?
•    Do you always bring work to home every day?
•    Are you always on edge with the work unfinished?
•    Do you often require colleagues to work more quickly?
•    Do you rarely or never even take a vacation right?
•    Do you often feel too tired to only speak with your family at home?
•    Do you often call your colleague just to discuss the job while you at home?

You have the tendency of work addicted if you have 5 or more ‘yes' answers. If your colleague or friend is a workaholic, you can help him. The key words are still appreciating his work productivity. But you can tell him that the condition will be far better if he does not sacrifice the quality of work, health, relationships with family and office colleagues.

There are simple tips to overcome your workaholic colleague:

•    Set the standard work procedures and work instructions guide.

•    Help your colleague to prepare a list of tasks based on priorities. Not all tasks must be completed as soon as possible.

•    Remind him always on the priority tasks that have been set.

•    Do not criticize the long work hours. You can criticize the quality of work if it below the standards. Tell him that the quality and quantity of work are the same importance.

•    To pull a workaholic out of his world, try to get your colleague to join in activities outside the office tasks such as workout in fitness sport club after office hours, lunch together, and others.

It is required your patience, but with the right steps, your colleague can usually begin to overcome his work addiction.

What if you are a workaholic? The most important thing is that you have already realized and recognized the symptoms that happened to you. Without any recognition, it is very difficult to overcome this addiction. You must have a strong desire and make the right steps immediately.

Applying these steps below to overcome your work addiction:
•    Try to reduce the work rhythm. Any time you feel tense, talking on yourself, say that you need a little more calm. Take a breath several times slowly until you feel relaxed.

•    Make a priority of the task based on a better level of significance. Do tasks based on priorities.

•    Select each additional task or project offer that you receive. Make assessment of whether a task or project is beneficial for career development or only add the burden of your work.

•    Learning to create a balance between working and not working activities. Choose other activities that can truly make you relaxed.

•    Join and do activities together with people who pay attention and want to help you out of this work addiction.

•    Take a vacation. During the holiday, do not think the task of the office at all. Do new things of interest. Watching movies, reading favorite books, try new foods or to go to places that you want to go. After you complete a holiday, immediately planning what you want to do on the next holiday. You can create a plan for every week end. Making a holiday plan make you wait for something fun, so you do not feel trapped in routine work.

Do all these steps consistently. If you have a strong desire, the good results usually will be able to achieve in just a short term.

A workaholic actually has a positive potential for success in the job. What should be done is to make and direct this potential as well as possible so that it does not become a boomerang for himself.