Are you a workaholic?

Many times during your career, you may find that you need to spend some late nights at the office finishing a project or catching up on work. Working overtime to help catch up on things be a great help to balance your workload, but how much is too much? What happens when you can’t remember the last time you were home in time for dinner, let alone in time for the 11:00 news?

If you find that you are working excessively (12 or more hour days during the week and weekends) and that your dinners usually consist of what ever is left over in the vending machine, chances are that you are a workaholic.

Oddly enough, working more than just 40 hours per week can be an indication of workaholism, according to Workaholics Anonymous (WA). In addition, WA says that letting your personal relationships suffer as a result of long working hours, taking your work home with you, and fearing that a lack of hard work will get you fired are three more indicators of workaholic behavior.

Experts on the concept of workaholism are quick to differentiate between loving one’s job and being a hard worker and being a hard core workaholic. Employees who have strong work ethics and workaholics are not necessarily the same, as a workaholic is someone who cannot achieve an acceptable and healthy work/life balance and believes that all tasks are important at work at all times.

And with technology making it possible for constant and consistent communication with the office and enabling employees to work from home, the risk of workaholism has recently become even greater. Despite these advances in technology that are designed to help strike a balance between one’s work and personal life, the opposite seems to be gathering steam. People need to learn to make room for other things in their lives besides work, like developing family and social relationships.

Being a workaholic is also completely unrelated to how an individual feels about their job and is completely related to their behavior. In fact two of the major indicators of workaholic behavior are spending time thinking of ways to do one’s job better and getting involved in others’ business.

Workaholism is also unrelated to how people feel about their jobs. According to Pete Mudrack, assistant professor of management at Kansas State University, workaholism is an unhealthy dependence on work that can damage a person’s relationships, personal life, and even health— just like many other addictions.

Thought the notion sounds counterintuitive, workaholic behavior can also be a destructive element in the workplace. When employees cannot seem to find an acceptable and healthy balance to their personal and professional lives, it is unlikely that they will be able to effectively manage tasks and activities at work. By throwing the majority of their focused efforts behind finishing a project, workaholics lose focus on such detrimental areas as strategizing, prioritizing, and coming up with more creative solutions. The reality is that being a workaholic does much more harm than good.

Like other addicts, the first step for workaholics is admitting that they have a problem. But it is much more difficult for them the battle their addiction to work, because workaholics cannot be recover simply by quitting their job. Most workaholics, like everyone else who works, don’t have the luxury of quitting their jobs to focus on overcoming their habit.

Fortunately, recovery groups such as WA offer support and counseling for people who want to help either themselves or their loved ones balance their personal and work lives. WA even offers a 12-step recovery program (modeled after the Alcoholics Anonymous program), regional group meetings and a seasonal online newsletter for continued support.

If you feel that you or a loved one may be a workaholic, take some time and take this twenty question quiz at Workaholics Anonymous that will help you make the first step to recovery.