I'm a workaholic. Or at the very least I have an addictive tendency towards work. It's not something that's new to me, I generally have an additive personality. I easily get sucked into things and struggle to put limits on things. Whether it's alcohol, games, or even wikipedia rabbit-holes, I tend to go further than I wanted and then regret it afterwards.
With work having become the defining feature in people’s life, it's never been easier to be a workaholic. Add into this the advent or remote working and you really never have to put down work anymore. It's possible to pick up at any moment. The walls that used to separate work and personal life have nearly completely disappeared.
Now I don't want to give the impression that I’m unhappy working excessive overtime on a consistent basis, it satisfies my addiction so I feel good doing so. But it does indicate a toxic culture and harmful environment that this is something work-addiction is such an easy hole to fall into. It’s particularly pernicious as explicitly no manager would force their workers to do overtime, but implicitly there are many pressures that lead to people to becoming workaholics.
The real problem with work-addiction is the benefits it provides. There’s a lot of pressure work nowadays. We need to get results and finish our projects in time, especially if you want that promotion you need good results. Or if you take ownership of your work or just don’t want to let down your coworkers. There’s also constant pressure to promise results in less time than would realistically be required. These factors make it almost natural to start making more hours, to be able to keep up with the ever growing wave of work. Slowing breaking you, threatening to drown you.
This is a constant and relentless problem that threatens to crush anyone that doesn’t keep swimming against the current, but it’s also the future of work. I don’t think things will change any time soon.
The effects of this are deeply harmful on a personal level. We neglect our personal lives because we simply have no energy at the end of the day. Even our weekends are wasted due to being exhausted. Slowly losing focus of our hobbies makes it harder and harder to get started again. The barrier to start just keeps growing.
Once this happens, we don’t have have anything to energize us anymore, and it becomes easier to work more. We can still feel useful and productive by doing more work, and at least that is somewhat fulfilling.
For what? When we are dead, no one will care what reports or analyses we did. We have wasted our life. We are forgotten and our time is lost in the corporate mist. You can try as hard as you can, but promotions aren’t merit-based anyway. Your network is what brings you financial stability, not your achievements, not your sweat.
Why be a workaholic?