It’s a bit exhausting, isn’t it? Coming up with a New Year’s resolution in anticipation of the clock striking midnight. If you need a hand, you can google “Most common New Year’s resolutions” for some lazy inspiration, but that’s kind of, well, blah.
A March column in Forbes tells me that the No 1 resolution at the start of 2023 was … improving one’s mental health. Followed by, sigh, improving fitness, and losing weight. Exhausting. Unfortunately, for me – because I really wanted it to be higher – improving one’s work-life balance came in only eighth of 14 items on the list, ahead of meditating more and, phew, performing better at work.
Y’see, I’m thinking about workaholism. Kiwis work at least a couple more hours a week than the OECD average. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re workaholics – many of us are working more than one (or two or more) jobs just to make ends meet.
Originally meaning “addiction to work, the compulsive and uncontrollable need to work incessantly” and deriving quite deliberately from the term for addiction to alcohol (alcoholism), workaholism has been a “thing” for about half a century. The definition has evolved to include, for example, only those working more than 50 hours a week, or who put in more time and effort than is necessary to do the job.
One typology characterises workaholics as compulsives, perfectionists or “achievement-oriented”. Hmm, fun – you overwork because you feel like you have to, because it needs to be perfect, or because you need to feel like you’re achieving something.
Of course, that may not be your experience. Some people have that inner compulsion to work but genuinely enjoy it, and are committed to their work mission. Enthusiastic workaholics, the research says. But feel for the non-enthusiastic workaholics: just as committed, just as compelled, just miserable.
Pointy heads who theorise about this have been arguing over whether the former group are better thought of as “work-engaged” – it’s the non-enthusiastic worker bees who are the true workaholics. Regardless of whether someone enjoys their work or not, it’s that drive to work that sits at the heart of workaholism.
Where does that come from? One answer comes from workaholics’ answers to the question, “Do you feel guilty when you take time off?” Workaholics work to avoid feeling negative emotions: those that come from feeling like they need to keep working, or because working helps them avoid non-work stressors and emotions.
As someone who resonates with this need, it’s not particularly reassuring to see that this half-century of research points to a particular combo of psychological dispositions associated with workaholism. They include conscientiousness (good) but also narcissism and perfectionism (bad). In this case, the narcissism component is the part that means we add yet another task to our own plate because we don’t trust others to do it as well. Another cluster of motivations relates to autonomy, competence, and relatedness – work fills needs around forging our own path, feeling competent and being with others.
So what do you do? Well, if you enjoy your work in spite of overworking, probably nothing. One thing about psychology is that something isn’t a problem unless it’s a problem. Probably the most effective, or at least well-researched, intervention for workaholism is cognitive behavioural therapy, which tells us something about the solutions: it’s in how we think about work. Must you really work on the weekend? Is it really true that nobody else can do the job? Of course it’s possible that the answers are yes, in which case it might be a work problem, not a you problem. Hire more workers, and train them? Easy to say in a year when boffins are arguing over whether we’ve been in a “technical” recession.
