09 Oct 5 Signs You are a Workaholic

In some circles people view workaholism as a positive. You get a lot done. You are very committed and determined. Team members can rely on you to perform and be accessible. But being a hard worker is not the same as being a workaholic. Hard workers put in time because they believe that’s what’s necessary but would much rather have more down time. Workaholics get satisfaction out of living, breathing, eating and (not) sleeping work. They simply can’t stop themselves from continuing to work – hence the word being tied to addiction.

What’s the downside? As I laid out in my book, The Entrepreneur’s Growth Startup Handbook (John Wiley & Sons, 2013), aside from the many marriages and personal lives lost to workaholism, it can lead to less focus, less efficiency, less productivity and even health problems. In the book I talk about tips for reducing your workaholic tendencies such as time shifting, delegating and the like with the goal of actually increasing your likelihood of success in business or entrepreneurship. Here we focus on the five key signs you might be a workaholic:

1. Clock? What clock? You would actually rather be working at 1:00 am than in your bed asleep. Even when work is not that busy you find low-priority projects or take your existing work to even more depth.

2. Delegate? Ha. You must check and recheck everything your employees do because you simply cannot trust they will do things right, even if that takes all night. You take on many projects that could be delegated because you think no one can do them better than you can.

3. What are my kids names again? If you take an hour off to play with your kids, your mind immediately wanders back to the various work obligations you have and you find your interaction with your children stressful and difficult. Your spouse offers to treat for a night at a local hotel and you laugh out loud unable to even imagine that much time away from work.

4. Crackberry-itis. You would not be able to take the challenge of only answering emails and texts once per hour during the business day, even for just one week.

5. Calendar? What calendar? You always work Saturdays because you don’t even realize that Saturday is part of the weekend.

Even if you have these tendencies, there are strategies to battle this challenging addiction, which we will cover in more detail in a future post.