Go Appraisal 3: Can Workaholics be Changed and Accomplish More ?

“Nothing you could do could make God love you more than He does right now.” Dr. Lloyd John Ogilvie

TechnoparkToday.com>>  April 8, 2014:  Nath is a very busy Engineer working in a Corporate. He feels frustrated and guilty when he relaxes; doing nothing for several hours.  He finds it difficult to spend time on vacation. He is always in hurry, no matter what he does. He looks at his watch, often fearing he will be late for work. No doubt, Nath is a workaholic.

Doing more work and accomplishing less is referred to as workaholic syndrome. Workaholics are addicted to work, nevertheless they are ineffective. Many studies reveal that workaholics accomplish less. They tend to present their work as blizzard, but fail to accomplish even less than the less driven. Workaholics are simply committed to activity while less driven people are high achievers who are committed to results.

Sajan who works in an ITES company was slightly workaholic earlier. Identifying the high driven nature of Sajan, the CMD guided him to get over his addiction.  Sajan could correct himself at the right time.

Two World famous cardiologists, Meyer Friedman and Ray H. Rosenman, the authors of a very famous book,’ Type A Behaviour and your Heart’, Guide the workaholics to  shift and change their identity away from what they produce. Workaholics do not accept their addiction and tend to knowingly retard their high activity to hide themselves. An honest Self-appraisal is the right remedial measure. As it is a less easy task; their family members, friends and colleagues would be best suited as the honest appraisers. This helps workaholics in assessing by their intimates. As we see in Sajan’s example, his colleagues aided him to recover from work- holism.

Once you are convinced that you are a workaholic, and then the first step is to take a step back and evaluate the situation. Assess your work load; think how you can lessen it. Even though it may seem highly important to you, it is not necessary to take on every single responsibility. Think of delegating the part of work to your Team: co-worker, Assistant or colleague. Help them to understand their part of work and always make a follow-up. You can talk to your boss about your concerns and see if there is a way to break up large projects into smaller, more manageable ones. The Boss will delegate the break-ups to somebody else. You get time for managing your work and for an overall supervision too.

Above all, TRUST your subordinates and team members!  Shed your fear of becoming redundant! If all else fails, bring your work home with you. But instead of letting your work consume you at home, structure your workload so that you set aside a certain period of time to do work-related stuff and schedule fun breaks to play with your kids. Take them to the park for an hour or two.  Nothing can reward more than that of a cute smile on your child’s face!  Learn to reward yourself and your family. In short, enjoy work, balance your time with family & friends, use time effectively on holidays & vacations to relax and celebrate every success part of career and life regularly.