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Home » Business And Finance Articles » How To Beat Work Addiction

How to Beat Work Addiction

Hi!

Why are you so busy? Do you really have too much work? Is work so important to you that you'll sacrifice just about anything in your life to get the job done? Even if it's at the expense of your health and your relationships?

If you find these questions disturbing then see how you rate with these ones:

Do you work more than 50 hours a week?

Do you dream about work?

Do you feel that in order to succeed you must work late most of the time?

Are you a stranger in your own home?

Do you constantly miss family and social events because you're always working?

Do you schedule and undertake more than you can get done in a 40-hour work week?

Do you get bored when you're not working?

Is missing family and social events because of work unavoidable?

When on holiday do you constantly check your phone messages and email?

Your Score

The greater the number of yes answers, the closer you are to fitting the profile of a workaholic. If you've answered yes to more than half of the questions, it's time to take stock before you lose your health, family and everything you hold near and dear to your heart.

Do a Stocktake

First of all take a really good look at your job, what you do and the importance of your accomplishments. Are you appreciated for all those long hours you've put in? Does it really - I mean really - make a difference to your income? Let's face it. In today's economic environment, employees are often nothing more than expendable pawns. No amount of overtime and sacrifice will make a difference when a company has to make cutbacks.

Are You Having Fun?

Secondly, determine if you're having fun at your job, long hours notwithstanding. If you're not having fun and are popping antacids to avoid a stress-related ulcer, then you need to rethink all that hard work you're putting in. Fun must be a high priority in your life and your job should be no exception.

Gary's Story

In one of our coaching sessions, Gary told me he wanted to expand his social circle yet didn't have time because he worked from 7.30 a.m. to 7.00 p.m. most days. He said he'd been doing this for years and that it was 'the norm' in his profession.

As I continued to question him about why it was standard procedure to work these ridiculous hours, he realised that those colleagues who succumbed to this belief were all very unhappy individuals. Most of them were divorced just like he was and had no-one to go home to. They used work as a way to avoid the loneliness.

Gary was divorced because he didn't pay attention to his relationships. When he was married he would arrive home at 7.30 p.m. most nights and his wife wouldn't bother communicating with him. She was busy looking after their two young boys and meeting their needs. At that time of night his wife was putting the kids to bed.

Gary would read them a story if they hadn't already fallen asleep. He was missing out on everything that was important to him.

Unfortunately Gary didn't wake up to himself in time and got caught up with being 'Mr. Important' at work. He paid a heavy price with the divorce which followed.

Bringing Up Kids

In his book "Raising Boys", Stephen Biddulph categorically states: If you routinely work a fifty five or sixty hour week, including travel times, you just won't cut it as a dad.

He says: Your sons will have problems in life and it will be down to you.

The Final Word

If you seriously want to make changes to your life, then take action now. If it's too hard to do by yourself, get coached. If you've been a workaholic it can take awhile to break your old habits and to instill new behaviours. After all you've got everything to gain by working less and everything to lose by continuing the way you are.

Have a great week

Lorraine Pirihi

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

Monitoring Macedonia

Close to 500,000 people - one in four - live under the poverty line in a country where the average monthly salary is less than 150 US dollars. More than one in three members of the workforce are chronically unemployed. With inflation up 5.5% in the last 12 months and taxes - borne disproportionately by the poor and the working class - at 37% of GDP, life is tough in this small, landlocked country. When faced with the choice between raising VAT from 5% to 19% on bare necessities (such as bread and milk), or extending the "temporary" "war" tax (0.5% on all financial transactions) - the finance minister of Macedonia, after an emotional all-night consultation involving the Prime Minister, chose the latter. The "war" tax brought in the equivalent of 2% of GDP (on an annualized basis) since it was introduced in July this year and helped to contain a dangerously soaring budget deficit, now at 9% (and rising) of a shrinking GDP. Yet, the controversial decision to extend it brought on sharp rebukes by local tax experts. The finance ministry also plans to cut expenditures by a further 50 million US dollars.

This gaping hole in public finances is not the result of profligacy. Most of the government's budget is "locked" into paying pensions, state obligations, wages, and other mandatory items. Only 2% are discretionary. The vertiginous 15% of GDP tilt from surplus to deficit is the direct result of the six months of civil war that gripped Macedonia between February and August this year. The damages were direct - in new military spending, increased security expenditures, and about 500,000 US dollars a day used to accommodate and feed c. 80,000 internally displaced citizens, most of them non-Albanian Macedonians. But the war also had indirect consequences. The tax base shrank as GDP collapsed by at least 4-5% and industrial production contracted by 9-10%. The direct damages to the agricultural sector alone are estimated to be c. 100 million US dollars. The textiles sector has suffered even more. At least 17% of the country became physically inaccessible and the panic that gripped the population well into July interrupted tax collection. Tax, customs, and excise revenues, VAT excepted, decreased by 20-40% (!). The government was forced to use some of the proceeds of the sale of the telecom company, Makedonski Telekom, to MATAV.

In an effort to stem the monetary flood and to fend off potential currency speculation (which consumed more than 100 million US dollars of the National Bank's reserves by mid-June) - the central bank was forced to raise interest rates and to absorb excess liquidity. On October 15, one week and two weeks treasury bills (zero coupons) yielded 11% to maturity - and the same bills for 28 days yield 17%, a yield curve which signals distrust in the macroeconomic stability of the country. Eerily, after a brief, speculation driven, spurt, the currency settled to its 4 years old average exchange rate of 31 to the DM and 67 to the US dollar.

In its ten years of independence - mostly due to external shocks such as trade sanctions and wars - Macedonia has developed a chronic case of acute trade deficit, equal to c. 15% of GDP (c. half a billion US dollars annually). Luckily for it, unilateral transfers - remittances by expatriates, international aid and grants, international credits, and growing, though small, foreign direct investment - served to ameliorate the problem. The World Bank alone has invested more than 550 million US dollars in Macedonia since 1991. But a sharp collapse in exports (by c. 20%), coupled with increased foreign exchange expenditures on weaponry, and the drying up of Albanian remittances (at least through official channels) - have exacerbated the financing gap that Macedonia faces from a projected zero to more than 100 million US dollars in 2001.

The Macedonian side has a vested interest in exaggerating both the damages of the civil war and its financing needs. Macedonia, to its great detriment, has long been addicted to foreign aid. Nor does it seem to have any coherent plan to cope with the crisis - ad hoc, stopgap, measures notwithstanding. The IMF was forced to place Macedonia under "Staff Monitoring" - the equivalent of freezing of all credit arrangements with the fund for a period of 6 months. This, though, does not prevent Macedonia from reverting to a standby arrangement down the road, or from participating in a donor conference.

Actually, Macedonia has received more financing and pledges for financing during the first 9 months of 2001 than during the comparable period last year. Spain has promised to finance the "Lera" hydroelectric power station. Italy has granted Macedonia 4 million US dollars in "urgent financial aid". The EU has earmarked 198 million euro to remedy war damages. The EU CARDS program (project financing) was signed (43 million euro). The World Bank added 37 million US dollars to 3 new projects since March 2001and has disbursed 15 million to projects already approved. And this is a partial list.

Yet, the majority of these funds - whether approved or pledged - are conditioned upon the fulfillment of the August 13th Ohrid Framework Agreement between the Macedonian and the Albanian political parties. The EU has made it abundantly clear that its financial assistance will be withheld if what it calls "Macedonian intransigence" continues. A donor conference, already postponed three times, had to be put off yet again indefinitely (though the World Bank expresses unfounded optimism regarding a date sometime in December). Such a conference is supposed to tackle Macedonia's balance of payments needs and the costs of reconstruction and implementation of the Framework Agreement. With each postponement, Macedonian disappointment and xenophobia grow. The West is seen widely as interested mainly to assist the Albanians at the expense of all other segments of the population. The euphoria that gripped Macedonia after the September 11 attacks on the USA ("now they will understand what it means to confront terrorism") - has evaporated. It was replaced by grim realism. The USA and the EU are bent on securing a pacified Macedonia. The IMF and the World Bank are subject to political considerations, constraints, and arm twisting. The economy is fast deteriorating. Macedonia has very few choices.