Overcoming Workaholism

The phrase “takes one to know one” applies here. For decades I’ve struggled with workaholism and didn’t even know it. In fact, I probably glorified it. Today, let’s set a few more of you free like me.

The first thing to recognize is that working hard or doing good work doesn’t equate to the excess that would give you the label of being a workaholic. You have to watch for the tipping point when the dominant thought is work and that work squeezes out other priorities. Allow me to share my own experience to help you.

Growing up in the Midwest, where work ethic is a cultural value of the region, I was indoctrinated to expect this of myself. Additionally, my dad was getting his practice off the ground, which meant long hours and some late nights working from home. It was about the time that I was in middle school that my dad realized he needed to make a change. We had walked past the foyer as he sat in the living room and he remarked to himself, “I don’t know her, I don’t know her, and I don’t know him.” My sister, brother, and I were headed toward some fun activity and in that blur of movement, my dad had an epiphany: something has to change.

He instituted Wednesday Night Out as a date night with each of his kids. We all looked forward to it. One memory I have is going to get roast beef sandwiches from Rex, a fast-food joint that was popular at the time. Sometimes we’d get to go to a movie. Other times it was going to get ice cream. But the best was just one-on-one time with Dad.

So even though I had both a model of workaholism in my dad AND his corrected behavior to create a balance with work and life, overworking was still embedded into me as a kid through my schoolwork because it was modeled for approximately 10 years. Perfectionism ran deep in the family so that only continued once I graduated with my master's and started my professional career.

It became very easy to excuse the long hours. First, the profession of architecture tends to cultivate this in the college education system with studio culture producing long and late nights to get the creative ideas out and executed. Because that bakes in during those four plus two years (undergrad and masters), you just do that in the professional life. By the time I became an intern architect, some of the “old-school” ways of the sweat-shop life in architecture had certainly left, but remnants of the behavior still existed because the leadership at the top would’ve been trained by the black capes of the 50s and 60s.

A wise man recently said to me that there is a compound effect to watch out for. Take strength training as an example. You don’t get muscle definition without consistent and dedicated time to building muscle mass. This takes time because you have to stick with a specific weight until you plateau with it, and then you can increase the weight. The same can apply to becoming a workaholic. The more time invested in staying past 5:00 p.m., working the weekends, or messaging late at night, the harder it is to pull back from the blurred boundaries.

If you’ve had health problems or weight gain due to the lack of a quality diet and exercise, this can be a strong indication that workaholism is prevalent in your life. It was my early 30s and I was having heart issues at the time. I went to the doctor, got referred to a specialist, and did all of the extra tests. As I sat with the doctor, looking forward to getting some answers, essentially I was told everything was fine… you just have too much stress from work.

This was on me not the company. Boundaries are created by the individual. I am not saying there aren’t terrible and toxic workplaces because there are, but in this case, it was up to me to express a need for either more staff and/or process changes to keep things in check.

When I ran my small business, this only became harder to extract myself from a workaholic nature. I was doing extremely purposeful work in my mind and I was enjoying the challenge of making a successful go with small business ownership. But I did look up eventually and realize, I have nearly zero social life. And that’s when I began to make some changes.

Treating work as the most important above God, spouse, and family is wrong.

Treating work as trite, not caring about it, and being slothful is also wrong.

Balance is achievable.

If you are a Christian, and you recognize some of yourself in my story, the first thing to do is to confess it to God and ask Him for forgiveness. (1 John 1:9) And from that point forward, it’s a continual laying down of the idol that has been ‘work.’

Instituting boundaries and actually adhering to them is key. I started to recognize this rise in workaholism again in the last few months because it became my dominant thought. Warning Sign! I also realized my leaders were doing the opposite of me… leaving on time and maintaining their home-life boundaries of not responding to messages after hours. It made me pause and reflect and see how I needed to shift gears for my own sake and to model what they were doing.

Just like any addiction someone has had, it takes daily intentional effort to keep oneself clean. I don’t think we talk enough about this “-ism” in our American culture where work is put on a pedestal. But if sharing my story today helps just one person make a turnaround, I’m thankful.

Godspeed to you in the achievable life-work balance!

Michelle Rademacher is focused on providing insights into the real-world challenges we all face daily. Please follow her on this platform and subscribe to this monthly newsletter to receive wisdom, inspiration, impartation, and practical tips to see success come forth in your life.