Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Driven vs Workaholic

Yeah i know this sounds overtly dramatic but i stumbled on this website http://www.workaholics-anonymous.org which i thought was great. It gave some indications of how you can know if you are a workaholic. Excerpts include:


We operate out of the mini-crisis mode, using this as an escape from experiencing our true emotions.

We have an obsessive desire to understand everything in our lives, including our every emotion. We cannot allow ourselves to experience emotions that we do not understand, fearing our loss of control.

We judge ourselves by our accomplishments and hence have the illusion that we must always be in the process of accomplishing something worthwhile in order to feel good about ourselves.

Instead of being a haven, our home is an extension of our workplace. Our family and friends often arrange their time with us around our work, vainly hoping we will finish it and then can be with them.

We tend to be over-serious and responsible. All activity must be purposeful. We find it hard to relax and just be; we feel guilty and restless when not working. Because we often work at our play, we rarely experience re-creation and renewal. We neglect our sense of humor and rarely enjoy the healing power of laughter.

Waiting is hard for us. We are more interested in results than process, in quantity than quality. Our impatience often distorts our work by not allowing it proper timing.



I singled out these particular ones cos i think they relate to me. But can someone be driven and not be a workaholic. Is being a goal-oriented person such a bad thing? Any thoughts on this would be great.

I take the general point that i just need to relax and know how to shutdown. I suppose the question is do you "live to work" or "work to live"?

Hmmmmm.

Anyhow folks easy

3 comments:

Gbolade Shoyemi said...

Yes you can be driven and not be a workaholic...A driven person, strives for excellence in all things...the emphasis is on "all". a driven person plays excellently, works excellently, sleeps excellently etc. Work is just a minute part of our lives, we shouldn't make it bigger than it really is...

aloted said...

well said gbolade, well said.

@Garageboy, funny, I never saw u as a workacholic per say. hmm

Anonymous said...

Garage boy i like your blogspot i am so happy that at least you and TOLTED have been able to come out and share ur Xtian faith , this is really encouraging tanks for been urself
God bless you
and keep learning at HIs feet