As we move toward the holiday break, this is an ideal moment to pause and reflect on our habits as high performers. Many of us pride ourselves on being dedicated, dependable, and deeply committed to our students and organizations. But that commitment can also make it difficult to step away, especially for those of us who are workaholics. And for the record, workaholism is much more than simply working long hours. It occurs when work begins to dominate our thoughts and our activities, often at the expense of our relationships, our health, and our overall well-being.
Therefore, in this issue of Howe’s Now Monthly, we turn to an insightful Harvard Business Review article, “A Workaholic’s Guide to Reclaiming Your Life,” by Malissa Clark. The article explores what workaholism really looks like and offers practical strategies to help break the cycle.
As you prepare for the holidays, I invite you to give yourself permission to take a real break — and to explore the tools that can help each of us lead with greater balance, clarity, and sustainability.
How do we define a workaholic?
A workaholic is not someone who simply works a lot of hours. In fact, there’s only a weak correlation between the number of hours worked and workaholism. Instead, the term refers to a deleterious inability to disconnect from your job. When work dominates your thoughts and your activities, to the detriment of other aspects of your life, relationships, and health, you are displaying workaholic tendencies. Workaholism is detrimental to both people who may experience it and the organizations they work for.
Are you a workaholic?
To help determine whether you might be a workaholic, read each statement and rate the degree to which each one describes you, using the following scale: 1 = never true; 2 = seldom true; 3 = sometimes true; 4 = often true; 5 = always true.
- I work because there is a part inside of me that feels compelled to work.
- It is difficult for me to stop thinking about work when I stop working.
- I feel upset if I have to miss a day of work for any reason.
- I tend to work beyond my job’s requirements.
Add up your total score across these four items. If your total score is 15 or above, you are displaying significant signs of workaholism. Even if your score is below that, if you rated any of these items a 4 or a 5, you have some workaholic tendencies.
How do you manage workaholism?
If you display workaholic tendencies and want to change, we have good news: It’s possible to loosen your workaholic tendencies and thrive both on the job and in the rest of your life, without having to choose between the two. We’ll focus on five strategies:
- Redefining “urgent”
- Reinventing the to-do list
- Learning to say “no” and delegate
- Fixing the workaholic clock
- Embracing rest and recovery
Redefine urgent
Workaholics tend to view everything job-related as high-priority. There’s no better way to create a perpetual mini-crisis than to assign everything as urgent. The problem is this means we put ourselves and our bodies in a constant fight-or-flight state, which significantly increases our stress. Therefore, we must redefine “urgent.”
Here’s one technique to help. Look at a list of things that were on your to-do list, say, a month ago, and think about how important they seem now, in retrospect. You may realize that what was driving the urgency around some tasks wasn’t their actual importance but rather your workaholic reflex to treat any unfinished work as acutely needing to be completed (and perfectly!). But looking back, you may note that the task didn’t matter all that much or didn’t need to be completed perfectly in that time frame.
Reinvent your to-do list.
Once you’ve started to redefine “urgent,” it may be time to take a closer look at your relationship to your to-do list entirely. That’s because, for the workaholic, a to-do list becomes an invitation to overwork. You can break this pattern, however, by reinventing your to-do list and its purpose. One way to do this is by using the Eisenhower Matrix. Start by taking your to-do list, which is probably a linear set of bullet points or numbered items, and placing all the items on the matrix.
For the workaholic, almost everything will end up in the top right quadrant at first. Everything is urgent and important! But if you can force yourself to map with some self-reflection and honesty — and overcome those feelings that all work is all-important — you can start to let go of some tasks.
Learn to say no and delegate.
Workaholics tend to be poor delegators. Their drive to always have work to do means they’d rather take it on themselves than give it to someone else.
Overcoming this predisposition takes practice. Here’s one method. Before saying yes to any task, pre-determine three decisions. For example:
- Who to help? Family first, students second, colleagues third, everyone else fourth.
- When to help? At designated times that don’t interfere with my goals.
- How to help? In areas where I have a unique contribution to make.
Then, when your calendar and your Eisenhower Matrix are full, you can give yourself permission to delegate the task or simply say no.
Fix the workaholic clock.
Workaholics tend to underestimate how long it will take to do something. As a result, they overcommit to doing too many things in too short a time.
To reset the workaholic clock, you must first acknowledge that your clock is off and then gauge how far off it is. So, for the next week, before you start any task, write down the amount of time you think it will take, and afterward compare that to how long it actually takes. Take a data-driven approach by starting a timer before you begin your task. Do this for multiple tasks in order to identify the pattern between your estimated and actual times of completion. Then figure out how much longer than anticipated things take you, on average.
By knowing how much time to allocate toward each task, you’ll be able to prioritize and organize each one according to the time needed. Done regularly, this exercise works to relieve intimidation and anxiety around time management.
Embrace rest and recovery.
Our bodies are not physically able to remain in constant fight-or-flight mode. Part of a healthy stress response is the eventual calming down of our regulatory systems, which allows us to return to homeostasis. Research definitively shows that when we rest and engage in recovery activities, we have better well-being, particularly when we have a lot on our plates. Here are four ways you can adopt rest and recovery as a way to combat your workaholic tendencies.
- Psychological detachment: This is a full mental disconnect from work.
- Physical activity: We all know that medical research has shown the positive effects of exercise on our mood and physical health, but it can help us rest and recover from work, too.
- Relaxation: Meditation or other relaxation exercises, such as yoga, lower your sympathetic nervous system activation, which brings your heart rate down, helps you breathe more deeply, and relaxes your muscles.
- Mastery experiences: This involves engaging in non-work-related activities that challenge you to learn and grow.
Remember, this stuff takes work, and we’re all a work in progress. But the work pays off and can get your to a healthier, happier place.