A workaholic refers to someone who works compulsively. They spend most of their waking hours thinking about work or working. Now, this has positive outcomes as such individuals may be high achievers. But there are also downsides to it. Workaholics barely have a life outside work.

If you followed our publication last week, you will know that achieving work-life balance requires equal attention to work and personal relationships.

In her article, A Workaholic’s Guide To Reclaiming Your Life, Malissa Clark defined workaholism and outlined Six strategies for defeating workaholism. According to the author,

“Workaholism is when work dominates your thoughts and your activities, to the detriment of other aspects of your life, including but not limited to your relationships and your health”.........Malissa Clark

Of the six strategies for defeating workaholism proposed by Clark, I will be highlighting the 3 I believe are most important.

✅Redefining “urgent”
✅Learning to say “no” and delegate
✅Embracing rest and recovery

Redefining Urgent

This first strategy caught my attention, perhaps because I am a victim of the “Urgency mentality”. If you feel pressured to get through your to-do list because everything seems so “high priority” or you find it difficult to prioritize your tasks, then you may also be a victim of the “Urgency mentality.”

“Workaholics tend to view everything job-related as urgent,” said Clark, and by failing to prioritize, they end up sacrificing their personal life, subconsciously deprioritizing those activities needed to build a life outside of work. This will tilt the balance in favor of their job but is detrimental to any relationship they might have.

To avoid this, Clark suggests a brute force approach of redefining “Urgent.” Here is how it’s done;

• Review your to-do list, reflect on each task, and rate how urgent or important they seem now compared to when they were written down.
• Ask for help when you find it difficult to review your to-do list. A second opinion may help you see things as they are, not as they seem.
• Keep notes of tasks that were less urgent than you thought and try to identify them in the future.
• If a similar task should arise, force yourself not to make it urgent. You can deprioritize such tasks to do them later or even delegate them.

The challenge lies in making a conscious decision not to give in to the feeling of urgency. You can do so by asking yourself, why is this task “NOT URGENT?” as opposed to asking yourself, why is this task “URGENT”? As a workaholic, the second question will likely trigger scenarios that will give credit to your feeling of urgency.

Learn to Say No to some tasks and delegate them.

If you are a workaholic, delegating tasks to others won't come easy to you. The good news is that you are not alone. A lot of non-workaholics do struggle with delegating tasks, however, this is likely a result of not trusting others to get the job done properly compared to the compulsive desire to work.  

Whether you are a workaholic who enjoys the grind or a non-workaholic who feels no one could do it better, you still need to learn how to delegate. Otherwise, it becomes increasingly challenging to do everything alone. As the business grows,  this will become impossible.

Beating the urge to have an extra long to-do list starts with saying no to certain tasks. This will free up time and and help you focus more on those task that deserves your attention. A good reminder in this situation is the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the tasks.

Focusing on the 20% of the tasks, you do have control over 80% of the outcome.

So, what do you do with the remaining 80% of tasks? Well, delegate them to others. Another helpful trick is the 80% rule of delegation. I am not quite sure who came up with this, but what this principle highlights is that perfection is not the key when it comes to delegating tasks.

So therefore, if you have someone who can do the task 80% as well as you would, then you should delegate the task to them.

Embrace rest and recovery

You may have heard the phrase work hard, play hard or all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. What these two phrases represent is that all things being equal, work and play or in this case, rest, should be balanced.

Too much work and too little rest makes you susceptible to high stress levels, which, according to studies, could lead to physical illness (such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, and weight gain), as well as psychological and mental distress.

Basecamp carried out a workplace experiment on the effect of a three-day weekend on its employees, and the result is just what you would expect. The employees returned on Monday happier and eager to work. That’s not all, they were also more efficient, completing in four days the same amount of work that usually took five days.

What does this prove? Rest improves focus, which also improves productivity. Grinding all day may seem like an effective way to get through your to-do list, but what you may not have considered is that the quality of work you put out reduces the longer you keep working.

This is why intermittent rest between work is highly recommended, as it gives the body time to recover lost energy and refocuses the mind.

Summary

Hard work pays off, but overwork can cause more harm than killing your dreams. You risk missing out on important moments of life or, worse, sacrificing your health. If you feel like work has taken over your life and your time is no longer under your control, then it's time to hit the brake, take a step back, and reassess your life. Taking back control of your time is easy, and it all begins with redefining what is urgent, saying no often, and taking a much needed rest.