This is partly due to an ongoing cycle of denial that I am, in fact, a workaholic and partly because I love what I do. If you find a career you love then you will never work a day in your life, right?
Wrong.
The negative impacts of an imbalanced lifestyle can be far-reaching with subtle warning signs that are often difficult to identify. Here are some main ways you can determine if you are working too hard and some easy strategies you can use to achieve a better work-life balance.
The big leagues
Working in corporate finance for a Big Four (one of the four largest international professional services networks) means that the stakes are high, the pace is frenetic and the hours are long. While this is anathema to some, I love my job and enjoy being good at it. This is not to say that I neglect myself: I exercise regularly, eat a clean diet, drink moderately and do not smoke. I like to think I am a fit and healthy 29-year-old.
Which is why it came as a shock when my health suddenly deteriorated.
We want more
Like most people my age, I thrive on a breakneck daily routine. Early morning exercise, a full day of work, after work exercise, and a short break for socialising and dinner before opening the laptop to start on more work.
These days increased work pressure in the form of tight deadlines, high profile projects and understaffing across several industries has led many of us to develop unhealthy lifestyle habits. If a deadline looms, we find extra time to complete a project outside work hours.
For me, working weekends became the norm – an average of 7 hours overtime on Saturday and Sunday. Even then I would still have mountains of work waiting on Monday morning. Waking up tired was common (and to be expected with an average of 5-6 hours sleep per night) but this tiredness usually only lasted until after my first coffee.
Then something changed. Fatigue began lasting past the first coffee until lunch.
Unshakeable exhaustion is a shot across the bow as far as your body is concerned – and it should have been the first major warning sign that I was doing too much.
But, like most driven people my age, I brushed it all off as an anomaly and kept up the pace, using excuses to justify my position.
Promotion season is coming. I’ll just stick it out a little while longer.”
The next warning sign was not so subtle.
A deep ache in my lower back. It initially seemed like a pulled muscle, or byproduct of awful plane seats from regular work travel. After a hot shower failed to ease it, I noticed a raised and inflamed patch (about the size of a fist) on my skin.
With a painful rash spreading in a uniform line around my back, the doctor took 10 seconds to diagnose the cause as shingles.
9 of those 10 seconds comprised surprise and incredulity on the part of my doctor as shingles are most commonly found in people aged over 50. The cause of shingles in younger people is prolonged periods of stress, illness or a where a person has become immunocompromised.
Proof is in the pudding
Even though I love my job and frenetic lifestyle I, quite literally, had overworked my body to the point where my immune system resembled a stressed out 50-year-old. A far cry from the relatively fit and healthy male I thought I was.
The truth is that we all work too hard. Whether this is in a job we hate, for work experience, career development, for a position we genuinely love or any number of justifications we use to prioritise work over other areas of life. The negative emotional, psychological and physiological impacts of working more than living are uniform and immense.
The first step is to admit that you have a problem
In my case, I am addicted to work because I enjoy it. However, as we’ve explored, workaholics come in all shapes and sizes. So long as you feel compelled to continue working beyond normal business hours, you may have a problem.
Ask yourself the following questions to determine if you are headed towards an unhealthy lifestyle:
- Do you consistently work longer than others in a similar role in your workplace?
- Are you the kind of person who has trouble ‘switching off’ after work?
- Are your personal relationships strained? Particularly those with loved ones.
- Do you become stressed if you’re stopped from working in some way?
- Do you plan the rest of your life around work?
- Do you spend more time on tasks than you had originally planned?
- Have you been told by others to ease up on the amount of work you do – and have you ignored them? (Pay special attention to this sign, particularly if it comes from colleagues).
If you answered yes to more than three of the above, you may wish to re-think your current lifestyle choices.
How to reclaim your life
- Start small
If you are constantly working from home, start keeping a journal of how many extra hours you log each day. Then try to reduce this on a weekly basis. No need to go cold-turkey! Slowly ease back on your number of work hours by working one less hour per week and try to increase this steadily.
- Work smart, not hard
If you start to feel less productive as a result of your reduced hours, there are ways that you can optimise your time.
Software such as Rescue Time runs quietly in the background on your computer, delivering a report on which applications you spend your time on and how long you spend on them each day. It even helps you set and achieve goals in terms of your daily work efficiency.
Apps such as 30/30 also help your efficiency by keeping you on a task for a specific period, while Freedom disconnects you from the internet altogether – allowing you to work distraction-free.
- Learn to switch off
Set some work/life boundaries. If you maintain an almost 24/7 connection to work then you may need to disconnect work email from your phone or laptop. If this is hard to achieve then set yourself a goal of not checking email between certain hours or use an app such as EnforcedVacation that will automatically switch your emails off for you.
- Leave when everybody else does
If you are the first person into work and last person to leave, start keeping regular hours like the rest of your colleagues. Set yourself a drop dead time to leave by and do not deviate from it. If you easily lose track of time at the office then set an alarm 20 minutes before you wish to leave on your phone or set a vibrating alert on your wearable fitness tracker or have a friend or colleague send you menacing emails, texts or hover over your desk until you step away from the computer.
- Focus on your passions
Take up some hobbies that you have always wanted to try and spend more time with your family and friends. By incrementally reprioritising where you spend your leisure time, you will eventually get into the habit of passing over extra work hours and learning to switch off.
At the end of the day
The work will always be there but your health will not.
It is important not to feel guilty about taking time for yourself. Give yourself permission to relax and take some time away from the office to recharge. It will serve to strengthen your abilities, creative energy and problem-solving skills so that you will be more productive once you are back in the office.
What strategies do you use to cope with work-related stress? Think we’ve missed anything? Let us know in the comments section below!
Further Information
- To manage fatigue at work visit Safe Work Australia.
- For help achieving a sound work/life balance visit Managing Worklife Balance International.
