How to Avoid Making Work Your Life

Work is the primary method of making a living. It’s how we make money to pay for our necessities. Still, no one should have to work to excess. When work becomes your lifestyle, what you think about first when you wake up in the morning, you have become a workaholic. It’s time to re-evaluate your standard of existence.

Here are a few signs that you need to stop making work your life. There is a time every day for a workaholic to go home. There are ways for a workaholic to re-connect with life, friends and family.

You are always tired. Getting out of bed is slow. You feel slugish. When everything is quiet, you find yourself nodding off to sleep. By Wednesday, nothing you read or write at work makes sense. You can’t think straight because you are fatigued, thoroughly exhausted.

You pride yourself as a hard worker. Still, there is a difference between working hard and creating good results. When you wake up at 11:00 pm, still at your work desk; that is not a power nap. Do you really think you are producing quality work at that time of night?

You need to accept that when you are excessively tired, it’s time to call it a day for work. Put down the extra cup of coffee or energy drink, and go home.

Your health has gone bad. It's not what it used to be. You catch colds more often, and not just during allergy season. Your weight has changed significantly. Your stomach is constantly in knots from eating bad or fast food all the time.

Your joints and muscles ache all the time, especially your back and shoulders. You have headaches when that was never a problem. You think it’s just old age catching up with you.

These are signs that you are working your body too much. You’re not giving it a chance to recuperate. We sleep to rest our brains. Our body needs time to recuperate every day.

Sleep and moderate exercise are ways to heal the stresses and strains of the day. You treat your computer better than yourself. You need to decrease your work hours. Cut down the 60-80 hour work weeks, and see if your health improves.

You fear being layed off due to corporate downsizing. So, you work extra hours to stay on top of your work load. You work to keep up with unrealistic deadlines, or are afraid of being demoted or transferred. You need to go home and figure out how to change your work load situation.

Evaluate your work habits. What changes can you make to work smarter instead of harder? Take a class or seminar to get the information you need to be a success. Working to excess can only be so successful if you are working out of fear of losing a job.

Communicate with your supervisor. Ask if he or she can suggest more productive ways for you to accomplish your tasks. Asking for advice is appreciated by a supervisor. What will eventually fail you is working six days a week, 16 hours a day.

Workaholics are Obsessive. One of Benjamin Franklin Rules of Management states, “Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its time.” When you see work everywhere you go, even at the beach, you have lost the capacity to put work in its proper place. Your ability to be rational and reasonable about rest, time, and place is off-line.

When your friends and family no longer include you in their activities, they are leaving you alone with your work obsession. They assume you will not take the time off to participate, so they eventually exclude you from their lives. You need to re-capture, create and respect family and friend time.

The Best Reason to Go Home is when you decide there is no reason to go home. Work has become your best friend and comfort. You are most happy when you are at work. You have convinced yourself that it doesn’t matter whether you go home or not. You live alone; or, you have a spouse you don't care to see. When you are home, your children seem to have their own life that no longer includes you.

If you are working to avoid a home that has no more meaning to you, you are living a compulsive and obsessive life. Work has replaced what should be a well balanced life. It is now your crutch, your safety net. You are in desperate need of perspective.

If your life is crumbling with friends and close ones because of the time you spend at work, you need a plan. What can or should you change? If you died tomorrow, your boss, your family and friends will mourn your loss. Then they will quickly learn to go on without you. In fact, your boss will hire or promote your replacement within a week of your death.

What are the best ways to avoid making work your life? Rest, reflect, react, respond, and change. Like you do at work, prepare an outline of changed behavior to shift your existence as a person, not a work drone, back into balance. It will take awhile. In the end, you will be happier with your quality of life. Everyone around you will be happier, too.