This past weekend, after several cancelled attempts due to covid restrictions, my wife Paula and I finally managed to get away for a few days to celebrate our 30th Wedding Anniversary.

Time away from the office provides a good opportunity to step back and self-assess. For me, that always includes giving some thought to the degree that I allow work to control my life.

I recall a period a number of years ago when I was particularly stressed out, overworked, and exhausted. Feeling desperate, I decided to take a survey by Workaholics Anonymous on the rare chance that I might be a workaholic. The result left me in shock. If workaholism was like drug addiction, then I was a hardcore crack addict! A day or two later, I called a family meeting with our then teenage children. Like I said, I was in shock and wanted to break the news to them gently.

But my children’s response was another jolt. My kids essentially said, “Uh yeah Dad, you’re a workaholic. Duh! Tell us something that we don’t already know. This is not news.” Not exactly the sympathy I was looking for.

Over the years which followed, I made many tactical changes that helped put better boundaries on my addiction. The real work, however, was digging deep into my root motivations to see what was driving me. One of those drivers was a deep-seated need to feel productive. For me, some of my perceived value as a person was formed on the basis of whether I felt like I was generating output. I talk about the concept of these deep drivers and where they come from in my book Confidence at the Core.

Another factor was learning to consciously disallow feedback to add fuel to my internal fire. They say workaholism is one of the few addictions in the world which is socially encouraged. Whereas substance abuse addictions generally have a social stigma attached to them, workaholism yields the opposite. Bosses, clients, and even peers appreciate hard work, being responsible, and generating outcomes. So the math ends up being simple. If 1x work gives me a 1x kick, 2x work will give me twice the buzz. And there is rarely anyone standing in the way to tell us this could be unhealthy.

I often say that even the best things in life become dangerous when taken to an extreme. For example, sleep is good. Too much sleep? Laziness. The same can be said for work. Work is a good thing. It provides us with an opportunity to make a difference and leverage our strengths to provide value. But, when work intrudes too far into the margins of our lives, we often compromise other things which are also of value – e.g., family lives, physical health, mental health, spiritual health, and so on.

One of the best principles I have ever seen from Alcoholics Anonymous is the idea that even those sober for many years still introduce themselves as an “alcoholic.” I find that same principle is helpful for me with my workaholism because those tendencies seem to continuously creep in. I have to consciously push back from time to time.

Which brings me back to this past weekend. Keeping the reality of my long-term workaholism in mind, I took some time to step back and think about how I’m spending my time. Frankly, it always seems like a battle, but I was encouraged to see that I’m doing a much better job beating it than I was a decade ago.

How about you? Have you found yourself compromising other things that are important to you in the name of work?

You certainly may not be a workaholic, and I have no desire to project my experience upon you. But, if you wonder, there might be value in taking the Workaholics Anonymous survey to see what you find. Here’s the link if you’re interested.

And even if you’re not a workaholic, if you took stock of the entirety of your priorities, evaluating whether one area consumes a disproportionate amount of your life, what would you discover?