Being busy most of the time can provide enjoyable stimulus in otherwise dull and boring work — or become as addictive as any drug.

Duane Hanson’s sculpture “Drug Addict” (1974)
Wikimedia Commons

It’s fashionable to take one of two attitudes to the uncivilized work demands common today. The proponents of the “there is no alternative” approach say it’s entirely due to global market pressures. Any company, or nation, that doesn’t throw everything into competing to cut costs and drive up profits won’t survive.

The second attitude acknowledges that it’s all about driving profits higher, but fastens the reason for this, not on competitors, but on corporate and executive greed and the actions of remote financial speculators.

Both explanations share one common factor: they locate the causes ‘out there.’ That may be comforting, but I suspect it isn’t true.

If people were being forced into overwork entirely against their will, you would expect to see many more instances of rebellion against the system. You don’t, I believe, because the constant busyness and pressure feed a human need: the need for stimulus and excitement.

Competitive pressures and executive greed both play a part, I expect, but neither could survive long if people simply refused to go along with excessive workplace pressure. What I observe is rather different: people who seem to glorify their stresses and almost revel in working unsocial hours. How can it make sense?

Busyness equates to importance and excitement

Read through these descriptions. How many of them would fit you?

1. I rarely get to take all my vacation. When I do, it takes me most of it to stop worrying what’s going on back at work.
2. I feel best when I’m busy. I get anxious if I don’t have lots to do and deadlines to meet.
3. Making the numbers is what business is all about. You don’t do that, you’re not worth your pay. Hitting my targets proves my worth to the organization.
4. It doesn’t bother me to take work home most evenings and weekends. It’s part of being a true professional.
5. I feel anxious if I’m out of touch with my people.That’s why I always have my cellphone on and check my emails any time I have a spare moment.
6. The only way I can get any of my own work done is by going in early or leaving late. For the rest of the time, other people claim all my attention. That’s the price for being a major player in the business.
7. The people who work for me don’t seem to have much initiative. I have to keep pointing them in the right direction. I guess that’s what I’m paid for: to keep them up to the mark.
8. I am always in meetings. It irritates me, but you have to stay in the loop or decisions are made without your input. If you don’t play the political game, you’re nobody around here.
9. Travel is part of the job. In my case, it’s a major part. I’m probably away more than I’m home. People need to see my face and know who they’re dealing with.
10. We’re all rushed off our feet. I can’t delegate more. There’s no one able to do what I do — or do it as well as me. I don’t say I’m indispensable, but it’s close.
11. I’m always on the lookout for ways to get ahead and climb the ladder. Ambition is what having a career is all about. If I’m constantly in demand, I know I’m on the right track.

If you said “yes” to most, you’re probably seriously addicted to the stimulus and excitement that comes from being a workaholic. Any number more than half is still indicative of relying for your sense of self-worth more on how busy you are than what it is you’re busy doing.

In time, it becomes an addiction

Speed, constant busyness, and pressure are genuinely addictive. They set off brain chemicals that make you feel alert and alive and give you a short-term high. They also appear to prove your importance to the organization, and that plays into another pressing need — security. Indeed, some organizations seem to cultivate a sense of continual insecurity in order to ‘motivate’ people to go all out. That’s why there is so much emphasis given to measurements of performance. The implied threat that, if you don’t reach whatever target is set, you’ll be let go is a very common way for an organization to push its employees into long periods of unpaid work every week.

Then there’s the ‘gossip factor.’ People who invest much of their feelings of self-worth in the amount of pressure they are under and the long hours they must work aren’t going to entertain the thought that it may all be for nothing; that they are the patsies and someone higher up is making a fortune from their gullibility. So they boast about what they do and tell everyone who will listen that it’s the only way to survive and prosper. If this view is questioned, they respond quite angrily, dismissing the questioner as naïve and ‘a loser.’ In time, what began as bravado becomes accepted wisdom.

Like all addictions, you need more and more to recapture that original ‘high’

Today’s leaders operate on overdrive the whole time. If the pressure drops, they feel anxious. The high is gone. Quick! Grab some more pressure! Get another high. Restore what’s come to feel normal. If the pressure starts to flag, crank it up somehow.

Of course, much of the pressure is real. Organizations have become as addicted to constant pressure as any wannabe-CEO. It’s everywhere in the culture, accepted as normal and inevitable — even though it’s often neither. Macho management is based entirely on the myth that next year’s pressure is bound to be greater than this year’s and is proof of progress.

So, if you can’t simply turn it off and you aren’t imagining it, what can you do?

How to cure an addiction to constant busyness and overwork

• To start with, you don’t have to make it worse. “Taking it” isn’t a badge of honor. It’s more likely a sign that you’ve lost your sense of proportion. Stop sleeping with the enemy. Don’t add to the pressure by inviting it in.
• Consider why you’ve come to act the way you do. Have you simply believed what others told you? Have you accepted it as normal without questioning if that’s true? Have you started to go to work to play the ambition game, rather than make a valuable contribution through your skill and ability? Reflection may show you how you’ve slipped into attitudes that no longer support a healthy lifestyle and strong relationships.
• Think about where you look for feelings of self-worth. Is it what you do (the work itself is valuable); or what you earn (you must be valuable because you get paid so much); or how busy you are (only a truly valuable person would be so over-worked)? Money is a rather poor measure of real value, since criminals often get more of it than honest people. Busyness isn’t any better, since slaves are likely to be the busiest people of all. Only the intrinsic value of what you do — how you apply your talents and energy for something beyond your own benefit — shows any real measure of worth.
• Consider whether the life you are living is what you want for yourself and those who depend on you. The effects of an addictive attachment to work go well beyond you as an individual. Few people, if any, can choose such a demanding lifestyle without forcing it equally on those around them.

Breaking any addiction is tough. ‘Cold turkey’ is painful and frightening. You’ll maybe need help and support. But it’s going to be worth it. There’s no chance whatever of breaking the cycle of seeking more stimulus through additional pressure and workaholic responses until you do.

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