A workaholic is a compulsive worker, someone who is prone to believing in a destructive illusion that s/he can conquer the challenges of life simply by putting in more time and effort at work. Working hard could be likened to other addictions like gambling in that there is a substance (adrenalin from work) and a process (the actual practice of working). It's estimated that about 30% of people could be classified as workaholics and unsurprisingly those who spend more hours on the job or earn more money are more likely to be workaholics. You might think- so what's the problem? Well the drawback is that people may be literally killing themselves through overwork. In Japan they even have a term for death from overwork- karoshi! Five percent of deaths from cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular disease amongst those of the typical working age range have been attributed to workaholism. There are also several other problems such as the effect of parental overworking on children and overworking has been shown to be related to poorer perceptions of ones spouse and marriage though cause and effect could be an issue here!
The authors argue that for workaholics current work increases the desire (marginal utility) for future work (known as “reinforcement”), lowers the utility from a given amount of working (“tolerance”), and imposes future costs in terms of health, and other, problems. If workaholics either fail to recognize these effects, or do recognize them but have time-inconsistent preferences and imperfect self-control, then government intervention arguably can increase their utility as measured consistently.
This is definitely an interesting and understudied area, though when you come across a paper on workaholism at eleven on a Sunday night you have to wonder is someone trying to tell you something!
WE SHOULD NOT HAVE WORKED ON THIS PAPER
6 comments:
as you might expect, i have problems with theses that are against "workaholism"
(1) Danger that they will drift in to arguments for interfering with people's right to express their creativity through work.
(2) The belief that workaholism is bad for health is certainly not universally supported. There is a bucket of evidence to suggest that achieving a higher social status is potentially good for you health. By working hard you maximise the chance that you end up in a job where you can have control over your time and health.
ironically enough, am too busy to finish this comment but in the rush to venerate work-life balance people shouldn't throw about the baby with the bath water. The world needs people who work manically.
The mantra "we should not have worked on this paper" reminds me of that song "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you". Oh, paradoxology.
Those of us working in research who put the challenges of life at the focus of our work might manage to side-step accusations of working under a destructive illusion but for many who don't find work to be a meaningful creative endeavour the compulsion to work may be maladaptive... All the same I can't see the government paying out much for research on workaholics!
I certainly wouldn't work as hard as I do if I wasn't doing a job Richard Florida claims to be contributing to creative capital (no offence to those doing jobs that don't make such a contribution).
And furthermore, as Michael hints, PhD research in something like Ancient Greek just wouldn't seem as worthwhile spending hours at. Though that of course is not the case for those who love Ancient Greek!
lads, seriously there are loads and loads of people outside of what are traditionally thought of as creative jobs who achieve flow states by working hard. Read czichzentmihalyi (impossible bugger to spell!) and that type of literature. it is absolutely insular to assume that the only people who get this type of buzz are academics. The Flow book describes factory managers, athletes, farmers and pretty much the whole social spectrum. i agree that being compelled to work long hours due to financial need is not going to be good but this is hardly what we think of as workaholism. the literature on burnout would be interesting to look at for a counterpoint to my view.
I'd agree about the flow states and some of the mindfulness literature suggests that mindfulness may enhance wellbeing through its association with enhanced or optimal attention to moment-to moment experiences acting in a similar way to flow activities.
For the sake of it I'd like to do a comparison between the ideas related to flow and those related to psychological momentum which I discussed on the blog recently as feelings of being 'in the zone' might equally reflect psychological momentum or a flow state.
From Markman & Guenther (2007:
"PM experience that is not captured by flow is the notion that a force is exerting an effect on one’s ability to attain desired outcomes. Moreover, momentum can be experienced whether one is intrinsically or extrinsically motivated."
"In turn, because flow is typically experienced during the performance of a single task, it is unclear whether it can accumulate and transfer to the performance of a second task like in PM. Finally, and perhaps most important, the flow concept is meant to describe the phenomenology of personal experience and thus cannot account for how individuals perceive momentum in the behavior of other individuals (e.g. actors, atheletes) or attitude objects (e.g., social and political issues)."
PM has the disadvantage of being easily interrupted as the focus is not on intrinsic motivation and self-control as it is in the flow state. Perhaps a comparison of flow workers vs. psychological momentum based workers and the differences in terms of frustration, need for external stimulation to drive ones work, and then likelihood of burnout (maybe mental toughness would need to be considered also) would be interesting.
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