Are you a workaholic?

We offer tips to find a balance between working hard and unwinding.

Being a workaholic puts a huge strain on your personal life and leaves you with no time for your family. “Because you are always focused on work, you are likely to have higher levels of stress than other people who take the time to relax and do other things outside work,” says Bruce Mubayiwa, a LinkedIn coach and professional networking expert. “Sometimes people only focus on their health when they have major scare like a heart attack which can result from high stress levels.”

5 signs that you are a workaholic
Mubayiwa offers the following five signs to look out for:

1. You are always connected
You are always responding to emails on your smartphone. The boundaries between work and play time have become very blurred – to such an extent that you always seem to take work everywhere you go.

2. You never take leave
You generally don’t take a break or any leave from work. You take leave when you are forced to do so, or if there is a personal emergency. If you had a choice, you would never leave work. You can actually count on one hand the number of times you took leave over the last few years.

3. You can’t think of yourself outside of work
It has become very difficult to think of yourself as a person outside work. Your life is dominated by work. You now believe that there is really no time to do anything outside work.

4. Work takes priority over everything else
Work has become the number-one priority. If any potential commitment comes up, one of the first questions to come up in your mind is: “What about work?”

5. You have very few hobbies or interests outside of work
If you have interests, there is a good chance that they are directly related to your job. It’s not really a hobby; it’s just one more way of getting to work outside the office in a different way.

The dangers of being a workaholic
“The sad thing is that your partner and children have come to accept that they will always play second fiddle to your work. There is also a big danger that one day you will resent yourself and the very work that took up so much of your time,” says Mubayiwa.

Tips for balancing family life
• Delegate more. One of the reasons why some people are workaholics is the inability to delegate. As a result, these people have huge workloads. Review the work that you are currently doing.
• Let people know what your priorities are. If you say that you should be out of the office by a certain time every day to pick up your kids, make sure it happens. If you take your own priorities seriously, other people will learn from you.
• Be strict with your diary. Do not accept commitments that encroach on your personal time.
• Switch off your phone. Take time to switch off your gadgets. Let people in your personal life know that they have your full attention.