Psychology (A Field Guide to the Workaholic) Essay

Psychology (A Field Guide to the Workaholic) - Essay Example They are akin to function like this even at the cost of their family, health and a good night's sleep! Any place other than their place of work does not augur well with them. Such wild workers are labeled as 'workaholics' and 'workophiles'. They live in their own wilderness of their work castles. Work becomes their only source of fortitude, security and identity. Their place of solace is work and work alone. Work also helps them escape from the world. Work emerges as a shield for them. There is only one track of life for them. To paraphrase Bible, "Live thy life by the sweat of thy work" - evolves as the most fundamental principle for them. "Workaholics are out of balance" for, as hard worker, they "will be at [their] desk, thinking about the ski slopes.workaholic[s] will be on the ski slopes thinking about [their] desk" (Goodman, 2006). This 'workaholic' pattern is coming up as a potential disease in United States where some institutions tend to work nearly 24 hours a day for seven days a week! Here, primary concerns are efficiency, customer satisfaction, and the wide spread principle and belief that stresses for "time is money". This trend is eating on the nerves of almost every modern United States (US) citizen. About four types of workaholics are there in US today. First, there are those who do their work quite near to perfection. Secondly, those who just remain at work place without doing much of their work. Thirdly, there are those who keep on making careless mistakes for they have not learnt to say "no". They will not stop even for a while. They will just go on doing their work relentlessly. The fourth types are those who are always busy with finding deepest details of their work even if such details are not required. The result is endless surging ahead of diversified individual and social stresses, tensions and uncalled for socially harmful tendencies like recurring personality complexes and likely suicidal possibilities leading to personality imbalances and social disharmony. For Gayle Porter, workaholics quite incapable of institutional team work and leadership. They try to concentrate all work in their hands only. They start considering work as their source of power apparently. They thus become highly emotional and possessive and obsessive about their work. As such, varied crises emerge. The workaholic tries to utilize this situation to his own advantage without much of an achievement and accomplishment levels. Workaholics suffer a lot due to their idiosyncrasies and esoteric whims. Instead of workaholics' obsession, those workers are able to do much better work in terms of quality and quantity who go for normal off days and permissible holidays for relaxation and enjoyment. Any type of obsession does not serve a positive purpose. Normal performance and steady progress of work leads to productive results. Opinion about the Article This article is an analytical piece of work. It serves its purpose of highlighting pejorative effects of obsessive patterns of behavior and working trends. Its emphasis on the need to function in a balanced way is also appropriate. The overall style and tenor of this piece is highly edifying for it warns against work and administrative excesses. This article also points to human questions of