<story><title>Workaholism leads to health problems, work addiction risk depends on occupation</title><url>https://www.hse.ru/en/news/research/433782660.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>honkycat</author><text>Most of the time I&amp;#x27;ve seen it, it is avoidance of the rest of their life. &amp;quot;Change diapers? Oh, sorry honey, I uhh... gotta do this thing at work. Darn it!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;One phenomenon I&amp;#x27;ve always noticed about workaholics is that they THINK they are being more productive, but often times they are just spending more time spinning their wheels. Also the effect it has on their mood&amp;#x2F;interpersonal skills, and the pressure it puts on the rest of the team cancels it out. Seriously, one rude comment in the morning can throw a developer off for the rest of the day, it&amp;#x27;s not worth it.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Man what&amp;#x27;s up with frank today?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh he was pulling an all-nighter doing a non-urgent task.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Did anybody ask him to?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No. In fact we asked him to stop.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I consider independent study, side-projects, reading a good book, smoking some dope, cooking a good meal with my partner, getting enough sleep, relaxing, and exercising(!!!!) part of my job. I don&amp;#x27;t care what kind of mutant you THINK you are, you will perform better if you go to bed and get a full nights rest and clean your brain out. It is just science.&lt;p&gt;Finally, while it is true that &amp;quot;work more = better review at work&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s just... not worth it. If your job is your whole life and you are not making +200k: GET A LIFE. You have better things to do with your time than make some other man money. Work is a &amp;quot;safe place.&amp;quot; Time goes in, money comes out. But that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean it is a healthy way to spend all of your time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>justathrowa</author><text>&amp;gt;But that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean it is a healthy way to spend all of your time.&lt;p&gt;Dunno about that.&lt;p&gt;Just a personal anecdote, but this year my boss specifically told me to work less, slashing my salary down by $10,000 a year to emphasize the point. Prior to this, 200 to 240 hours a month was pretty typical and has been for the last 8 years. (I doubt it&amp;#x27;s out of real concern for my health, my workload hasn&amp;#x27;t been reduced).&lt;p&gt;What I&amp;#x27;ve found was that in the times of idleness though I&amp;#x27;ve thought more and more about suicide. The Christmas holidays were some of the first I&amp;#x27;ve had to have an entire week to myself and I spent most of it was spent testing methods for speed, logistics, and discomfort, as well as scouting suitable locations; somewhere that would force an EMS &amp;#x2F; police arrival on site by 10 minutes or so. Updated my will and managed to work out the logistics of transferring all my assets to to remaining family quickly when I finally make the decision to kill myself.&lt;p&gt;Never in my life has it gotten this far before; never really had time to seriously think about until now. I&amp;#x27;d imagine that most people though would probably be more fine with a miserably but living workaholic, then a corpse dead of suicide.&lt;p&gt;As such, could you really say that is working long hours such is really unhealthy? Or such a terrible thing?</text></comment>
<story><title>Workaholism leads to health problems, work addiction risk depends on occupation</title><url>https://www.hse.ru/en/news/research/433782660.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>honkycat</author><text>Most of the time I&amp;#x27;ve seen it, it is avoidance of the rest of their life. &amp;quot;Change diapers? Oh, sorry honey, I uhh... gotta do this thing at work. Darn it!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;One phenomenon I&amp;#x27;ve always noticed about workaholics is that they THINK they are being more productive, but often times they are just spending more time spinning their wheels. Also the effect it has on their mood&amp;#x2F;interpersonal skills, and the pressure it puts on the rest of the team cancels it out. Seriously, one rude comment in the morning can throw a developer off for the rest of the day, it&amp;#x27;s not worth it.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Man what&amp;#x27;s up with frank today?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Oh he was pulling an all-nighter doing a non-urgent task.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Did anybody ask him to?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No. In fact we asked him to stop.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I consider independent study, side-projects, reading a good book, smoking some dope, cooking a good meal with my partner, getting enough sleep, relaxing, and exercising(!!!!) part of my job. I don&amp;#x27;t care what kind of mutant you THINK you are, you will perform better if you go to bed and get a full nights rest and clean your brain out. It is just science.&lt;p&gt;Finally, while it is true that &amp;quot;work more = better review at work&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s just... not worth it. If your job is your whole life and you are not making +200k: GET A LIFE. You have better things to do with your time than make some other man money. Work is a &amp;quot;safe place.&amp;quot; Time goes in, money comes out. But that doesn&amp;#x27;t mean it is a healthy way to spend all of your time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aerosmile</author><text>I found it interesting that you put a price tag on it. Also, $200k is about $150k more than most people make, but if you look at just the workaholic population and isolate for industries such as finance and law, many people in that group are going to be within the shooting range of that threshold. And there you have it - even within your own framework, it becomes understandable why we have so many workaholics.&lt;p&gt;My point is - the moment you put a price tag on your work-life balance, it becomes very difficult to escape the rat race. You really have to be quite militant about it or otherwise it won&amp;#x27;t work.</text></comment>