Workaholic学生作业汇总.doc

You Might Be a Workaholic If...
Some Signs You Might Need to Pull Back on Work
By TORY JOHNSON
June 14, 2007 —

It's a frequently asked question: Do we live to work, or work to live?
A growing number of Americans are finding that they live for work, and some of them are popping up at Workaholics Anonymous meetings nationwide.
Unlike people who simply work very hard, which quite frankly is most of us, workaholics never punch out. They always feel like they are on the clock, 24/7, physically, mentally and emotionally working.
They are more genuinely enthusiastic about work than anything else in their lives, even family and friends. There's nothing that person would rather be doing than working.
And we're not just talking about Fortune 500 executives; nurses and construction workers, among others, attend Workaholics Anonymous meetings to try to kick the habit.

What Are the Trouble Signs?
If you're a workaholic, you can't stop thinking about work. Work issues distract you from relationships and those thoughts speed through your mind as you lie in bed at night. A part of you is always longing to get back to work. Nothing — not eating, socializing, sleeping — is as satisfying.
Here's a good way to think of it: An ordinary hard worker will be on the job, thinking about shopping with friends. A workaholic will be out shopping with friends, but will be thinking nonstop about work.
Workaholics are very controlling. They can't delegate and are not usually interested in being team players. They are perfectionists and nothing is ever good enough for them. Workaholics would rather handle everything themselves, which doesn't always produce the necessary results because often we need the input and help of others.
A workaholic also has a troubled personal life. Typically workaholics don't have many friends or hobbies. Their personal relationships are in disarray. They have difficulty with intimacy because work is always on their minds. And of course, there is a ripple effect in the families of workaholics.
Research done by the University of North Carolina found that couples in a workaholic marriage tended to have twice the divorce rate as those who were in nonworkaholic marriages. We know that all marriages take work, but that's not the type of work that a workaholic wants to focus on.
Further, there is the effect on the children. Research has also found that children of workaholics have a higher rate of depression and anxiety mainly because that workaholic parent has placed severely high expectations on his or her kids, which links back to that desire for perfection.
And there are health concerns for workaholics, caused by the extreme levels of stress they suffer. They often eat poorly, don't exercise, and in short, they take poor care of their physical and emotional well being.

Solutions to Kick the Habit
Like any addiction, it's challenging to kick and the person needs a support system to help. First, a workaholic must recognize and admit the problem.
Take this quick personal survey: Ask yourself, on a scale of one to five — five being truly satisfied — how you'd rate your satisfaction and happiness in each of these key areas of your personal life: Your family? Your friendships? Your health? Your hobbies? Your spirituality?
If your total is not 12 or more points, you have to take a hard look at yourself. It's probably time to reconsider your priorities and to replace some of your work time with life time.
On its Web site, Workaholics Anonymous suggests 20 questions to ask yourself to determine whether you may be a workaholic. Among them:
Do you take work with you to bed, on weekends and/or on vacation?
Is work the activity you like to do best and talk about most?
Have your family or friends given up expecting you on time?
Do you get impatient with people who have other priorities besides work?
Have your long hours hurt your family or other relationships?
Do you think about your work while driving, falling asleep or when others are talking?
Answering yes to one or two might not be the sign of an addiction, but a pattern of yes to three or more of these questions might mean it's time to make changes. But of course, with all addiction, making those changes is easier said than done.
Make time to relax. Since workaholics are so detail oriented and focused, they should schedule time off to relax and play. Use this time to find new ways to find happiness and approval and satisfaction outside of work. Look for other benchmarks to measure your overall well-being such as achieving fulfilling personal relationships -- being a terrific, reliable partner, parent, and/or friend -- or even trying a new hobby that offers a complete diversion from work.
Learn to delegate. Recognize that none of us can be successful or productive at work on our own. This is hard for these perfectionists, so they can start small, such as sharing small tasks with co-workers to start whether it's folding shirts in a retail store or managing the office staff. Slowly, the workaholic can see that he or she can begin to let go and still get the job done.

A Workaholic Economy


FOR THE first century or so of the industrial revolution, increased productivity led to decreases in working hours. Employees who had been putting in 12-hour days, six days a week, found their time on the job shrinking to 10 hours daily, then, finally, to eight hours, five days a week. Only a generation ago social planners worried about what people would do with all this new-found free time. In the US, at least, it seems they need not have bothered.

Although the output per hour of work has more than doubled since 1945, leisure seems reserved largely for the unemployed and underemployed. Those who work full-time spend as much time on the job as they did at the end of World War II. In fact, working hours have increased noticeably since 1970 — perhaps because real wages have stagnated since that year. Bookstores now abound with manuals describing how to manage time and cope with stress.

There are several reasons for lost leisure. Since 1979, companies have responded to improvements in the business climate by having employees work overtime rather than by hiring extra personnel, says economist Juliet B. Schor of Harvard University. Indeed, the current economic recovery has gained a certain amount of notoriety for its “jobless” nature: increased production has been almost entirel} decoupled from employment. Some firms are even downsizing as their profits climb. “All things being equal, we’d be better off spreading around the work,’ observes labour economist Ronald G. Ehrenberg of Cornell University.

Yet a host of factors pushes employers to hire fewer workers for more hours and, at the same time, compels workers to spend more time on the job. Most of those incentives involve what Ehrenberg calls the structure of compensation quirks in the way salaries and benefits are organised that make it more profitable to ask 40 employees to labour an extra hour each than to hire one more worker to do the same 40-hour job.

Professional and managerial employees supply the most obvious lesson along these lines. Once people are on salary, their cost to a firm is the same whether they spend 35 hours a week in the office or 70. Diminishing returns may eventually set in as overworked employees lose efficiency or leave for more arable pastures. But in the short run, the employer’s incentive is clear.

Even hourly employees receive benefits –such as pension contributions and medical insurance - that are not tied to the number of hours they work. Therefore, it is more profitable for employers to work their existing employees harder.

For all that employees complain about long hours, they, too, have reasons not to trade money for leisure. “People who work reduced hours pay a huge penalty in career terms,” Schor maintains. “It’s taken as a negative signal’ about their commitment to the firm.’ [Lotte] Bailyn [of Massachusetts Institute of Technology] adds that many corporate managers find it difficult to measure the contribution of their underlings to a firm’s well-being, so they use the number of hours worked as a proxy for output. “Employees know this,” she says, and they adjust their behavior accordingly.

“Although the image of the good worker is the one whose life belongs to the company,” Bailyn says, “it doesn’t fit the facts.’ She cites both quantitative and qualitative studies that show increased productivity for part-time workers: they make better use of the time they have, and they are less likely to succumb to fatigue in stressful jobs. Companies that employ more workers for less time also gain from the resulting redundancy, she asserts. “The extra people can cover the contingencies that you know are going to happen, such as when crises take people away from the workplace.’ Positive experiences with reduced hours have begun to change the more-is-better culture at some companies, Schor reports.

Larger firms, in particular, appear to be more willing to experiment with flexible working arrangements...

It may take even more than changes in the financial and cultural structures of employment for workers successfully to trade increased productivity and money for leisure time, Schor contends. She says the U.S. market for goods has become skewed by the assumption of full-time, two-career households. Automobile makers no longer manufacture cheap models, and developers do not build the tiny bungalows that served the first postwar generation of home buyers. Not even the humblest household object is made without a microprocessor. As Schor notes, the situation is a curious inversion of the “appropriate technology” vision that designers have had for developing countries: U.S. goods are appropriate only for high incomes and long hours.

Paul Walluh

Are You a Workaholic?

There’s a big difference between working hard and being a workaholic.
Working hard involves being organized, focused, getting a lot of work done, knowing when to stop, and having a life other than work. Workaholics, on the other hand, are often disorganized, always find reasons for working more, feel lost without work to do, hide from problems through work, don’t know how or when to relax, bring work home from the office, can’t communicate well with co-workers and family members, and have unbalanced, one-dimensional lives.
Workaholics, like alcoholics, suffer from an addiction, usually defined as compulsive behavior despite negative consequences. They are sometimes pushed into their addiction by their work ethic, by workaholic role models, and by a work system that tacitly encourages workaholism. Despite lip service to the contrary (“a balanced employee is a productive employee”), most employers want their employees to work longer hours, rewarding them with higher pay and better benefits. In many companies, workers unwilling to burn the midnight oil are at risk. Certainly, they put themselves in jeopardy by working normal hours. Americans tend to become trapped in a materialistic work-and-spend cycle that leads them to ratchet up their expectations.
According to some psychology counselors, workaholism can be both good and bad for us. It can fuel a sense of self-esteem and accomplishment. And we get paid for it and praised for it, which produces good feelings we may not be able to get in other parts of our lives.
Workaholism is a problem that has been around since the Stone Age---whenever people have sought to escape other parts of their life through work. Out parents and grandparents worked very hard, but theirs was more of a physical work. Ours has more stress in it, especially in these days of rising competition and downsizing companies. The companies are getting smaller and smaller because of bleak economic conditions and employees fear for their jobs---so they work longer hours. We seem to be more in the fast lane than ever before.
Psychology counselors have noticed three types of workaholics:
• People with high energy that needs discharging.
• Very competitive people who have a strong need to prove themselves and tie their self-esteem to their work.
• People who use work to escape from something, such as grief, frustration or guilt. They keep themselves so busy that they have no time or energy to deal with their real problems.
These three types generally have the same traits. They can’t stand not to be active. They find it hard to go on vacation. They’re more comfortable being with co-workers than with family and friends. They equate self-esteem and success with hard work. They’d rather be at work then elsewhere or doing anything else.
Workaholics commonly view their addiction through denial and rationalization. They deny that the time they’re devoted to work is that much more than what other people are working, and they rationalize that their schedule is for the family and important for being promoted. They also tend to view themselves and their work as indispensable and their working long hours as committed to the company. Of course there is nothing wrong with their commitment, ambition and stamina. But what is wrong is that these things often come in at a high price to their health and the welfare of their families.
As workaholics tend to put all their eggs in one basket---their job, they can be helped by spreading these eggs into several baskets. Psychology counselors, for example, often help these people by asking about their hobbies they enjoyed in the past and don’t have any more now. That kind of question often get them started toward regaining more of a balance in their lives.
To be a healthy person physically and psychologically, one should lead a balanced life, according to some psychology experts. Those little things may seem relatively insignificant---reading mystery novels, playing volleyball, spending time with family and friends, playing with the dog, going fishing. They can be at least as rewarding as work.

Workaholic
Do you know where  the word “workaholic” comes from ? we always use alcoholic to describe people who like drink very much . In modern society, people  always work for a long time ,so we use “workaholic” to describe them .
Once there was a story about a man called Wayne Oates .He was a church counselor and he was busy from morning till night everyday. One day , his five-year-old son wanted to see him ,but his secretary told the boy that his father had no time ,and the boy must make an appointment first before he could see his father ,after this matter ,the counselor felt sorry to his son and the family .so he wrote a book named “confessions of a workaholic” (一个工作病狂的忏悔录).That’s where the word first appeared. And now , we often use the word to describe someone who ignore his family ,care nothing but work.
So ,do you want to know more about a workaholic ? and here are several types of workaholic:
First, workaholics love their work very much , they wor