Breaking the Workaholic Habit by Developing Optimal Self-Esteem

As the leaves begin to change colour, fall often brings with it some challenging transitions as employees transition from summer vacation to a higher gear of productivity. A May 2024 IPSOS survey found that 79 per cent of Canadians said they “really need a vacation” and yet only 35 per cent were “very likely to take a vacation.” This data suggests that the workforce is either reluctant to get back on the treadmill or wishing they could get off it and take a well-deserved break.

Rather than getting back on your old familiar bike and working as hard as you can to catch up on tasks put off from the summer, consider raising awareness of the workaholic experience to help disrupt old, potentially undesirable patterns.

Work, work, work, work, work

The term “workaholism” was coined in the early 1970s by a researcher named Wayne E. Oates in his book, Confessions of a Workaholic. Oates describes it as “the compulsion or uncontrollable need to work incessantly.” While there are many reasons behind the need to work incessantly, regardless of one’s motivation, the prevalence of workaholism is remarkable.

In 2023, a group of Norwegian researchers conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to better understand the extent of the phenomenon. Their study included 71,625 participants from 23 countries, and overall, the prevalence of the phenomenon was 14.1%. In Canada, however, a 2007 study by Statistics Canada found that 31% of Canadians considered themselves workaholics. In the United States, a survey of 2,000 American office workers estimated that 58% of employees considered themselves workaholics.

What kind of workaholic are you?

To measure the concept of workaholic, Spence and Robbins proposed the idea of ​​the “workaholic triad,” consisting of work engagement, motivation, and work enjoyment. According to these researchers, these dimensions can be combined to represent three different workaholic profiles:

1. The real workaholics: They are highly engaged and motivated, but unenthusiastic. These workaholics are driven by their own motivation and are invested in their work, but they get little pleasure from it. Some would say that parenting sometimes feels like this.
2. Work enthusiasts:high level of involvement and enjoyment, but low drive. Work enthusiasts are considered highly engaged employees because they are deeply absorbed in their work, feel a sense of importance and pride, and demonstrate a willingness to persevere in the face of work challenges.
3. Disenchanted workers: low involvement and enjoyment, but high motivation, which puts them at risk of burnout. Burnout, a word used so often that it has become rather commonplace, refers to a feeling of mental fatigue resulting from the depletion of energy resources. The most widely used conceptualization of burnout comes from Maslach’s 1993 paper, which describes burnout as the depletion of mental resources, an indifference to one’s work, and a decrease in self-efficacy, or the tendency to evaluate one’s job performance negatively. This can lead to feelings of inadequacy or low self-esteem, which compound the effects of burnout.

Unsurprisingly, workaholism can lead to neglecting other aspects of life that bring joy and has been shown to be associated with higher levels of stress and lower subjective health scores. For employees who work excessively but lack the “positive, fulfilling, work-related mindset” that characterizes work engagement, there are options that can help break out of the all-too-familiar mold of workaholism.

In modern society, work is a large part of our identity, and as a result, our self-esteem is heavily dependent on our performance at work. This idea is reflected in the concept of contingent self-esteem, which leaves our self-esteem precariously balanced between the successes and failures we experience at work. Instead, to decouple your self-esteem from your productivity, you might consider cultivating non-contingent self-esteem, or optimal self-esteem, which refers to the extent to which you like and accept yourself.

Developing optimal self-esteem

Building a more self-determined sense of self-esteem begins with cultivating self-awareness.

1. Become aware of how often you seek approval from others and from whom you seek approval. Observe it, don’t judge it, just notice it.
2. Start being more in tune with your own likes, dislikes, needs and desires, and then fulfill them with the same generosity you would offer to someone you respect.
3. Engage in a practice of self-compassion, which involves relating to your own suffering in a loving, or at least non-judgmental, way.

This season, if you’re feeling like breaking away from the workaholic cycle, consider the wisdom of Brianna Wiest, author of 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think and The Mountain is You: “Everything that is unknown is also uncomfortable, even if it feels good. That’s what makes change so scary. It’s not that we’re actually afraid to try new things or have new experiences or push and challenge the boundaries of our perception, but that we come to prefer a familiar hell to an unfamiliar heaven.”

By consistently developing optimal self-esteem, you will be able to find more space to allow your internal motivation to rest, which may allow you to have a less obligatory relationship with work.