It is unbelievable but true that that the first definition of a workaholic is to be found in Bhaja Govindam of Adi Shankara, whose date of birth is variously given as 509 BC, 44 BC and 788AD (the last being taken as the most reliable). He describes him as an unmitigated fool who does not understand that the various positions he may hold and their associated trappings are but the grease and paint he wears for performing on life's stage for a brief while for filling his stomach.
How ridiculous it will be if an actor playing Rama, fools himself into thinking that he is none other than the hero of Ramayana and does not realise that at the end of the show he has to wash off the grease and paint and get back home. How silly of even a potentate, were he to delude himself into thinking that ‘the boast of heraldry, the pomp of power' will be ever lasting?
That was why, the Roman emperors, in their heyday, for all their follies on other counts, had the sense of realism to appoint a herald who would march ahead of the imperial procession crying, “Memento mori” (Remember, you must die) by way of reminding them that “paths of glory lead but to the grave”!
Workaholics too imagine that but for them the whole organisation would collapse and it is their blood, toil, tears and sweat that is keeping Doomsday at bay.
Tell-tale signs
At the mundane level, workaholics wear some tell-tale signs on their sleeve: They feel jittery to be at home and secure only when they are in office, reaching there first and leaving last, or not leaving at all! If, pestered by their spouses and children, they are forced to leave office, they carry work home, and keep at it till the wee hours of the morning, oblivious to their surroundings, their obligations as spouses or parents and the havoc they cause to their personal relationships.
They seldom take time off for social functions and shun vacations for fear that heavens will fall in their absence. They neglect their families, and their children rarely have their company or guidance. They let their health too go downhill in the bargain.
For all the torture they inflict on themselves and their families, do workaholics fare better in their jobs or achieve more?
Do they climb faster in the career ladder, or make a spectacular dash to the winning post, finishing first in whatever they undertake?
Try as I might, I could not lay hands on any empirical research done on whether workaholism really leads to better job performance of higher quality and whether workaholics have shown themselves capable of achievements more impressive than those of persons of equal competence and calibre who manage to apply themselves seriously to their assigned responsibilities within normal working conditions.
All I have is a paper published in May 2010 which says that workaholics have a tendency to make projects larger and more complex than necessary and suffer from perfectionism, rigidity and inflexibility, with the potential of creating conflicts and difficulties for their co-workers, thus impairing performance.
Impressionistically, though, based on my own nearly 60 years of observation in a variety of settings in India and abroad, I have not found workaholics, for that reason alone, necessarily making it to the top of the heap ahead of time or ahead of their peers, or achieving laurels that are out of the ordinary.
On the contrary, they come to realise at the fag end of their lives how much of love, friendship, togetherness and human values they have foolishly sacrificed at the altar of the will-of-the-wisp of an ego-trip. But, by then, it is too late.
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