Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Workaholism: Anxiety, Addiction, and Finding Balance in a Busy World

25 snips

Sep 11, 2023

The podcast discusses workaholism in today's productivity-focused culture, exploring its psychological functions and relation to other addictions. They delve into differentiating workaholism from working hard, competence, approval seeking, population groups more prone to workaholism, the stages of change, and the challenges of balancing work and family. They also discuss tracking time, the challenges of disengaging from fulfilling work, and the concept of internalizing social support.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Cultural Validation Masks Addiction

Workaholism resembles addiction with tolerance and withdrawal, yet society often rewards it.
This cultural validation makes excessive work harder to recognize and change.

INSIGHT

Who’s More Prone To Workaholism

Research links workaholism to younger age, female gender, self-employment, and psychiatric symptoms.
ADHD, especially hyperfocus, strongly correlates with workaholic tendencies.

ADVICE

Widen Your View Before Acting

When craving drives you, widen perspective: take breaths and view the whole self before acting.
Ask which choice the wisdom of your whole self prefers to reduce impulsive regret later.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

In our productivity-obsessed, always-on world it’s easy for busyness to become a badge of honor. But sometimes that effort-ing transforms from the reasonable pursuit of our goals into workaholism: a compulsive, even addictive drive to work. In today’s episode Forrest and Dr. Rick explore what workaholism is really, the psychological functions it serves, and how it relates to other addictive behaviors. You’ll learn both how to approach changing behaviors like workaholism in general and specific interventions that can help.

You can watch this episode on YouTube.

Key Topics:

0:00: Introduction

2:20: Differentiating workaholism from working hard

9:40: Preempting criticism, and your internal audience

17:10: Competence, approval seeking, and motives

23:50: Addiction without social stigma

28:40: Population groups more prone to workaholism

33:50: The stages of change

37:45: Moving to the wider view, craving and regret

40:55: Embodying your future self, and social support

43:10: Identity, and creating a coherent narrative

46:00: Underlying feelings, mindfulness, and making choices

49:20: Distinguishing being and becoming

52:25: Tracking your time, and scheduling time off

54:50: Giving others influence over your behavior

56:20: Rick’s personal experience navigating a healthy work ethic

1:01:20: Recap

Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link.

Sponsors:

Factor delivers fresh, never-frozen, fully prepared meals right to your door. Head to factormeals.com/beingwell50 and use code beingwell50 to get 50% off.

Zocdoc helps you find expert doctors and medical professionals that specialize in the care you need, and deliver the type of experience you want. Head to zocdoc.com/being and download the Zocdoc app for FREE.

Join over a million people using BetterHelp, the world’s largest online counseling platform. Visit betterhelp.com/beingwell for 10% off your first month!

Want to sleep better? Try the Calm app! Visit calm.com/beingwell for 40% off a premium subscription.

Finally get that project off the ground with Squarespace! Head to squarespace.com/beingwell for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch use coupon code BEINGWELL to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Connect with the show:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices