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A workaholic is a person addicted to work. This addiction may be pleasurable to the victim or it may be burdensome and troubling.
Workaholism is generally accepted as a disease. The problem is that workaholics believe that if they don't work, their world will collapse. Workaholics do not necessarily love their work or try to excel in their work. If a person thinks he or she is the only person capable of performing their work, he/she is most likely a workaholic. Although most workaholism is associated with a paying job, it can also be associated with people who excessively practice sports, music, art, blogging, wiki editing, etc.
The term is often used inaccurately to describe an energetic person who devotes a lot of time to work even though that person has good relations with co-workers, takes pleasure in other non-remunerative activities, is well rested, and properly attends to family and social life.
The condition is more accurately described when it becomes recognized by the victim or by others to be detrimental to family life or social relations within or outside of work. This may be due to the victim's fatigue, poor relationships with non-addicted co-workers, or lack of time and energy devoted to family life, friends, hobbies, and other activities.
The word itself is a play on "alcoholism," created via back-formation. The term was first coined in 1971 by Wayne Oats in his book, Confessions of a Workaholic. It gained more widespread use in the 1990s, as the result of a wave of the self-help movement that centered around addiction, analogizing harmful social behaviors such as overwork to drug addiction, including addiction to alcohol.
Workaholism in other cultures
- Japan is often portrayed as having a workaholic culture. Several Japanese workers die each year due to overwork. The Japanese term for death by overwork is karoshi. In cases where it can be proven that the cause of death was overwork, the family can seek compensation from the employer for its failure to intervene in the employee's self-destructive behavior.
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