Labor Intensive

Workaholics Take A Decidedly Labor-Intensive Approach To Life

(CBS)  As a mother raising five children, a woman who asked us only to call her Deborah, was a workaholic even as a parent.

"I worked myself to death at home," she says. "Living in 15 minute increments. You know, 15 minutes, you get in the car, you drive somewhere, you drop a kid off, you go back home — just craziness."

Was she happy?

"I don't know that I was so much happy as I felt like I was justifying my place on the earth," she says.

Deborah says life didn't get better once she started working outside the home. Her marriage broke up, her work brought her misery.

"I was scheduling myself for six appointments with no drive time in there, literally back to back. Well, it might take 30 minutes to get from one place to another, but somehow in my mind, I can get there in 10 minutes. Well, where is that time going to come from?"

Alongside Deborah was Diane Fassel, the author of a book about the disease of workaholism called "Working Ourselves To Death."

"When I wrote the book in 1990, I wrote it because so many people were coming up to me in the course of talks I was giving on other issues about dysfunctional organizations, saying to me, 'My life is completely out of control around my work. Can you help me? Do you know what I can do to address this problem?'"

Since then, some workaholics around the country have organized their own 12-step program called Workaholics Anonymous. It is now recognized, Fassel says, as a real addiction.

"When many workaholics are just working, working, working, they get this adrenaline surge," Fassel says. "And in that adrenaline surge, you really don't feel that you — you don't feel your pain, you don't feel your tiredness, you don't feel that you're hungry. You don't even feel sleepy. So, that's a kind of a high; there's a chemical high that's produced by adrenaline — whether it's alcohol, drugs, sex, compulsive spending, gamble, workaholism, you name it. I think human beings — are — can be addicted to anything, absolutely anything. But I think that in our society, we're seeing more of it in workaholism."

Ironically, Diane Fassel says, workaholics often don't succeed at work. Their overwork can leave them too stretched to do a really good job.

For other hard workers, there are no guarantees of success. No statistics prove that if you put in the long hours, you'll do well. Jim Garretson knows that. He works a 65-hour week just to get by.

"It's a lot, but it's what's necessary to take care of kids," he says. "In today's economy, it's what you have to do."

Leaving the office after a full eight hours handling disputes for a health insurance company, his workday is still far from over. Seven years ago Garretson was thriving as a technical problem-solver in the computer industry. But then the dot-com bubble burst.

For almost a year he had no job. Now when he gets home from job number one, he turns right around to go to job number two: 6 to 10 on the deli counter.

"Six hours sleep is a good night, sometimes four," he says.

Jim Garretson is looking forward to the day when he won't have to work so much, but not this year. On Labor Day, he has to be on duty at the deli counter.

"Labor Day is a big day," he says. "Everybody works. I'll be working an eight-hour day on Labor Day.

But Deborah says she's getting her addiction under control and won't be working on Labor Day.

Brett Yormark and Pankaj Shah are both planning to take it easy on Labor Day, but don't be surprised if Pankaj answers an e-mail and Brett makes a phone call or two.

[bob_bob2]

Working this long and hard actually hurts our society. Much like adding a working mother to the household, at first those who do it gain in wealth, eventually we all need to do it to just get by. You are raising the bar for your children, and lowering their quality of life.

If you can%u2019t afford where you live or how you live without working 60 hours a week. MOVE! Downsize, eat less, consume less do whatever it takes.

We only have a limited number of days, don%u2019t trade them away for scraps of paper.