In the first part of this book, we discussed the habit of laziness and now we’re going to discuss the habit of working too much. These two habits have their roots in the same cause and they are two extreme expressions of one problem. It is the problem of not being able to strike balance between work and rest.
If you’re resting much more than you should and you’re working less or much less than you should; you’re lazy. However, if you’re working much more than you should and you’re relaxing less or much less than you should, you’re working too much. In both the cases, you’re missing the element of balance which is an important element for each and every habit/trait as well as sphere of life.
For instance, if you eat much less than you should or you eat much more than you should, you may face health issues. Likewise, if you spend too much time with your family and you don’t give much time to your profession or you give too much time to profession and you don’t have time for personal affairs, you may face problems. Balance is required in each and every sphere of life and whenever such balance is disturbed, it may cause broadly two types of problems lying on the opposite extremes.
For instance, your body temperature may drop or it may go up whenever there is some issue which it can’t handle. As long as it is balanced, the temperature may stay within normal range. Likewise, the weather may become problematic when it is too hot or too cold and it seems to work best when it is within normal temperature zones. The same applies to all other spheres.
Hence if you work too much and you take little rest and/or you have little time to attend to your personal affairs, you may end up causing problems in your personal life and/or health problems. Though you may think that by working too much you may achieve success earlier and the quantum of such success may be more, it may not be so in reality.
In order to understand this concept in proper manner, let’s first try to find out proper definition of success. Common definition of success says ‘accomplishment of an aim’. However, this definition is incomplete as it lacks important information. A better definition of success is ‘accomplishment of an aim minus the cost you have paid to accomplish such aim’. Such cost may be in form of money, efforts, health, peace, relationships and other things.
It means the net amount of success is calculated by subtracting the cost from the overall value of what you have achieved. Hence if various people achieve the same objective but they pay different costs, their successes are not same and they’re different.
Let’s take an example to understand this concept in a better manner. Suppose you sell a product for 100 dollars. Your net profit will be calculated after deducting the purchase cost of this product plus the expenses you incurred to sell this product. If you purchased this product for 80 dollars and 10 dollars were spent towards the expenses, the total cost of this product is 90 dollars and you sell it for 100 dollars, which means a profit of 10 dollars.
However if someone else sells the same product for 100 dollars when his purchase cost is 80 dollars and overhead expenses are 25 dollars, he will not get any profit in this case. The total of purchase price and overhead expenses for this product is 105 dollars in this case and he sells it for 100 dollars. This means that the second person is facing a loss of 5 dollars and not a profit of 10 dollars unlike the first person, though both of them have sold the same product for the same amount.
Likewise, a third person may witness a profit of 5 dollars, a fourth one may witness a profit of 20 dollars and another one may witness a loss of 10 dollars by selling the same product for the same price, depending on the total of purchase cost plus overheads. Though everyone is selling the same product for the same price and the resultant success seems to be the same from distance, everyone’s success is different and some of them are even facing losses. Hence the net amount of success is not what you have achieved but it is what you have achieved, minus what you have invested or what you have lost in order to achieve such success.
Let’s look at this example from a different angle to understand more about this concept. Let’s consider it from buyer’s point of view. Suppose a person buys this product for 100 dollars from a shop close to his house. Another person buys it from an online store which charges 4 dollars for shipping apart from 100 dollars as the cost of this product. Yet another person purchases the same product online with 100 dollars as the cost of this product and 7 dollars as shipping charges. Though all of them have purchased the same product, the overall cost of this product is different for them.
Hence the net amount of success you achieve in any sphere of your life is calculated after deducting the resources spent and losses taken, from it. Therefore it should be kept in mind that a particular success may hold good value for you, only if the net amount of resources spent and losses taken to achieve such success is less or far less than the value delivered by such success. On the other hand, if you have spent more resources and taken more losses to achieve a particular objective than the value delivered by such objective, the net equation does not correspond to success but it corresponds to loss.
Let’s look at an example from the life of someone I know. This person has been working with a company for many years. He has been working day and night to achieve top position in this company and in order to do so, he has been ignoring all other spheres of his life for many years, as his eyes are focused on his target. This person has recently become vice-president in this company. There is another person working for the same company who started working for the company about a year before the first person did. The second person is still holding a rank lower than the vice-president.
Looking from distance, the first person obviously seems to have achieved more success than the second one and it seems that his habit of working a lot has paid off. However, this equation may change when we dig deep into the actual amount of success achieved by these two people.
The first person has already had two divorces and the primary reason for both these divorces was that he gave little time to his wives. At times, he ignored them altogether even when they needed him very much. Whenever his wives asked for his attention or presence for some important affairs, he was busy with work and so he made excuses and ignored them. He kept working overtime and late nights in order to achieve top position in his company. After many years of working too much, he did achieve his target or so to say, he became successful.
However, this success has cost him two broken marriages and he is alone at this time. Apart from that, he is facing some health issues which have appeared due to his habit of working too much and in doing so, not eating properly and not taking proper rest. He has also developed a habit of drinking a lot which according to him is a good way of getting rid of his loneliness and bitter memories of his two marriages. He now misses his first wife a lot, he regrets his decision of not giving her proper attention and care, and he wishes he could do something to fix certain broken things.
Though the second person has achieved less amount of visible success than the first person, he is having a good marriage and he is blessed with a loving wife and two lovely kids. Though this person devoted the required amount of effort and time to his job, he knew the value of family, health and other important aspects of life. Hence he didn’t want to sacrifice any of these aspects in order to achieve more success in his profession. So he did his job with honesty and that honesty got him many promotions. However, he gave due time and attention to his wife, family, health and enjoyment also. As a result, he is a happy man with a good marriage, good health and a positive mindset.
You see, though the first person seems to have achieved more at the first glance, it turns out that the second person is indeed more successful as he has not paid any unwanted cost to achieve success and he has also not taken any losses to achieve success. On the other hand, the first person has invested much more to achieve somewhat more success and he has also taken big losses on the front of his marriage, family, health and mindset. His mindset has now become negative and he has started questioning the value of his success which was what he wanted the most at a time.
Hence the second person has achieved good amount of net success whereas the first person has taken losses which have value far greater than the value of the success he has achieved. Therefore, the cost to be paid for a particular success must be assessed before working towards that success, as the cost paid may be higher or much higher than the value delivered by that particular success.
After establishing a better definition of success, let’s move on to the habit of working too much. People suffering from this problem usually work too much in order to achieve one kind of professional success or another. In doing so, they may not pay required attention to other important spheres of their lives. This practice creates problems in other spheres of their lives. Though they may witness good results in their professions, they may suffer on other important fronts of their lives. When that happens, the overall quality of their lives may go down, the impact of which may start reflecting on their professions also, in many cases.
Hence you need to assign due importance to relaxation, personal affairs and other important affairs, in order to lead a balanced life. When you keep ignoring most other spheres in pursuit of professional success; your conscious mind sends messages to the subconscious that professional success is the most important objective for you and you’re willing to ignore/sacrifice anything in order to achieve it. With repeated messages, a script is written on your subconscious. When that happens, it encourages you to ignore everything else and focus on professional success only.
It means you’ve now developed a natural tendency to ignore most spheres of your life and you don’t need to consciously work for this. Hence you may naturally start ignoring important tasks from most other spheres in order to devote most of your time and efforts to professional success. This may continue for years and by the time you realize how much cost you’ve paid, much damage may have been done, some of which may be irreversible.
Profession is an important sphere of life but excess of everything is bad. Proper rest and due relaxation are important to keep you healthy, both physically as well as mentally. Therefore, you should take due rest and relax yourself whenever it is needed. You may have noticed that when the players of a football team or cricket team play too many matches in a relatively short period of time, their performances drop and they start losing matches. This is because their schedules demand them to work too much and such overwork takes a toll on them. They are not able to rest and relax as much as they need, in order to maintain optimum levels of performances.
Accordingly, their performances starts dropping and as a result, they start losing more matches than they usually do. Some of these players may even go on record and say that they have been playing too much in the recent times due to which their performances have dropped and they need a break to relax and hit the game again, with their strengths restored.
We use mobile phones and various other gadgets which draw energy from their batteries. In order for these gadgets to keep performing, their batteries must be recharged at regular intervals. Otherwise, their batteries may lose all their power and stop supplying energy to the gadgets. As a result, the gadgets will stop working.
Similarly, the cars we drive need fuel, maintenance and rest at regular intervals in order to perform properly. If any of these ingredients is missing, our cars may either not perform properly or they may not perform at all.
Just like the gadgets and cars, all other things and entities need due amount of rest/relaxation in order to perform properly. Same is the case with humans and we also need due amount of rest and relaxation at regular intervals in order to keep performing properly. Ignoring due amount of rest/ relaxation and working too much may start decreasing your performance like a car which has not been maintained properly for a long period of time. Hence you should have due amount of rest/ relaxation in order to recharge yourself and keep performing properly.
Other problems with working too much are that you may tend to ignore your family members as well as your health since you keep yourself busy with work most of the time. This may create problems in your family and as a result, you may have to witness heated arguments, frequent fights, no communication for long periods of time and in the worst case, you may have to suffer the loss of an entire relationship.
Paying too much attention to professional work and ignoring life partner is one of the primary reasons which cause so many divorces in this day and age. People are giving so much time and attention to their professions that they keep ignoring the needs of their life partners. Hence one such person may achieve more professional success but he may pay high prices for such success. The institution of marriage demands time, care and attention from both partners in order to be healthy. Too much focus on work may significantly reduce the amount of time, care and attention you may give you to your partner. As a result, you marriage may suffer or fail.
At times, it happens that both the partners are working and one of them receives an opportunity for promotion with transfer to another city or state. The partner who’s been offered such promotion or a better job opportunity in a faraway city wants the other partner to move whereas the other partner doesn’t want to move as doing so hurts his/her professional growth.
This is a situation where one of the two partners has to take a professional loss or make a professional compromise in order to keep having a happy marriage. However, none of them may be willing to make a compromise or take a loss and they may both expect the other one to make such compromise or take such loss. Isn’t it strange that we demand our partners to make such compromises when we’re ourselves not ready to make them?
At times, one partner may unwillingly take a loss and move with the other partner. When that happens, such partner may build grudges against the other partner. Such grudges may deteriorate the quality of marriage. At other times, none of them may be willing to make such compromise and the marriage may collapse due to this issue. The marriage fails because both the partners have become so obsessed with their professions that they are willing to take any losses in order to achieve more professional success.
Profession is a part of your life and it is not your entire life. Accordingly, you should pay due attention to other spheres of your life along with paying due attention to your profession. Happiness lies in a balanced mix of everything from each sphere of life and too much of anything may ruin it in most cases. Hence take a balanced approach towards life and stop letting your work ruin your personal life, health and other important spheres.
In order to treat the problem of too much work, start maintaining a schedule for your work as well as other spheres. For example, if you have a job where the working hours are 10 hours a day and five days a week, make sure that you don’t do your professional work apart from those 10 hours a day on weekdays. Stop doing overtime and especially stop bringing home your office work as doing so may seriously disturb your family life.
This is because no husband, wife or kids want you to be the office guy when you are at home with them, after working long hours at the office. Use this time to relax yourself, take some rest and spend some time with your family members or friends so that you may attend to some of their needs, which may strengthen your relationships with them. You should work overtime or bring office work home; only in case of emergencies or other situations which so demand. It’s fine if you need to do so once in a while since you owe that much to your profession. However, don’t make a habit of it.
The days when you don’t have to go to your office like weekly holidays, plan them in a way that you are able to spend this time partly in relaxing, resting and entertaining yourself, and partly in attending to the needs and demands of your family members. For example, if your wife and kids want you to take them to a movie and a dinner afterwards, don’t keep yourself busy with work on such days and instead do what they wish.
Likewise, you can read a book, surf on internet, watch a movie or some other TV program, go for swimming, help your wife with some domestic tasks, listen to her and help her make decisions on some family matters or matters related to her profession, play with your kids, help them in studies, hang out with friends and do many other such things which are the keys to a happy life.
Professional success can give you more resources. More resources may help you enjoy more and have a better life. However in order to do so, you must devote due time for such better quality of life. Most professional institutes work 5 or 6 days a week and they take breaks for 1 or 2 days every weak. This is because they understand that their employees need to relax and do a number of other tasks related to various spheres of their lives. Hence they offer breaks so that the employees may relax and recover from the workload. When that happens, the employees are able to perform properly for years and years. Hence don’t use your days off for work and use them for personal spheres.
Some people fix some targets and they think they’ll start enjoying once they reach such targets. What they may not realize is that by working so much; they’ve written scripts on their subconscious minds and these scripts feature no enjoyment. Hence they may not be able to relax/enjoy even when they achieve such targets. They may naturally (subconsciously) set new targets and they may think they’ll enjoy once they achieve those targets. This may continue and they may never enjoy.
Like many other things, the ability to relax and enjoy also works like a habit. If you have this habit, you may be able to enjoy and relax. If you don’t have this habit, you may not be able to enjoy and relax; even if you have all the resources and time. Hence along with the habit of working, you need to develop the habit of relaxing and enjoying, in order to maintain balance between work and relaxation.
Himanshu Shangari