Long associated with passion and dedication, hard work often hides an insidious trap: work addiction. Bill Gates, who experienced it, is today a fervent defender. Science, for its part, has been warning for years about the harmful effects of these marathon days on health and performance.
Work addiction: a toxic myth
“Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life again”. This famous phrase from Confucius has long been associated with the idea that exciting work does not require rest. However, the reality is much more complex. As Bill Gates discovered, work addiction, far from being a sign of dedication, is a scourge that undermines productivity and health.
Addiction to work is distinguished from passion by a tenuous border. If exciting work can bring pleasure and satisfactionwork addiction involves an unhealthy compulsion to work tirelessly, to the detriment of mental and physical health.
Numerous studies, such as that of the University of Brasilia, confirm the link between stress and lack of rest and loss of cognitive abilities. Turning professional commitment into marathon days is just a symptom of “toxic productivity,” which only harms individual performance.
This may seem obvious, but it is still a common misconception that when you love your work there is less need to take vacations.
The telltale signs of work addiction
Research conducted at Ariel University in Israel reveals that work addiction is a real problem that is often downplayed or even glorified. A study from ELTE Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest associates this addiction with character traits such as perseverance or perfectionism, combined with difficulty establishing healthy boundaries.
One of the most obvious symptoms of work addiction is long, often pointless working days. Experiments with the four-day work week have shown that these extended days work against productivity.
If you need 12 hours a day to accomplish what you should do in eight hours, that’s a clear sign of poor task management or poor estimation of the time needed for each task. Working more hours doesn’t make you more passionate about your job, just less effective.
Work addiction affects medium and long-term health, increasing the risk of depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, stress and heart problems. In Japan, this phenomenon even has a name: karōshi, which literally means “death from overwork”.
Establishing clear boundaries is essential to maintaining a healthy balance. Disconnecting from work allows you to recover energy and improve the ability to manage daily stress. It’s important to learn to listen to your body and take breaks, rather than masking exhaustion with temporary solutions like coffee. Sometimes a break is more productive than working too hard.
Work-life balance: a crucial challenge
Vacation is not a luxury, but a necessity. The right to digital disconnection and rest does not only concern employees, but also managers. Sleep time is also crucial, as advocated by productivity enthusiasts like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gateswho do not skimp on a minimum of seven hours of sleep per night to preserve their brain health.
It’s easy to get caught up in work culture, as the New York Times defined it, when we have more free time than ever thanks to technology. Finding a balance between work and personal life is one of the main challenges to avoid burnout among workers.
Personal time is so important that it even features in task prioritization systems like the POSEC strategy, where free and personal time is considered a task in its own right. It is possible to integrate this balance into your day by using tips to create habits.
