Work obsession | Vision obsession
Are you obsessed with work? Is work dominating your life, replacing family, friends and outside interests? Are you that workaholic type who spends all of his free time at the office?
Clearly, the possible risk of work obsession is high, especially if one absolutely loves his work. Many people have probably been encouraged to love their work. There is a line to be drawn, however, between healthy, ambitious work habits and workaholism.
You see, there’s nothing wrong with loving your work! I always suggest to people to do what they love and to love what they do. In some cases I would even dare to suggest an obsession towards the goals of the work. But there is a fine and blurry line between the useful side of this suggestion and the dangers it might bring about.
You see, the danger consists in mistaking the purposes with the means (i.e. becoming obsessed with work itself, rather than the its goals). If you dream of having a house on beautiful sunny ocean beach, there’s nothing wrong if you become obsessed with that dream; it will help you take the necessary actions and recognize the opportunities that can get you closer to it. But when you start becoming obsessed with those actions themselves, you have to stop for a moment, analyze yourself, remember and / or redefine the goal that you were going for.
Let’s take blogging for instance. It’s a well-known fact for most bloggers that they should engage in marketing activities and create as many loyal readers as they can if they want their blog to be successful. But the mistake that most bloggers make is that they slowly and unconsciously become obsessed with marketing and attracting visitors (the means) and forget why it is they wanted to do that in the first place (the vision).
Why does that happen? Poor vision, maybe a complete lack of one.
VISION
What is this vision? For every business, every manager and every person in this world, there’s nearly always a distance between ‘where we stand‘ and ‘where we want to stand’. The vision is the destination, the point towards which we’re heading from the point where we are now. Lack of a proper vision leaves us vulnerable to a lot of confusing thoughts, such as the confusion of the vision with the actions that get us there.
A clear and well-defined vision enables one to clearly see his destination point and to feel the feelings associated with reaching it even before it actually happens in the material reality.
VISION OBSESSION VS WORK OBSESSION
The main difference between these two kinds of obsessions is the fact that one is mostly productive and the other is mostly counter-productive. The productive one is the vision obsession.
Reasons why vision obsession is productive:
- it enables the creation of strong positive feelings that help in sustaining positive mental attitudes;
- it doesn’t interfere so much in the relations with other people - like work obsession does;
- it is a fertile ground for great ideas;
- it allows one to recognize and use most of the opportunities encoutered in life when they appear;
- it is a passive skill. It cretes clear material results but doesn’t require a conscious effort to maintain it - obsessions reside in the subconscious;
- since it happens inside your mind, it doesn’t violate the rights of others - as opposed to work obsession;
- it doesn’t tire you. Work, as much as you would love doing it, can’t be done continuously without serious health consequences;
There are probably more strong positive sides to it but these are the most important ones that I could think of.
On the other hand, being obsessed with work also has some very important positive points to it, but there are certain fixed conditions that must be met in order for those strong points to be useful (no family, strong mental abilities to resist stress, mint health, etc). Here’s a real short story about the downside of being a workaholic:
“The long hours I spent at the office frequently included evenings and weekends. This left Norma alone a great deal of the time in the trenches with our three endlessly energetic kids.
When I was home, my mind was filled with all things work, which again, left little time for our marriage. Understandably, Norma would tell me. She’d point out that I wasn’t there for her needs or to help with the parenting. But to me, it sounded more like nagging, so I ignored her — as many men do!”
WHAT IS THERE TO DO?
Research has found a strong link between long and unpredictable work hours (workaholism) and the breakdown of family and other relationships. These work patterns are making people unhealthy, putting relationships under extreme stress, creating angry, inconsistent parents and reducing the well-being of children.
One possible solution is to become a “visionholic,” a person obsessed with vision and ideas rather than work. Let your vision govern your actions and your feelings and place your work on a lower level. It would be best for both you and those around you and ultimately it would clothe your dreams into material form sooner than you would expect!
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