Workaholic vs. Home Business. Which Describes You?

Has any­one asked you recently what you ‘do’? How did you answer? How do you define YOU? Find­ing Bal­ance in how we live our lives, and bal­ance between work and self and bal­ance between work and fam­ily is a chal­lenge for most adults. It is a greater chal­lenge that verges on becom­ing an insur­mount­able prob­lem for those of us who have a home business.

Oh, my. What a seri­ous sub­ject. Nope. Can’t do it. Today it is Spring and the sun is shin­ing and I am liv­ing at the beach with some of my own stuff finally, so let’s have a bit of fun.

Have you ever won­dered if you are a worka­holic? Here is a list of clues. If you see your­self in any of these responses, it might be that you are a workaholic.

You might be a worka­holic if:

• It frus­trates you that they don’t make a sand-​​and-​​water-​​proof lap­top for the beach
• Watch­ing the Law and Order marathon on cable is your idea of a vacation
• The only time-​​off you’ve taken in the last year was to attend a trade show
• Your hobby is walk­ing the dog
• Your lunch hour con­sists of brows­ing the web while munch­ing from a bag of nacho chips hid­den in your desk drawer
• You avoid drink­ing cof­fee dur­ing the day — not to limit your caf­feine intake — because you’ll lose time going to the bathroom
• The only breaks you take dur­ing the day are those trips to the bathroom
• You’ve had to replace your cell phone in the past year because of water dam­age from using it in the shower to return busi­ness calls
• You bring your iPhone to your son’s foot­ball game — and use it to ‘catch up’ on e-​​mail
• You’ve said, “this is the only Sun­day I’ll work” more than twice in the past six months
• Your idea of an inti­mate anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion is to take your spouse to a for­mal busi­ness dinner
• You’ve said, “I can cut back my hours when I get this project over the hump” more than twice in the last six months
• You live in a sunny cli­mate and don’t have a tan by August first
• You wake up at 3 am think­ing of work and actu­ally get up and work
• You’re drink­ing your caf­feine of choice in a dirty cup from yesterday
• You haven’t quit early in the last six months
• The last out­ra­geous thing you did is a dis­tant mem­ory chalked up to youth­ful foolishness

I’ve taken a light-​​hearted approach to work addic­tion today and I hope that each of you saw some part of your­self and were able to laugh. I believe that the per­son­al­ity twist that makes it pos­si­ble to have a suc­cess­ful home busi­ness and to work from home requires that we each be a bit of a worka­holic. I know that I have a strong streak of work zeal run­ning down my back — eas­ily 80% of the activ­i­ties I con­sider fun to do are work related. And most of the time I am glad of it.

It is pos­si­ble, how­ever, to be a worka­holic and com­pletely out of bal­ance. If you found that the fun I poked at work addic­tion is uncom­fort­ably close to the truth for you, then your life may be out of bal­ance. There are help pro­grams, like Worka­holics Anony­mous, if your need to focus on work is com­pul­sive and destruc­tive to your per­sonal relationships.

For­tu­nately, a 12-​​step pro­gram is not nec­es­sary for most of us, not even those of us who run a home busi­ness. Achiev­ing bal­ance between life and work is nec­es­sary for all of us. If you found even one of the You Might Be A Worka­holic If responses above elicited more of a guilt twinge than a chuckle, then reach out and find a way to add some­thing more than work to your life.

Cre­at­ing bal­ance in life is a jour­ney, a process. Begin today. You won’t regret it.

Join the fun. Can you think of a You Might be a Worka­holic if response? Share your opin­ion and expe­ri­ence in the com­ments below!

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