CNN.com has a nice little article on the ravages of workaholism. All my years in college and graduate school, that was me. I could insist that I liked my work, even loved it, but that didn't make my 24/7 work attitude healthy.I was at my most workaholic as a college professor. By then, I no longer enjoyed excessive work. I'd begun to realize there was more to life, but didn't know how to break the all-work-all-the-time cycle.
I was helped by two perspectives.
Another faculty member was dying. She told me it was her inability to say "no" to work that was the root cause of her illness. A few months later she was dead. Overwork had literally killed her.
From this I got the idea that institutions are vampires. They have no natural "stop," but will bleed you of all you can give and still demand more - unless you develop an ability to protect yourself by saying "no" to work demands.
A simple arithmetical idea also helped.
The amount of work that needs to be done is infinite (because new work is always being created). Compared to infinity, any finite number is insignificant, no matter how large. Ten or ten thousand: both are equally insignificant. Why knock myself out completing one more (or ten more) tasks? I can only complete an insignificantly larger, insignificant number of tasks - no matter how frantically I work, or how many relationships I sacrifice (including to God).
It requires being still and listening to tap the divine energy that is our core being This is destroyed by constant busyness. In the end, tapping my inner joy, love, peace and light so regularly it suffuses my life, even under very trying conditions, will be more healing for the world than anything else I could do. But this means expecting to do no more work than can be done in the time available, without rush or worry.
I'm not that practiced yet and am easily derailed back into busyness. But I know there is a better, more God-full way.
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