Workplace Calisthenics: Work addicts need to find other fulfillment in life

Cal LeMon, of Executive Enrichment Inc., solves organizational problems with customized training and consulting.

Do you enjoy your job or are you addicted to your job?

There is a difference.

Addiction is the fare regularly served up on "The Practice" and "The Sopranos." Straws for snorting off a mirror and needles for puncturing skin lace our television shows and the evening news.

Of course, there is addiction to gambling, sex, lying, overeating, golf and, the ultimate junkie, the chocoholic.

But there is another addiction few of us talk about or admit to: work.

All addictive behavior provides a "high." Getting high is not segregated to ingested chemicals. Ask a runner. After the first agonizing mile, the feet seem to barely kiss the surface of the road, and it feels like your body is flying. (I get the impression not many of you are identifying with that analogy).

So, what is the "high" for working? You, undoubtedly, will say it's the money. Well, if that was the case, why do people stand around at coffee break talking about the resulting depression when they pick up their weekly check?

No, the "high" in work is discovering this place that you abhor and complain about actually dishes up huge portions of self-worth. Most of us do not feel comfortable saying it out loud in a workplace (because of accusations of sucking up to some boss), but people who get more worth from their jobs, in contrast to anywhere else in their life, will quickly become addicts of labor.

If you think this is sick, you are right. When a job description becomes the sum total of who I am as a person, we have pathology knocking at the door.

I see workplace addiction all the time. These addicted people have moved the center of intimacy from their homes/private lives to the office. Realistically, they would rather be at work because they get more highs, more strokes and more recognition than in their personal lives.

They do not have lives.

Want to know if you are among the hooked-on-work crowd? Here is a short quiz. Just answer "yes" or "no" to the following questions.

Do you normally work more than 60 hours a week?

Do you regularly come back from vacations exhausted and cannot wait to get back to work?

Do you regularly say, "This job will be the death of me"?

Do you normally work through lunch?

Do you constantly talk about work when at home?

If you answered "yes" to three or more of those questions, there may be addiction smeared on your time card.

Peter Block, a noted business writer, said, "People who bring their bodies to work and leave their brains at home will destroy us." These are the people who consider work showing up to pick up a paycheck.

Equally as dangerous are the addicts who mainline on opening and closing the office, because their identity as a person is what they do, not who they are.

This is a one-dimensional person who expects everyone else to adhere to the credo of crazed. They infect others with a tantalizing message that, if we just work hard enough, we will unlatch the secret of our humanity.

When the doors are locked, the lights turned off and the spreadsheets printed, no one hears the haunting emptiness of this obsessed life that has been wrung out in the pursuit of a higher return on investment.

Entrepreneurs, senior management and anyone in the helping professions (education, health, safety, religious) are especially vulnerable. Who can argue with using up a life chasing a dream, keeping others employed, teaching our children, performing life-saving operations or placing someone's hand in the palm of God?

I love my work, but I love my life much more. If I could never speak or write again, my life would be hell, but it would not be over. My greatest legacy to those who try to find my footprints will not be an IRA or audiocassette series on assertiveness.

It will be a balanced life, glued together by lots of work, love, family, friendship and quiet moments that echoed with a grateful fullness.