Workaholics are well-known for their instinctive drive to always be getting something done.
Unless, of course, “something” involves working at home. Regardless, the term often applies to office workers who refuse to leave their cubicles until at least 200 percent of their daily workload is complete.
Stress, of course, plays a large part in workaholics’ lives — either because they fear stress or they manage to use it as fuel.
Workaholics also tend to get very little sleep, which sounds familiar — say, similar to the life of a college student. And as any collegiate scholar or slacker will tell you, being overworked is not conducive to a healthy living environment.
Translation: “It sucks.”
In fact, some of us would be better at doing what we do under the influence of alcohol rather than the influence of a lack of sleep.
Finally, modern science has provided support for this thesis.
The Journal of the American Medical Association released findings this week showing how 90-hour weeks can be as detrimental to on-the-job performance as downing three shots of vodka — which causes a blood alcohol level of about .04 percent, halfway to Indiana’s legal limit — prior to working under normal conditions.
The study, carried about by Brown University and the University of Michigan, tested 34 trainee doctors. The tests measured reaction time, attention, judgment, control and driving ability, before and after two situations.
The first situation had the doctors working a month of 44-hour weeks in clinics without any night shifts. Tests were carried out prior to and following the consumption of three vodka and tonics within 30 minutes. Those doctors have a better stomach than I do.
For the second situation, the doctors were tested after an entire month of 90-hour weeks, including night shifts, without any alcohol being consumed.
After the second situation, researchers noticed impairments in the doctors’ vigilance, attention and driving skills comparable to the impairments that showed up in the first situation.
This should worry us for two reasons: (1) because we, too, tend to overwork our bodies to the point of nervous breakdowns; and (2) because the people being tested are DOCTORS.
So, if I’m running the risk of screwing up because of my fatigue and ending up in the hospital, it’s good to know the surgeon working on my body has that potential, too.
We’re both workaholics — he just gets paid a hell of a lot more.
The term “workaholic” is obviously a play on two other individual terms. “Work” being the first of the two, and the suffix “-aholic,” which, by the dictionary.com definition, is “one that is addicted to or compulsively in need of” something — as in “alcoholic,” go figure.
So, it’s no wonder stereotypical college students grow accustomed to working all the time.
So go ahead and take away our kegs, Muncie liquor stores!
We’ll stay up all night and work for our buzz.
Write to Dave at
heydave@bewilderedsociety.com
http://www.bewilderedsociety.com
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