No Such Thing as Time Away
Always being available is not good for your health. Sure, some peole relish the increased pace that life and business is running at these days, but the increased pressures are causing problems in many others. It can effect not only peoples physical health, but certainly their emotional and relational health as well.
Emotional Health Problems
Always being preoccupied with work can never be a good thing for your emotional well being. If you can never truely shut down and remove yourself from work then there is no way to relieve the stress that is brought on by a hectic work day. Being truely away from work is the time to get refreshed and renewed and to view work from a healthy distance, which can allow you to gain a healthy perspective on what you are doing, and why you are doing it.
Without healthy time away from work you create a perfect recipe for becoming stressed out and burned out.
Relational Health Problems
How many times are you out for a meal or coffee with someone only be be interrupted by a phone call, text message or e-mail. What would have previously been a one-hour lunch conversation, interrupted only by ordering, paying and eating, now becomes only a 20-minute disjointed conversation because of the constant interruptions.
Because of the pressure of my Dad's job even he finally caved in a few weeks ago and got himself a BlackBerry. Now during commercials or intermissions in the hockey he can now browse through e-mail messages instead of chatting with the family. I understand the need for this with his job, but it comes at a personal relational cost.
Physical Health Problems
There are more cold and sick days being taken now by people because of the physical effects of stress on people's lives. Stress seriously degrades the quality of life that people experience. It can lead to heart problems, headaches, high blood pressure, diabetes and many other ailments. According to this site 43% of adults suffer adverse health effects from stress and 75% - 90% of all doctor's visits are for stress-related ailments and complaints.
Stress can also lead to substance abuse, including drugs and alcohol and over indulgence of food (binge eating, etc.).
Unfortunately these challenges are not exclusive to big business. They are prevalent in all industries, including NGOs, non-profits and ministries. Each person needs to find the healthy balance between work, fun and family, but to find that balance something always needs to give.
Tags: stress, work balance
Technorati Tags:
Post A Comment! :: Send to a Friend!
Share and enjoy
I am a full time volunteer with Reef to Outback - Youth With A Mission (YWAM) where I work in Communications and Information Technology. I am married to a wonderful wife, we have a five year old son and a one year old daughter.
