Workaholicism

Scrivs posted about being a workaholic over on Whitespace; his description sounds eerily familiar:

I go through bouts where you can't pull me away from my computer (not to play World of Warcraft, but actually working) and then I get burnt out and go through phases where thinking about the computer makes me sick. Still trying to get into a routine of moderation, but rarely has anything in my life been done in moderation.

Someone commented (emphasis mine): "So, are we talking about being a workaholic or a procrastinator? There's a huge difference."

Interesting idea! I wonder, though, how they're similar.

Workaholics:

• Have no problem with "working", but there's a difficulty in stopping. It's compulsive and twitchy, until the workaholic runs out of juice and collapses.
• Are compulsive about working...
• ...to the exclusion of other healthy activities like family and friends...
• ...and eventually isolate themselves out of a life because people stop caring about them...why bother?

Procrastinators come in two flavors: conscientious procrastinators and sociopathically lazy. I'm talking about the conscientious ones here...you know, the ones who worry about not working. These people...

• Work represents "activity that makes progress toward the goal". But for whatever reason, the work doesn't get done.
• Are compulsive about not working...
• ...to the exclusion of scheduling activities because they feel they should be working...
• ...and eventually isolate themselves out of the life they desire because they never get anything done.

More simply:

• workaholics have no problem starting, but have problems stopping.
• conscientious procrastinators have problems starting.

Looking at these two ad-hoc descriptions, my first thought is that workaholics have a very powerful (i.e. compulsive) feedback loop that keeps them working, but that actually might be me looking at them through a procrastinator's eyes. For me, I tend to work immediately when I can get immediate results. For work that has a deferred payoff, there's a threshold of motivation that I need to reach before I start working, and then things are fine. Workaholics, on the other hand, may not need that motivation at all. They may just love the feeling of work itself, and rewards are a pleasant secondary benefit...they just go.

It occurs to me also that conscientious procrastinators are possibly less sure about what they want and need more justification for action, but aren't consciously aware that these are factors. The workaholic, I suspect, is 100% sure of what they're doing, for whatever reason.

I have no real conclusions, but maybe something will pop into my head over the weekend. I'm not sure my model of the workaholic and the procrastinator is accurate, so if anyone has any experiences to share, post a comment! :-)