How to know when You’re being Overworked
When you wake up in the night, look at the clock and think, “thank goodness, there’s another five hours before I must get up for work!” You know that you do not want to go to work, but the reason that you do not want to go to work could be that you are overworked.
The reasons that overwork is a bad thing is that it causes physical and mental stress that can lead to physical and mental health problems and these can lead to emotional, physical and mental burn out. What are the symptoms that you may be putting your health and well-being at risk through overwork?
The major symptom of over-work is that the balance between your home, family and social life and your work life is tilted overly towards work. If you no longer have the time or energy to devote to once loved hobbies, if you are too tired to listen to other family members relating their daily experiences, if you get irritable with family members, these are all signs that you are stressed.
Do you constantly think about work, even when you are at home or when you are on vacation? Do you constantly telephone or e-mail your workplace when you are on vacation? These are more symptoms that you are overworked.
Overwork makes you tired both physically and mentally. If you are not sleeping properly and waking up in the night the problem could be mental and physical exhaustion through overwork.
If you are exhausted through overwork, you are probably not eating properly. You may be eating at irregular hours or eating junk food because that is all you feel like eating or all that is available at the time that you come home at night. You may not be taking the regular exercise that you need to remain healthy. You may also find that you are smoking and drinking too much.
Interrupted sleep, irregular or bad food and lack of exercise affect your physical and mental well-being. They also affect your ability to make decisions at work.
When you are overworked, you find that the workday is one constant mental whirl. There are never enough hours in the day and there always seems to be a constant feeling that you have too much to do and not enough time.
Your conversations whether you are at work or at home are solely limited to your job and you cannot focus on anything else. When your first thought on waking is about work, it is a sign that your life has become unbalanced and that work is the problem. That imbalance causes stress and affects your mental and physical well-being. It can damage your relationships with your spouse, family and friends. Whether you are overworking compulsively or because your boss makes you do so, the first step to alleviating the problem is to acknowledge that there is a problem. By recognizing and understanding the symptoms of overwork for what they are, you can acknowledge the problem and find ways to remedy it.
