Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Wellness Wednesday: {Work Overload- Signs & Symptoms}

Welcome back to Wellness Wednesday, a fun mid-week look at the areas of wellness in our lives. To remind you, in talking about wellness I'm discussing the positive factors in life that help protect us from the events of life. Wellness is therefore not about the absence of the negative, but the presence of the positive. Remember that I am using the Wheel of Wellness to show the various factors of wellness in our lives.

After introducing the ideas behind work & leisure and looking at an overview of the work factor, today we'll be looking in more detail at the factor of "work" in our lives.

To remind you, here's the definition of the "work" factor of wellness:


Activity that contributes to the well-being of self and others: perception of adequacy of financial resources (financial freedom), job satisfaction, feeling that one’s skills are used, perception of work overload, role conflict, role ambiguity (i.e., psychological job security), participation in decision making (i.e., feeling appreciated), satisfaction with relationships in the job setting


Today I want to look specifically at the phrase "perception of work overload". This is an important issue in our society today, as more and more individuals are being overloaded by work. Here are a few signs and symptoms that you might be headed towards work overload:

  • working increasing hours that are unrealistic or are eating up your time with your family in the evenings
  • unrealistic expectations beyond your job description
  • pressure into working unpaid hours
  • eliminating healthy behaviors from your life in order to work more hours
  • consistently higher and higher levels of stress & frustration
  • Anger
  • Fatigue
  • Dreading going to work
  • Family complaining that you aren't present often, or aren't emotionally present when you're physically present
  • Depression
  • Stomach Pain
  • Migraines
This is obviously a list of only some of the signs and symptoms of work overload, which puts a strain on your body, and will very quickly start decreasing your levels of health and wellness. 

Now it's your turn!
Do you think that you (or someone close to you) have every hit work overload? How does an overload at work influence the other factors of wellness?

1 comment:

  1. I think that everybody hits work overload every once in a while. It's important to make sure that you don't ALWAYS feel these symptoms. If you do, you should probably reconsider the number of projects/hours you're taking on and whether or not it's the best job for you. I think that these symptoms can also fit with work overload in terms of going to school. Sometimes college students take way too many classes at once and end up having to sacrifice a lot just to get that certain number of credits. I find one of the best ways to relieve the stress of being over worked is to find a healthy outlet to put that stress energy into like exercising or playing a musical instrument.

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