I'm a hard worker and love my work. I have felt pulled toward work. And it's a pull I have ferociously had to counter to make room for my family.
Arlie Russell HochschildRead
Each person's drive to overwork is unique, and doing too much numbs every workaholic's emotions differently. Sometimes overwork numbs depression, sometimes anger, sometimes envy, sometimes sexuality. Or the overworker runs herself ragged in a race for attention.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Overworking can be a personal escape from emotions, impacting individuals differently.
In this quote, Arlie Russell Hochschild delves into the complex relationship between workaholism and emotional numbness. She suggests that individuals overwork for various reasons, using it as a coping mechanism to escape feelings of depression, anger, envy, or even to seek validation and attention. The unique motivations behind each person's excessive work habits reveal how deeply intertwined our emotional states are with our professional lives.
Themes
OverworkEmotionsWorkaholismDepressionAttentionCoping
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be shared during a workplace wellness seminar to highlight the dangers of overworking.
More from Arlie Russell Hochschild
All quotes →The focus of our public discourse has been on how American companies are competing with Japanese, German, and other foreign companies. What this allows us to ignore is how each of those American companies is really in competition with the families of the workers. That's the real competition.
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What emotions would we experience if we weren't working ourselves to death? What wishes drive us? What fantasies hitch themselves to our continual busyness? Only when we step away from our frenzy can we know.
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No work-family balance will ever fully take hold if the social conditions that might make it possible - men who are willing to share parenting and housework, communities that value work in the home as highly as work on the job, and policymakers and elected officials who are prepared to demand family-friendly reforms - remain out of reach.
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In response to our fast-food culture, a 'slow food' movement appeared. Out of hurried parenthood, a move toward slow parenting could be growing. With vital government supports for state-of-the-art public child care and paid parental leave, maybe we would be ready to try slow love and marriage.
Arlie Russell HochschildRead
Could it be, I wonder, that there is such a thing as a wantologist, someone we can hire to figure out what we want? Have I arrived at some final telling moment in my research on outsourcing intimate parts of our lives, or at the absurdist edge of the market frontier?
Arlie Russell HochschildRead
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