Is All Work and No Play Okay?

Or do we need to love in order to work well. Well we all know that one person in the office that is clearly over worked and under fucked. These over achievers have a full time job and are divorced from any kind of normal social life. You can tell because they drive everyone (except maybe the CEO) crazy and take work matters way too seriously. They make others in the workplace look bad because they may sometimes tattle about collegues’ phone, Facebook, and personal email use. So people are wondering, “Is it better to have a full time job and no life or a full time life and part-time job?” 

For the most part, work lives and love lives have been seen as polar opposite, non-overlapping life matters. But it’s hard to argue that there has to be some sort of relationship between work satisfaction and relationship satisfaction, no matter how small. I mean first of all, work relationships are fairly common just because the pool of eligible singles dramatically decreases as soon as one finishes undergrad. Even in graduate programs a significantly larger percentage of students are married or engaged compared to undergraduate programs.

Do we need to focus on work, instead of focusing on fun in our lives? Well Freud, the Father of Psychology, thinks not, he suggested that the overarching goal of psychotherapy is to allow the patient to love and to work. And notice he lists love first suggesting it may be first and foremost important. In fact, even employers looks for employees with stable family and love lives. It is far more useful for employers to hire someone with a wife and children because they know they have incentive to keep their job and they have the motivation to do the work that is expected from them.

Is it even beneficial to put work over love in the long term? To answer that, there is evidence the people with secure attachment styles are also very successful when it comes to work: they are less likely to put off work, are least likely to have difficultly completing tasks, they enjoy their vacation time, and are less likely to let work jeopardize their life. But those with alternative attachment are both unsuccessful at relationships and at work…so there is a connection! The exact connect cannot be pinpointed because not enough research has been conducted on the relation between the two.

             There is no reason that pursuing your personal life within reason has to come in between or sacrifice any of your work efforts. So if you’re waiting to plan your next vacation or if you’re weary of asking your boss to let you leave early to get ready for a hot date tonight, I hope you GO FOR IT!...... Not like I’m condoning sexting or Skyping during work...

But if you live a little then you’ll see you’ll work a little harder too.