Between teaching MBA students and speaking to a lot of business audiences, I’m often interacting with successful people who work extremely long hours. It’s common for me to hear about 13-hour workdays and seven-day workweeks, with few or no vacations. What I see among many of those I encounter is workaholism, a pathology characterized by continuing to work during discretionary time, thinking about work all the time, and pursuing job tasks well beyond what’s required to meet any need. Workaholics feel a compulsion to work even when they are already earning plenty of money and despite getting minimal enjoyment from doing so.

在教授MBA学生、面向各类商业受众演讲的过程中，我常常与那些工时极长的成功人士接触。听到“每天工作13小时、一周工作7天、几乎不休假”这样的情况，对我来说并不稀奇。我在许多人身上看到的是工作成瘾（workaholism）——一种病态：在本可自由支配的时间里仍继续工作，脑子里时时刻刻想着工作，把任务推进到远远超出满足任何实际需要的程度。即使已经赚了足够多的钱，而且从工作中获得的乐趣微乎其微，工作成瘾者仍会感到一种非做不可的冲动。

Does this sound familiar? If you do little else but work—and are mentally absent when not working—you are likely to find your life feels bereft of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Worst of all, compulsive overworking is incompatible with healthy intimate relationships, which take time, energy, and effort

这听起来熟悉吗？如果你除了工作几乎什么都不做——而且即使不在工作时也常常心不在焉——你很可能会发现，自己的生活缺乏乐趣、满足感和意义。更糟的是，强迫性的过度工作与健康的亲密关系不相容；而亲密关系需要时间、精力和努力去经营。

As with other addictions, telling a workaholic they’d be better off not doing the destructive behavior is unhelpful—as though just suggesting “Hey, why not work less?” will result in the person slapping their forehead and saying “I never thought of that!” Instead, I try to look behind the pathology to discover its origins. Typically, what I find in highly successful people is that an addiction to work is, in fact, based on an inchoate belief that love from others—including spouses, parents, and friends—can be earned only through constant toil and exceptional merit. Unchecked, this mistaken belief is catastrophic. But understanding the reasons behind this delusion can lead to healing.

和其他成瘾一样，告诉一个工作狂“别再做这种自我毁伤的事”并没有用——仿佛只要随口来一句“嘿，为什么不少干点儿？”就能让对方拍脑门说“我从没想到过！” 相反，我会尝试探究这种病态背后的根源。通常，我在那些非常成功的人身上发现，工作成瘾实际上源于一种模糊却根深蒂固的信念：他人的爱——包括配偶、父母和朋友的爱——只能通过持续的辛劳和非凡的成绩来“赚取”。如果任其发展，这种错误的信念将酿成灾难；但弄清这份迷思产生的原因，则可能开启自我疗愈的道路。

Life offers two kinds of reward , which social scientists define as intrinsic and extrinsic. The first kind involves immaterial things that can’t be bought, such as love and happiness. The second kind involves material things that can be procured, such as money and goods. We want both kinds of reward, of course—even though we all know what research has shown over and over again: that once we have achieved a basic standard of living, we gain much greater life satisfaction from intrinsic rewards. Compare the scenario of driving to a fancy restaurant in your new Ferrari, where you will eat alone because you have no friends or family, with that of driving to Denny’s in a 1999 Corolla to hang out with people who truly love you.

人生的回报大致有两类，社会科学家称为内在回报（intrinsic）和外在回报（extrinsic）。前者是无法用钱购买的非物质性事物，比如爱与幸福；后者是可以获取的物质性事物，比如金钱和商品。我们当然都想要这两类回报——但研究一再表明：当基本生活水准得到满足后，能更大幅度提升人生满意度的是内在回报。对比两种情景：你开着全新的 Ferrari 去高级餐厅，但因为没有朋友和家人，只能独自用餐；或者你开着一辆 1999 年的 Corolla 去 Denny’s（美国一家连锁平价餐馆）与真正爱你的人相聚。

And yet, millions of seemingly successful people act as if extrinsic rewards are all that count. Although they may not be totally bereft of loved ones, they live almost as if they were so, neglecting family and friends in favor of work, earning far more than their household needs to survive, even thrive. You can think of this as a crossed psychological circuit, resulting in a false conviction that intrinsic rewards can be bought with extrinsic currency. If I work hard enough and am sufficiently successful, thinks the workaholic, albeit unconsciously, then I will be worthy of the love I truly crave.

然而，数以百万计看似成功的人却把外在回报当成一切。尽管他们并非完全没有所爱之人，却几乎过着仿佛没有的生活：为了工作而忽视家人和朋友，赚的钱远远超过家庭维持、甚至过得很好的需要。你可以把这看作心理回路发生了交叉，因而形成一种错误的确信：内在回报（intrinsic rewards）可以用外在货币（extrinsic currency）来购买。工作成瘾者（workaholic）在潜意识里会这样想：只要我足够努力、足够成功，我就配得上我真正渴求的爱。

Why might someone fall prey to such an erroneous belief? It could be the way you were raised. Workaholic parents tend to have workaholic kids. If you grow up seeing adulthood modeled by people who work all hours and are rarely home, you can be forgiven for regarding this as appropriate behavior for a responsible spouse and parent. This is at least partly the same mechanism behind the fact that you are much likelier to become an alcoholic if you were raised by one.

为什么有人会陷入这种错误的信念？原因可能在于你的成长经历。工作成瘾的父母，往往会养出工作成瘾的孩子。如果你从小看到的成人榜样是整天工作、很少在家，那么你把这种模式当作一个负责任的配偶和父母应有的行为，也情有可原。至少在某种程度上，这与另一种现象背后的机制相似：如果你在酗酒者（alcoholic）家庭中长大，你自己也更有可能成为酗酒者。

Researchers have also shown that when parents express love for a child in a conditional way based on the child’s behavior, that person is likely to grow up feeling that they deserve love only through good conduct and hard work. This might sound as though I’m describing terrible parents, but I don’t mean to do so at all; well-intentioned parental encouragement can be heard by a child as a message about their worthiness.

研究者还发现，当父母把对孩子的爱建立在孩子行为之上的“有条件”表达时，这个孩子长大后很可能会觉得，只有品行良好、刻苦努力，自己才配得到爱。这听起来好像是在指责父母很糟糕，但我绝无此意；即便是出于好意的鼓励，在孩子耳中也可能被理解为对其“是否值得被爱”的评判。

In the workaholic’s case, it might look like this: Your parents wanted you to succeed in school and in life, so they gave you the most love and attention when you got good report cards, won at sports, or earned the top spot in the orchestra. You were a bright kid, and put two and two together: I am extra lovable when I earn accolades. In my experience, this describes the childhood of a lot of people who strove to be special to gain their parents’ attention, and who carry this behavior into adulthood by trying to earn the love of others through compulsive work.

以“工作成瘾者”为例，情形可能是这样的：你的父母希望你在学校和人生中都取得成功，因此当你拿到好成绩单、在体育比赛中获胜，或在管弦乐团里拿到“首席”等顶尖位置时，他们会给予你最多的爱与关注。你是个聪明的孩子，很快就得出了结论：只要我获得赞誉，我就更值得被爱。以我的经验，这正是许多人的童年写照：他们拼命让自己“与众不同”以吸引父母的注意；而这种模式被带入成年，表现为通过强迫性地工作来试图换取他人的爱。

If you’re tending toward workaholism, you may very well be discovering that the returns to work are falling below the costs to your life. You are likely defensive about your heavy work habit, and confused about why such a noble virtue is earning complaints at home, instead of praise. Here are three steps you can take to resolve this issue.

如果你正走向工作成瘾（workaholism），你很可能已经发现，工作的回报正在低于它对你生活造成的代价。你可能会为自己的高强度工作习惯辩护，也困惑于：为什么这样一种被视为高尚的美德，在家里却换来抱怨而不是赞赏。以下是你可以采取的三个步骤来解决这个问题。

**1. Look at your origins and face the truth.**

1. 审视你的来处，直面真相。

Think back to your childhood: Did you struggle, say, to get your parents’ attention and affection unless you excelled in school or outside activities? Did being a “special” or a “bright” child make you feel loved? If so, don’t get mad at your folks: They were probably doing their best, perhaps trying to give you a better life than they’d had; or they may have been diligently following some now-outdated parenting advice. But the result is very likely that there’s a script in your head that says, You’re not inherently lovable as you are, so you better win the spelling bee. You are still trying to win some grown-up version of the spelling bee, even if your parents are long dead.

回想一下你的童年：是不是除非你在学校或课外活动中表现出色，否则很难得到父母的注意和关爱？当你被称为“特别的”或“聪明的”孩子时，是否才会感到被爱？如果是这样，也别责怪你的父母：他们多半是在尽力，也许是想让你过上比他们更好的生活；或者他们只是认真遵循了一些如今看来已经过时的育儿建议。但结果很可能是在你脑海里写下了这样一段内在脚本：你并非天生就值得被爱，所以最好去赢下那场拼字比赛（spelling bee，美国学校里的拼写竞赛）。即便你的父母早已离世，你仍在努力赢得某种“成人版”的拼字比赛。

**2. Give what you want to receive.**

2. 给予你想要获得的东西。

Benjamin Franklin wrote that “if you would be loved, love, and be loveable.” The profound truth behind this assertion is that you should give what you want to receive. So if you want more courtesy, start by being courteous to others. And if you want true love from your beloved, give them true love, in the intrinsic currency that satisfies our deeper needs. That means giving your self, not more money or things. Try this: Take a day away from work, turn off your phone, and give the person you love the attention they crave, all day.

本杰明·富兰克林曾写道：“如果你想被爱，就去爱，并且让自己可爱（讨人喜欢）。” 这句话的深意是：你想得到什么，就先去给予什么。所以，如果你想得到更多礼貌与尊重，就先对他人礼貌、尊重。而如果你想从爱人那里得到真爱，就用能满足我们更深层需要的“内在货币”（指无法用金钱买到的东西）去给予他们真爱。也就是说，给出你这个人本身——你的时间、注意力与陪伴——而不是更多的钱或物。试试这样做：请一天假，关掉手机，把整天的注意力都给你所爱的人，满足他们对你关注与陪伴的渴望。

**3. Make plans to change.**

3. 制定改变计划。

One day is not enough to repair your relationships, and big changes in your habits don’t take place overnight. If you were dependent on alcohol, say, I wouldn’t be so naive as to imagine that not drinking for a day would fix the problem. Breaking any addiction takes a lot of planning and resolve. Own up to your workaholism, acknowledge the roots of the problem, and work with your loved ones to make a long-term plan to live differently. That might mean planning a career or job change, in six months’ to a year’s time; scheduling weekend trips and tech-free vacations from now until then; and asking your family to hold you accountable for making progress.

只靠一天的努力，无法修复你的人际关系；而习惯的巨大改变也不可能一夜之间发生。就像如果你对酒精上瘾，我绝不会天真地以为只戒一天酒就能解决问题。摆脱任何成瘾都需要充分的计划和坚定的决心。坦承自己有工作成瘾（workaholism），承认问题的根源，并与至亲爱人一起制定一个长期的、真正改变生活方式的计划。这可能意味着：在未来六个月到一年内规划一次职业或岗位的调整；从现在开始安排周末短途出行和“无电子设备”的假期；并请家人监督你、为你的进展负责。

Let me close with one of my many conversations with work-addicted strivers that makes the point better perhaps than any studies can. An older, very wealthy man told me how he worked himself to a husk to earn his fortune. While he ground away at building his company over the decades, barely talking to his wife and kids, he dreamed about how marvelous it would be to be wealthy. I asked him what he imagined it would be like to be so rich. He said that he thought of the obvious stuff, such as houses and cars. “But mostly,” he said, “I thought if I was rich, my wife would love me.”

最后，我想用我与一位沉迷工作的奋斗者的谈话作结，这段对话也许比任何研究都更有说服力。一位年长且非常富有的男人告诉我，他为挣到那笔财富把自己累得只剩一副躯壳。几十年里，他埋头苦干地创业，几乎很少和妻子、孩子说话，却一直幻想着富有会有多美妙。我问他，想象中的“非常富有”是什么样子。他说，自己想到的无非是那些显而易见的东西，比如房子和汽车。“但最重要的是，”他说，“我以为如果我很有钱，我的妻子就会爱我。”

“And?” I asked, noting that he was not wearing a ring.

“然后呢？”我问道，注意到他没有戴婚戒。

“She didn’t.”

“她并没有（爱我）。”