To your health - importance of leisure

Nation's Business, March, 1988 by Stephen A. Franzmeier

To Your Health

Are We Having Fun Yet?

"We feel guilty over pleasure so we take care not to get too much of it," actor Warren Oates wrote in Confessions of a Workaholic (Abingdon Press).

And so it is for 85 percent of the executives who attend the seminars on the value of leisure conducted nation-wide by Seattle psychologist Barbara Mackoff. Those executives say guilt usually overtakes them when they are supposed to be enjoying themselves. A voice seems to say: "You really ought to be working."

Psychologist Bruce A. Baldwin of Wilmington, N.C., maintains that to achieve the greatest success, in our jobs and in life, we must strike a "creative balance" between work, on the one hand, and satisfying involvements in family, leisure activity and friendships, on the other. But many business people are workaholics. Leisure activity is rare or work-related. Enjoyment of long-cherished personal interests is left for retirement.

All work and no play will, however, turn rabbits into tortoises, Baldwin warns. As a workaholic executive, you may be reliable and productive. But you are likely also to be inefficient, unimaginative and self-destructive. You may lose your verve, your creativity, your excitement over challenges . . . and sometimes your health and your family.

In five years, an entrepreneur we'll call Roger had built a health-care business from a few employees to several hundred. But he had driven himself so hard, and he was so competitive, that he was developing symptoms of stress-related heart problems--even though he was still in his middle 30s--and his marriage was nearing divorce.

Baldwin persuaded Roger to delegate responsibility to subordinates so he would have more time for his wife and children. He taught Roger when to turn off his competitive instincts. Sometimes those instincts work against us, as in private relationships and during leisure activities. Sometimes, too, they work against us in business; the soft sell can be far more effective.

Roger has learned to be "successful" during his leisure time. Now he is a baseball player in a community league. He gets more exercise, which releases tension. He takes more days off to be with his family; his marriage is no longer in jeopardy. And his business is thriving.

If, like Roger, you accept the notion that you could be better at your job if your life was balanced between work and pleasure, you may still face a problem: anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure after pleasure has been postponed too long. One's sense of pleasure can atrophy like an unused muscle. The executive's dilemma, Baldwin says, is that the hard work required to become successful often also "sabotages our ability to enjoy the fruits of our labors."

You may actually need help in rediscovering what is fun for you. In fact, you may never have known. You may only have followed fads and gone along with friends, and you may never have stopped to ask, "What do I really enjoy?"

To help his clients answer that question, Eldos Cable of Irvine, Calif., a leisure counselor, asks them to complete a "Leisure History Inventory" that includes these instructions:

List three activities about which you've spent your life saying, "Gee, if I only had time to . . .."

List the five things you would want to do if you learned that a giant ladybug was going to devour the earth in three weeks.

List the activities that get your blood racing.

In the same vein, Patsy Edwards, president of Constructive Leisure, Inc., in Los Angeles, suggests asking yourself these questions before you choose a leisure activity: What subjects get me going conversationally? Do I enjoy being with people I know more than with new people? Do I enjoy physical or mental activity more?

"To be stimulating," says Edwards, "an activity must fascinate you, personally. It should have a purpose and it should challenge your abilities, allowing you to feel competent."

Edwards offers these additional guidelines:

1. If your work is sedentary, choose active recreation. You'll experience kinesthesia, the sense of pleasure derived from moving the body and muscles.

2. Choose activities that give you a chance to excel.

3. Don't feel guilty about doing absolutely nothing if that's what you feel like doing. Inactivity can be a refreshing change of pace for workaholics.

But many business people find that even thinking about leisure can be intensely difficult.

For workaholics, the ability to take time off--and enjoy it--may come only when they recognize that enjoying leisure time can enhance their prospects for a productive, successful career in business.

You can have it all, Baldwin says-- success in both work and leisure. In fact, he adds, you must have it all, if you are to realize your full potential.

Photo: Are you one of those executives who just can't seem to leave the office behind?