Workaholics Anonymous—A 12-Step Program of Recovery and Personal Transformation (Step 2)

Workaholics Anonymous—A 12-Step Program of Recovery and Personal Transformation (Step 2)

The speed of life has never been faster than it is today… and it is speeding up exponentially.

Consider this:

• In 2006, the amount of data created and captured was more than 3 million times all the information in all the books ever written. On top of that, 3,000 new books are published each and every day.

• 210 billion e-mails are sent every day, more than 2 million every second. For the 1.3 billion e-mail users, that equals an average of 161 demands on our time every day.

• The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the planet.

• In 2004, it was estimated that knowledge was doubling every 18 months. IBM now predicts in the next couple of years, information will double every 11 hours.

For a workaholic, these are dangerous times. The natural boundaries of work, personal and family times have been erased. Technology has pierced the walled garden between these important segments of our lives. There is now a constant open door to our attention, one that is always connected, always available for contact and always at the mercy of a never-ending stream of information and demands. Each day we wake up with an inbox full of e-mail and we swim all day in incoming phone calls, instant messages, text messages, news updates, notes, files and paperwork—all with new requests and demands on our time.

In STEP 1 we discussed the importance of focusing on a few major priorities, instead of everything. Hopefully, you have stopped doing the minor tasks that keep your accumulative achievements minor, and you now have the time to commit yourself to the major projects that will contribute to your breakthrough achievements. Now that you have removed many of the distracting tasks and activities, it becomes important to protect against the accumulation of new ones.

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