The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

for example, elaborate computations - will sleep
off at the end of each day the fatigue that that day
has brought. The harm that is attributed to
overwork is hardly ever due to that cause, but to
some kind of worry or anxiety. The trouble with
emotional fatigue is that it interferes with rest. The
more tired a man becomes, the more impossible he
finds it to stop. One of the symptoms of
approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that
one’s work is terribly important, and that to take a
holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were
a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any
patient who considered his work important. The
nervous breakdown which appears to be produced
by the work is, in fact, in every case that I have
eyer known of personally, produced by some
emotional trouble from which the patient attempts
to escape by means of his work. He is loath to give
up his work because, if he does so, he will no
longer have anything to distract him from the
thoughts of his misfortune, whatever it may be. Of
course, the trouble may be fear of bankruptcy, and
in that case his work is directly connected with his