Workaholic: 5 Signs of a Workaholic

A workaholic is someone who prioritizes work performance over other facets of life. A workaholic will put an excessive amount of time into their work schedule, spending far above the expected number of hours in their work environment. Such workers often exude an insatiable need to be ahead of their coworkers, putting in long hours to demonstrate their dedication to a job, even though that intense work can ultimately be detrimental to one’s personal and professional life.

Workaholism is a behavioral addiction. Psychotherapists can work with workaholics to improve work-life balance, and programs such as Workaholics Anonymous can provide support and decrease relapse.

Workaholism and work engagement are two distinct ideas in professional settings. Workaholism means prioritizing work over everything else, often as staying late and bringing work home on weekends and paid leave. A workaholic will be guilty of overworking, which can negatively impact one's relationships with loved ones.

You can define work engagement, however, by dedication to one’s job, but this does not mean excessive work. To such workers, job satisfaction is as key as interpersonal relationships in the office, community building, and healthy work-life balance. Those practicing work engagement will get involved in extracurricular work activities and show conscientiousness and love for their occupation, but these hard workers will also practice self-care.

Workaholic tendencies include:

1. 1. Making a habit of taking work home: Workaholics will bring office laptops home after work, favoring their professional over personal lives. Remote workers might extend the workday far beyond typical working hours.
2. 2. Neglecting loved ones: Friends, family members, and other loved ones will be secondary to a workaholics’ professional life, leading to strained relationships.
3. 3. Perfectionism: Workaholics can be obsessive-compulsive perfectionists, spending more time than necessary to complete a specific project to ensure turns out perfect. They may become upset if a colleague identifies an error in their work. For this reasons, workaholics may not be strong collaborators in group settings.
4. 4. Staying late: Everyone has to stay late now and then, but workaholics will make it a habitual practice, staying long past their scheduled end time and blowing off personal commitments to work more. They will have longer work hours and are less likely to take time off.
5. 5. Talking about nothing but work: Workaholics’ personality traits will revolve around work. They will struggle to find anything else to talk about in and out of the office.

Being a workaholic can cause health problems and negative consequences in one’s personal life. Consider the negative effects of workaholism:

1. 1. Relationships: By putting all their time into work, workaholics may ruin personal relationships; this can lead to lowered self-esteem in their personal life, causing the person to fuel all their energy into their professional work.
2. 2. Sleep quality: Staying late and coming into the office early can lead to sleep debt, impacting one’s physical health and overall well-being. Over time, this can lead to burnout.
3. 3. Stress: Workaholics will experience feelings of guilt if they are not working, which can lead to stress and high blood pressure.

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