Personal growth and transformation
A Workaholic’s Guide to Reclaiming Your Life
Six strategies for finding better balance. by Malissa Clark
September 10, 2024
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Summary: Workaholism is when work dominates your thoughts and your activities, to the detriment of other aspects of your life, including but not limited to your relationships and your health. In this article, Malissa Clark presents depictions of workaholism and equips readers with six coping strategies to break the cycle. Through mechanisms such as redefining what is and is not urgent, fixing the workaholic clock, and embracing rest and recovery, workaholics can unlearn toxic behaviors and reclaim their time and lives.
My daughter, Alex, was born three years into my PhD program, smack in the middle of midterms. I was at a coffee shop, scrambling to complete a take-home exam, when my contractions started. I told myself I would continue until they were consistent, which bought me several more hours, until the pain was unbearable. I reluctantly stopped working and headed home (and shortly thereafter to the hospital).
My memories of that day, and the days following Alex’s birth, should have been about the experience of labor, the joy of childbirth, and the building of a family. I was instead filled with anxiety and panic over the fact that I hadn’t finished my midterm, which I forced myself to return to within 72 hours. The next week was a blur of sleepless nights and feverish work when I could muster the energy. I then took two additional weeks off — but after that “break,” I went right back to my classes and teaching obligations.
Why, I ask myself now, did I not request a substitute for the rest of the semester, or an extension on my coursework? How could I have been so invested in work when I had a literal newborn at home? The answer is simple: I was a workaholic.
A workaholic is not someone who simply works a lot of hours — in fact there’s only a weak correlation between number of hours worked and problematic “overwork” or workaholism. Instead, the term refers to a deleterious inability to disconnect from your job. When work dominates your thoughts and your activities, to the detriment of other aspects of your life, relationships, and health, you are displaying workaholic tendencies. Note that this is not a clinical diagnosis — it’s not in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM — but the literature on it is deep and convincing. Workaholism is detrimental to both people who may experience it and the organizations they work for. Often, companies contribute to a culture of overwork without even realizing it; while I’ve addressed how they can reverse this culture, their efforts alone are not enough. The change must also be yours, and it must be personal.
Today, I still carry guilt over the fact that I prioritized work over my daughter during those first few months of her life. Because of my research, most of which I’ve published in my book, Never Not Working: Why the Always-On Culture Is Bad for Business — and How to Fix It, I know that my story is not unique. Many of the individuals I’ve interviewed recounted similar feelings of guilt and regret once they realized they were workaholics.
Take Gabe, founder and CEO of a tech company. Gabe’s realization of how much he gave up for his work came at the most unlikely of times — when watching the final scene of The Notebook. As he reflected on the deep connection between the couple in that scene, Gabe remembers being overcome with feelings of regret. Thinking about his own relationship with his wife and kids, Gabe realized he was not living the life he wanted to live. He loved his work more than his family. At that point, Gabe was working between 60 and 80 hours per week. Even when he wasn’t working, Gabe admitted he was constantly working in his head.
Then there’s Ellen, an educational leader. She found herself working from 8 AM to 10 PM daily, often waking up in the middle of the night to send just one more email. Ellen also put off taking care of herself. When her doctor found a lump in her breast and needed to schedule her for a lumpectomy, Ellen negotiated, saying it needed to wait until her vacation, which was an entire month away. By the time of the procedure, the triple-negative tumor had developed aggressively. Had Ellen waited any longer, the cancer could have been lethal. Looking back, she realizes now that her successes at work came at an immense personal cost. Thinking of how she delayed her lumpectomy, Ellen bemoaned, “What kind of idiot was I? I put myself at life-and-death risk — all because of my workaholism.”
Gabe, Ellen, and I — and many like us — are unbelievably adept at our jobs, appearing incredibly confident, competent, and productive. But this productivity comes at an unreasonable personal cost. News flash: It’s never worth it.
If you recognize yourself in our stories and want to change, I have good news: It’s possible to loosen your workaholic tendencies and thrive both on the job and in the rest of your life, without having to choose between the two. In this article, I’ll walk you through exercises that may help you identify workaholic behavior and begin to mitigate it. I’ve found these activities particularly effective, especially for people who sense they have a problem but don’t know where to start. I’ve also found that even small improvements tend to have an outsize and lasting impact.
We’ll focus on six strategies:
Redefining “urgent”
Reinventing the to-do list
Learning to say “no” and delegate
Fixing the workaholic clock
Controlling rumination
Embracing rest and recovery
Redefining “Urgent”
Workaholics tend to view everything job-related as high-priority; Workaholics Anonymous’s Book of Discovery calls this “frantic multitasking.” Many people I’ve spoken with talk about how they almost feel addicted to adrenaline when they are in this mode; there’s no better way to create a perpetual mini-crisis than to assign everything as urgent. The problem is this means we put ourselves and our bodies in a constant fight-or-flight state, which significantly increases our stress.
Lauren, who agreed to be interviewed for my book, is a former academic and member of Workaholics Anonymous, an international nonprofit organization that holds meetings for those who desire to stop working compulsively. She recalled one vacation, when she stopped by a grocery store on a hot day to pick up a cake for a family party. While her husband waited in the car with their crying children, she stood in the parking lot, the cake beginning to melt, while she made a phone call. “I’m having this conversation with this new study coordinator…to make sure that she was doing things right. Remembering all the little details.”
“It felt urgent,” Lauren says. “And it felt like things were going to spiral out of control and somehow be a reflection on me if I wasn’t there.” It was so urgent that she interrupted her vacation, ruined a cake, and made her family miserable — all so she could initiate a call with a person who, by the way, didn’t appreciate being micromanaged.
At the core, issues such as Lauren’s are all about prioritization. It’s not always easy, but sometimes the brute force of setting artificial restrictions is a good way to begin redefining your relationship with work and seeing “urgent” in a new light. So I recommend starting by doing a retroactive review of your tasks. This can help you see that not everything is as urgent as it seems in the moment.
Look at a list of things that were on your to-do list, say, a month ago, and think about how important they seem now, in retrospect. Ask others what they think, too. You may realize that what was driving the urgency around some tasks wasn’t their actual importance but rather your workaholic reflex to treat any unfinished work as acutely needing to be completed (and perfectly!). But looking back, you may note that the task didn’t matter all that much or didn’t need to be completed perfectly in that time frame. For example, what was Lauren’s urgent matter with the study coordinator? Upon reflection she noted: “I can’t even remember.”
Keep notes on these tasks and try to spot them when they arise again. When they do, force yourself to critically question if it’s actually a priority. If not, assign them further down your list.
There are other ways to think about urgency. In her TED Talk, “An ER Doctor on Triaging Your ‘Crazy Busy’ Life,” Dr. Darria Long uses an emergency room triage model to recategorize to-dos. Red is immediately life-threatening. Yellow is serious, but not as urgent as red. Green is minor. There’s one other category: black, which means that no measures can save the patient. Applying this lens to a to-do list — again, with discipline and honesty — forces you to make decisions about what is truly important rather than treating everything as urgent. For example, a colleague asking for your help in finding a contact may be timely, but it isn’t as urgent as the rapidly approaching project deadline you’ve been working on day in and day out. So your colleague is a green, and your deadline is a yellow. At your healthiest, only personal, health, and family matters will escalate to red and black.
With experience, you will see that even though you deprioritized a work task, the sky didn’t fall when you didn’t complete it right away, perfectly, or even at all.
Reinventing the To-Do List
Once you’ve started to redefine “urgent,” it may be time to take a closer look at your relationship to your to-do list entirely. That’s because, for the workaholic, a to-do list becomes an invitation to overwork. We become almost addicted to anticipating — and then getting — the satisfaction of checking things off. And for good reason: Research shows that accomplishing a goal can give us a burst of dopamine. We feel positive emotions and are motivated to keep working toward accomplishing another goal. However, the stark reality is that to-do lists are never going to be fully completed. For the workaholic, this fact becomes self-reinforcing.
In one study, for example, researchers found that when people have high workloads, they want to take a break — but are much less likely to do so when they feel a strong desire to “get it over with.” Something that can be checked off today leaves one less thing to do tomorrow — theoretically. Now imagine the same scenario for a workaholic, who sees a high workload as a positive. For them, the drive to ensure more work by adding to the list outweighs any satisfaction from completing a task. To the workaholic, a break is a signal that something’s wrong. A to-do list that gets shorter is a threat that triggers a need to fill the empty space.
You can break this pattern, however, by reinventing your to-do list and its purpose. The key is to transform it into a document in which the completion of a task isn’t the point. There is no focus on finishing what’s on the list or crossing things off. Instead, you can use your to-do list as a method for mapping and prioritizing.
One way to do this is by using the Eisenhower Matrix. Also known as the “urgent-versus-important matrix,” this tool helps individuals identify what tasks they may be spending too much (or too little) time on. Start by taking your to-do list, which is probably a linear set of bullet points or numbered items, and placing all the items on the matrix.
For the workaholic, almost everything will end up in the top right quadrant at first. Everything is urgent and important! But if you can force yourself to map with some self-reflection and honesty — and overcome those feelings that all work is all-important — you can start to let go of some tasks. For example, things that fall in the bottom right quadrant (high urgency, low importance) are workaholic enablers. They feel necessary but aren’t. You are the one overestimating the urgency, perhaps because you’re afraid that if you treat it as less urgent, others will judge you. Or maybe you’re after the adrenaline of having a pressing task to take on.
Try letting go of the to-dos in this quadrant entirely, or at least push them off. Say to yourself, “This is not important now. It can wait.” Also have the courage to eliminate entirely low-urgency, low-importance to-dos (bottom left) and learn to respect but not immediately address high-importance, low-urgency items (top left). Through experience, you will see that deprioritizing some work tasks isn’t the end of the world, or your career.
Equally vital, make sure you force yourself to put to-dos on the matrix that are not about work at all. If you are intent on resetting your life and escaping workaholism, you should have at least one high-urgency, high-importance task that isn’t job-related.
Learning to Say “No” and Delegate
Workaholics tend to be poor delegators. Their drive to always have work to do means they’d rather take it on themselves than give it to someone else. They don’t say “no” to requests because it feels good to be asked to do a task. And their need for things to be done perfectly means they can’t trust others to do the work to their standards.
Overcoming this predisposition takes practice. In his podcast WorkLife with Adam Grant, the Wharton professor talks about how he practices saying “no” more often than he is inclined to. He does it by setting priorities that may echo the Eisenhower Matrix method for your to-do list. Here’s how he describes his method:
Who to help? Family first, students second, colleagues third, everyone else fourth.
When to help? At designated times that don’t interfere with my goals.
How to help? In areas where I have a unique contribution to make.
He adds, “Now, when people reach out with requests that stretch beyond my wheelhouse or my calendar, I refer them to relevant resources: an article or an expert.”
Maybe for you, the people you want to help are your family and friends, with work colleagues coming later. The timing around when you help may vary, but it could be in moments that don’t interfere with your self-care — for example, say “no” to things at lunch and any time before 9 AM and after 5 PM. The “how” can serve as a much-needed boundary; if the ask is bigger than expected, you might aid in the first two steps and direct them on how to proceed independently from there. Ultimately, this exercise is a reminder that your time is yours.
Another idea is to keep your mantras close by as a reminder and forcing mechanism. One woman I interviewed from Workaholics Anonymous reminds herself to say “no” by keeping a laminated index card on her desk so that it is always in her line of sight. It displays two affirmations she learned from Workaholics Anonymous: “My life is full and underscheduled,” and “I say no, even when offered the best.”
Fixing the Workaholic Clock
Workaholics tend to underestimate how long it will take to do something, so they overcommit to doing too many things in too short a time. This is the workaholic-clock error that leads to so many problems — not only for the workaholic but for others who are pulled into projects and tasks that have been set on an unreasonable timeline. And unlike employees or coworkers who may simply fall behind on such deadlines, workaholics are much more likely to do anything they physically can to try to meet them — often at the expense of their well-being.
To reset the workaholic clock, you must first acknowledge that your clock is off, and then gauge how far off it is. So, for the next week, before you start any task, write down the amount of time you think it will take and afterward compare that to how long it actually takes. For example, say you estimated that it would take two hours to complete a task, but you actually spent three hours on it — that’s 1.5 times your estimate (3 divided by 2). I recommend doing this by starting a timer before you begin your task. Do this for multiple tasks in order to identify the pattern between your estimated and actual times of completion, and figure out how much longer than anticipated things take you, on average.
Now, say I expect a task will take 20 hours, but I know I tend to work 1.8 times longer than my estimated time. My first calculation would be my expected time (20 hours) multiplied by my projected pace (1.8 workaholic clock), with a product of 36 hours that I should actually allocate to complete said task. There’s a catch, though. A workaholic might look at that number and say, “OK, 36 hours is about two and a half days of work,” because they expect to put in 14-hour days. Instead, you must force yourself to budget the time on a nonworkaholic schedule. Either extend the deadline by a few days, or bring in a few more team members to help lighten everyone’s load.
You can also try implementing the workaholic-clock calculation in your preparation process for larger projects. By knowing how much time to allocate toward each task, you’ll be able to prioritize and organize each one according to the time needed. Done regularly, this exercise works to relieve intimidation and anxiety around time management.
Controlling Rumination
At the core of workaholism is something that’s a positive — a passion for something. It’s the inability to throttle that passion, to turn it off, that becomes the issue. Passion becomes an all-consuming obsession — to the point that the workaholic actively seeks out ways to fuel it.
Adam Grant once referred to me as a “metaworkaholic,” trying to apply my obsessive work habits to study obsessive work habits. In our conversations, we’ve also talked about how we actively try to avoid a Netflix binge or YouTube distractions. For us, it takes willpower not to work. We have to force ourselves not to engage in the next task.
Grant has a strategy to help with this tendency. If he notices he’s ruminating about work — thinking about it while trying to enjoy family time; propping open a laptop while watching TV; or feeling stress, anxiety, or guilt about not working — he forces himself to stop. He asks himself why he feels that. He has some questions and statements he’ll repeat to himself: “Who said I should be working every minute? I don’t even have a boss!” and “What is the point of having tenure if I don’t get to decide for myself how many hours I will be spending on which projects?”
You can come up with your own mantras specific to your situation when you find yourself in similar moments. It may be something as simple as, “This work can wait. I need downtime to recover.” I also recommend practicing all the mindfulness techniques you can and finding one that sticks, whether it’s meditation, breathing exercises, or something else. Remember: You won’t be able to simply eliminate rumination. You have to learn to listen to it and work with it.
Rumination is one of the hardest workaholic tendencies to combat because it’s one of the most internal. It happens in a place — your mind — where no one sees it, and it’s hard to control. Thoughts and feelings come whether you want them to or not. And what you feel may be quite different from what the world sees.
Further, workaholics often tell themselves they can’t stop working because their students, patients, clients, or customers count on them. They use a fear of letting other people down as a driver. It can help to talk to some of those people. Ask them if they will feel let down if you put in a little less time or stop communicating with them after hours. My experience with workaholics is that they are surprised at how relieved people are that you’re taking steps to improve your well-being.
Embracing Rest and Recovery
Our bodies are not physically able to remain in constant fight-or-flight mode. Part of a healthy stress response is the eventual calming down of our regulatory systems, which allows us to return to homeostasis. Research definitively shows that when we rest and engage in recovery activities, we have better well-being, particularly when we have a lot on our plates.
Unfortunately, workaholics have told me that even sleep becomes “a nuisance” and “a waste of time,” and they are almost annoyed that it can’t be engineered out of their lives. Rest when they are not sleeping feels doubly foolish because, in their minds, it’s not necessary. However, as burnout management coach Emily Ballesteros put it to me, “The only time you rest should not be when you are dead asleep. You have to have rest in your waking hours.”
Here are four ways you can adopt rest and recovery as a way to combat your workaholic tendencies, including concepts from the recovery literature about reducing the strain on our bodies and improving our well-being as outlined by preeminent scholars Sabine Sonnentag and Charlotte Fritz:
Psychological detachment. This is a full mental “disconnect” from work, switching off your work-related thoughts when you’re not in the office or don’t need to be working. To facilitate psychological detachment, force yourself to do a nonwork activity that shifts your attention toward something (or someone) else. Think of activities that seem interesting, or people you’ve always wanted to spend more time with. If you force yourself to engage with one of them, you may become engrossed and detached from work. This could include something like immersing yourself in a good book or TV series, cooking, or catching up with an old friend (but resist the temptation to talk about your job!).
Physical activity. Of course, we all know that medical research has shown the positive effects of exercise on our mood and physical health, but it can also help us rest and recover from work, too. Physical activity has been shown to be even more beneficial for workaholics than for the average worker; one study found that those higher in workaholic tendencies were happier in the evening and felt more recovered the next morning on days during which they exercised or participated in sports after work.
Relaxation. Meditation or other relaxation exercises such as yoga lower your sympathetic nervous system activation, which brings your heart rate down, helps you breathe more deeply, and relaxes your muscles. It literally takes you out of the fight-or-flight response, reducing stress. Many of the individuals I spoke with from Workaholics Anonymous shared how they have found ways to relax. Debra, a licensed clinical counselor, said she takes a few minutes each morning to practice putting golf balls in her living room or listening to jazz music. Also, she and a friend each committed to taking two quiet pauses every day to take three or four slow, deep breaths.
Mastery experiences. This involves engaging in non-work-related activities that challenge you to learn and grow. Any number of activities can fall into this category. For one of my graduate students, it’s woodworking. My editor plays guitar. Others may pursue learning a foreign language, perfecting their baking or gardening skills, or taking up a sport. It could be anything, really. The most important thing is that you decide what’s the most restorative for you, because having control over what you choose to engage in during your leisure time is also related to more-positive outcomes.
I also encourage you to experiment with freeing up more time during your typical work hours. Schedule exercise, rest, and mastery experiences. Research on exercise during lunch breaks, for example, has shown that people come back after the break with even more vigor to finish out their workday. Make intentional choices to choose recovery over work. It’s OK to do something that you find pleasurable for the pure goal of finding joy.
. . .
If you’re a workaholic, the idea of detaching probably seems difficult. You might even experience a physical reaction at the thought of carving out time in the middle of the day to not work.
All of that is normal, which is why you’ve seen me repeatedly mention “forcing” yourself to try something, being open-minded about an alternative approach, and being disciplined and honest with yourself. I get it. Although there are things I am much better at today (such as setting boundaries protecting my weekends), I am still a work in progress. This past December, I went on vacation without my laptop for the first time in my adult life — which, for me, was a big step. If that sounds daunting — try a laptop-free evening as a baby step. Remember: This stuff takes work. But that work, I promise, pays off and can get you to a healthier and happier place.
Malissa Clark is an associate professor of industrial and organizational psychology at the University of Georgia, where she leads the Healthy Work Lab. She is one of the world’s leading scholars on workaholism, overwork, burnout, and employee well-being. In addition to serving as an expert consultant to organizations on these issues, Clark and her work have been featured in outlets including the New York Times, CNBC, the BBC, Time, Business Insider, Forbes, Bloomberg, and others.
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