Speaking of Psychology: Are you a workaholic or just a hard worker? With Malissa Clark, PhD

Many of us have trouble switching off from work, whether it’s staying late at the office, checking messages on vacation, or lying awake running through tomorrow’s to-do list. Malissa Clark, PhD, of the University of Georgia, discusses how workaholism differs from simply working hard; why it's about more than hours on the clock; how it affects physical health, mental health, and relationships; and how workplaces can encourage a healthier relationship with work.

Malissa Clark, PhD, is a professor of industrial/organizational (I-O) psychology at the University of Georgia, where she is director of the Healthy Work Lab. She is a recognized expert on the topics of workaholism, overwork, burnout, and employee well-being and is the author of Never Not Working: Why the Always-On Culture Is Bad for Business—and How to Fix It .

Kim Mills: It’s 5 o’clock and your workday is technically over, but you tell yourself you’ll just answer one more email. Before you know it, 2 hours have passed and you’re still at your desk. Or you’re supposed to be on vacation, but you can’t resist reading work emails and responding every time your phone pings with a message from a colleague. In our always-connected world, it’s easier than ever to let work encroach on every hour of the day. But psychologists who study workaholism say that compulsive overwork is detrimental to our physical and mental health, and perhaps surprisingly, even to our careers.

Today, we’re going to talk to a psychologist who studies workaholism about what it is and how to combat it. What’s the difference between being a workaholic and just being a hard worker who’s invested in her job? Is workaholism an addiction? How does it affect people’s physical and mental health and their relationships? What can you do if you recognize workaholic tendencies in yourself or in someone you care about? And what can organizations and employers do to encourage a healthy relationship with work among their employees?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I’m Kim Mills.

My guest today is Dr. Malissa Clark, a professor of industrial organizational psychology at the University of Georgia, where she directs the Healthy Work Lab. She’s a leading expert on workaholism, overwork and employee wellbeing. Her research has been published in top academic journals and featured in publications including Time, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and U.S. News and World Report. Her 2024 book, Never Not Working: Why the Always-On Culture Is Bad for Business—and How to Fix It, was recognized as a top management book by People Management, Management Today, and The Next Big Idea Club. She also recently spoke with APA’s magazine, Monitor on Psychology, for an article on workaholism and work addiction.

Dr. Clark, thank you for joining me.

Malissa Clark, PhD: Thank you so much for having me.

Mills: I’ve seen workaholism go by a few different names, including “work addiction” and “compulsive overwork.” What term do you use in your research and how is this situation different from just working really hard or being very dedicated to one’s job?

Clark: I use the term workaholism. To be honest, I don’t love the term work addiction, but it is what it is at this point. It’s what is coined. It’s not a formal addiction in the DSM, and I’m also not a clinical psychologist, which is partly why I don’t use the word “addiction”  specifically, but workaholism is multifaceted and a lot of people don’t realize that. They think, okay, it’s just someone who works all the time. But those examples that you pointed out really touch on how nuanced it is. And the way I study it and measure it is actually with four different components. There’s a motivational piece where people feel like they ought to be working all the time. You probably have heard of a concept called intrinsic motivation, which is working because you love to work. Workaholism is driven by introjected motivation. It’s a concept that psychologists know—it’s working because you feel like you ought to. It’s partially internalized values of society and things that you learned growing up, but it’s not truly of your own volition. So it’s this kind of controlled motivation, but I just describe it as a pit in my stomach feeling like I ought to be working.

The second component is the cognitive component where you’re thinking about work all the time. And this is often not talked about enough in my opinion, because it’s this running dialogue about work in your head. It keeps you up, keeps you from falling asleep. It distracts you when you’re talking with your family and what are you doing, you’re thinking about work. So that’s the cognitive component.

There’s an emotional piece to it that goes along with introjected motivation, this feeling of guilt and anxiety that kind of builds and builds if you’re not working, which is partly what drives you to pick up the phone or check your email.

And then the fourth component is the most obvious, it’s the behavioral component. Workaholics do tend to work longer than expected, longer than their colleagues. It is related to work hours, but it’s honestly just kind of a moderate relationship or correlation. So doing things like working on vacation, all of that is part of the behavioral component. So it is truly multifaceted. You can think about it sort of like a compulsion to work, using that loosely and not in the technical clinical psychology sense.

Mills: Now you’ve studied how workaholism affects people’s lives, their physical health, their mental health, and their relationships. What have you and other researchers in this area found?

Clark: Right. So pretty universally negative outcomes for individuals, for those around them, family—both in terms of physical health outcomes, we find that workaholism is linked to poor health. They tend to not exercise as much sometimes or sleep very well, and that kind of takes a toll. But there’s some recent research showing links with cardiovascular risk and actograph studies showing the sleep impacts of workaholism and even linked to inflammation. And so we see these health impacts.

We see self-reported lower mental health, greater burnout, just generally kind of self-report of how you’re feeling tends to be universally negative. And impacts on the family. I personally conducted interviews of spouses of workaholics and we really see the impacts on the family by talking to the spouses. The relationship quality suffers, the spouse is taking more on, so they’re becoming more exhausted. They probably are becoming resentful. There’s impacts on the children.

And there’s impacts at work. There’s not enough research on this particular area in my opinion, but we do see research on if a supervisor, for example, is higher in workaholism, they are having negative impacts on their employees, that their employees are basically feeling like they need to be responding all the time because of this pressure that their boss is putting on them. And just in general, we find workaholism related to negative workplace behaviors like counterproductive work behaviors, which we don’t want at work. So things that indirectly or directly harm the organization. So this could be things like being rude to a coworker or those types of counterproductive work behaviors, not necessarily things like stealing and whatnot.

But yeah, we just see universally negative impacts on individuals, those around them, and their work suffers too. We are not finding relationships with job performance, either the self-reported or supervisor reported performance that’s consistent across all of our research. And we’ve conducted meta-analyses, which is basically a quantitative synthesis of all the research in this particular area, and we’re not finding relationships with work performance. So workaholic behaviors are not making people better workers and they’re making them more difficult to be around, to be quite honest. In my opinion, it’s very clear that the impacts are negative.

Mills: Do workaholics themselves tend to think that by being on all the time that that’s going to help their careers, even though the research shows that it doesn’t? I mean, are they deluded?

Clark: Well, for my book, I interviewed many individuals from Workaholics Anonymous, so that’s actually a real organization that exists. And so I feel like the answer to your question, it comes from just hearing from self-described workaholics. And I can say that in many cases, yes. It’s almost like they trick themselves into, this is what I have to do, this is what I need, even in the face of negative health consequences. And I kid you not, every single person I interviewed from Workaholics Anonymous had some sort of health impact of their workaholism. And even with that, I distinctly remember one man I spoke to, he said he will never stop working. He will literally work until he dies. And it did not matter that he’s had a heart attack in the past and his wife has said that she was going to divorce him.

And with him, the only reason he was part of Workaholics Anonymous is his wife said, “You’re going to do this or I’m leaving you.” And so it was almost like he’s dragged into this. And I relate personally to, this is why I studied it in the first place, is I relate to this idea of telling yourself, I’m doing this for this reason, I’m doing this because this’ll help me succeed. So I do think there is a lot of confirming this with yourself.

Mills: Then are there particular jobs where the expectations are so high that workaholism is encouraged, if not expected? I mean, I’m thinking of some law firms where people are just expected to put in crazy hours or even here in DC, people who work on Capitol Hill, they do crazy hours. I mean, you’re expected to be there all night because Congress is in. Is that the problem, that the jobs are encouraging workaholism?

Clark: That’s part of the problem. And there are certainly these types of jobs and occupations that the culture is, it’s a workaholic culture. This is what newcomers are told when they get in. Let me give you an example. One woman I interviewed for the book, she worked at one of the big consulting firms and the very first day her coworker said, Look, let me tell you something. If you ever need to leave to go to a doctor’s appointment or something like that, leave your purse on your desk and just take your keys. Why would that be? Well, I mean, because we know that if we’re going to actually leave work to go to an appointment, of course we’re going to take our purse. And so it was basically sending that signal that you don’t leave your desk. And jobs like that, like you said in DC, some of the government jobs, I mean doctors, lawyers, you name it.

But what was really fascinating was in my research is I have had people in all sorts of jobs across the whole range: K through 12 teachers, I even had a race car driver and a llama farmer. I mean, it goes the whole range, so it’s not linked to specific jobs. Another person I spoke with, she said she thought it was her job, and so she quit and she got a new job and realized she was still doing the same thing even though that job wasn’t as demanding with their organizational culture. And then that’s when she realized, Oh, this is partially internally driven. So the way I see it, there are some internal drivers that, whether it’s dispositional tendencies or whatnot, that do play a role for sure, but the setting, the organizational culture can exacerbate those workaholic tendencies.

Mills: Is it something that is typical of say perfectionists? Are those the kinds of people who become workaholics?

Clark: They’re highly related, I will say. Yeah. So there’s different kinds of perfectionists too, and we see some of the more, I would say, maladaptive qualities of workaholics such as feeling negative emotions when you’re not working or thinking about work all the time. In my research, those two in particular seem to be related to the aspect of perfectionism that is that you’re never going to live up to your standards, your internal standards. Whereas some people call it the more productive dimension of perfectionism, perfectionistic strivings, which is perhaps considered the healthier aspect, that’s more related to the behavioral and the motivational components of workaholism. But bottom line is they’re very highly related and we see perfectionistic tendencies in your childhood that are kind of early indicators. So yeah, a lot of workaholics are also perfectionists.

Mills: And just to follow up on that, I mean, if I were a parent of a child and I thought that there was potential workaholism flowering there, I mean, what would I be looking for?

Clark: There’s actually a concept called school addiction that I’ve read about. I haven’t personally studied it, but yeah, you can, I think, look for the same sort of patterns if your child is constantly worried about their grade or you see them, instead of taking a moment to play with friends, they are studying for their exam, which is two weeks away, for hours and not being able to put their schoolwork down. I think those are really good indicators that there’s some workaholic tendencies developing for sure.

Mills: Well, our country is sometimes stereotyped as a country of workaholics, and I’m wondering if that’s borne out in the research.

Clark: There are some cross-cultural studies that show that some cultures on average tend to show higher levels of workaholism. The U.S. is one of them. Japan, China, South Korea, those are probably the ones that show the highest levels. What’s interesting though is Western Europe countries, a lot of them, especially the Nordic countries, we see lower levels on average, again, but there’s not a ton of research on this. But if I had to explain where most workaholism researchers are, it’s in Europe, which we would think we need more of the research here, but that I think just goes to show that it’s just culturally acceptable here. And maybe that’s why in Europe we see more researchers studying this phenomenon because people take it more seriously.

Mills: Well, we don’t get a lot of vacation in this country compared to other places. And I’m wondering, is that something that would help mitigate workaholism or help to promote a healthier relationship that workers have with their workplace?

Clark: I would love more vacation. Yeah.

Mills: But would you take it?

Clark: I mean, isn’t that the million dollar question? Yeah. So I do think as a society, we need more sanctioned vacation days, but regulations that mandate that organizations have to give so much vacation time because we are far short compared to other countries in terms of days off. But I do think that even with that, we would need to make sure people take it. Use-it-or-lose-it policies sometimes are beneficial. I think people don’t want to lose something that they have. But things like unlimited vacation time, I don’t really think are the solution because then it turns into this weird pressure of like, Well, what are my peers taking? What are my coworkers taking in terms of days off? I don’t want to look like I’m taking too much. And so I definitely think that having it taken out of the worker’s control almost and the organization or some regulation saying, nope, these are the days you have to take.

And there are even right to disconnect laws in some European countries. I don’t know if I’m necessarily 100% on board with that, but it’s an interesting concept. Right to disconnect laws is basically that the organization is not allowed to reach out to the employee if they are off the clock. So again, I don’t know if I’m completely on board with that, but the philosophy behind that I am, because I do think setting those norms and making sure it’s not expected and organizations really, really shouldn’t unless there’s an emergency—that can help people to truly disconnect.

Mills: Many of us work from home these days, especially since the pandemic, and we have our work emails on our personal phones and computers, so we can check any time. Has workaholism gotten more common, do you think, as technology has made us more reachable?

Clark: What we do know from the research is that technology does tether us to work in an unhealthy way, and simply just having that access to work 24/7 and them having access to you 24/7, really what it’s hindering is your ability to psychologically detach from work because you know that you’re always possibly reachable. And having that technology is very tempting. If you have these workaholic tendencies, you’re much more likely to have your email go to your phone and check it just throughout the day. It almost becomes a habit. A lot of us have this, just if we’re bored, if we’re in line at the grocery store, what do we do? We pull out our phone and maybe check our email. Maybe you can relate to that. And so being more accessible, it really hinders that detachment both physically and mentally from work.

Mills: Are there other things that workplaces can do to basically discourage people from becoming workaholics or manifesting those tendencies?

Clark: Yeah, there’s a ton of things they can do if they’re willing to fully see that through. The culture broadly plays a role and then how that manifests with the leader behaviors and what is rewarded is all something to think about. So for example, is the organization rewarding and praising people for being accessible on the weekends and after hours? One of the companies I spoke with, one of their employees told me that the CEO in an all-hands call was praising another one of the employees for being available whenever he needed him. But the issue was he worked all the way around the world. And so being available all the time meant this person was up all night basically. And so those are little signals that give indications of what is valued in that culture or in the organizational culture. And so what is rewarded, who is rewarded and why.

But also things that the leader, I think the leader, the supervisor manager is the most direct impact on us. If our boss is constantly texting us and emailing us, and we know that their personality is such that they want a response immediately. A lot of workaholics have this tendency to think everything is urgent. And so if the manager or the boss has these workaholic tendencies and is constantly pinging their employees and wanting an immediate response, that is going to affect the employees negatively regardless of if they have workaholic tendencies, they’re having to jump when the boss says jump.

Mills: Well, what if you see these tendencies in yourself? What are some of the things you can do to reduce your workaholism? And I mean, you said that that was an issue for you early in your career, so how do you manage this?

Clark: It’s a constant battle. I’m not going to lie. I mean, it’s not like the tendencies go away, right? So I think just being really intentional, and there’s a variety of different strategies that I talk about in my book, and it’s not a one size fits all, so I think it’s a matter of trial and error and see what works for you. And I use a combination of things. One strategy is scheduling myself into my daily to-do list, putting it on my calendar. Here’s the time where I’m going to actually take a lunch break and not be on my computer, but just relax and eat. Or set an alarm on my phone. Okay, now it’s time to walk around my building for 5, 10 minutes to just get some fresh air and get away from my desk. Those little moments of reprieve, those are micro breaks and they can be really helpful in recovery.

So another thing that I do, there’s a whole literature on recovery strategies that’s very related to the workaholism literature obviously. And one recovery strategy from that literature is to engage in what’s called a mastery experience. And I personally love this one. It works for me because things like relaxation and meditation, I have tried and I have failed and I have tried again and I’ve failed. Something about just being idle is very uncomfortable for me and I don’t love it. And so a mastery experience is a recovery strategy where you’re immersing yourself into something not work related and it takes your attention and concentration. What I love about that is one, it’s been shown to be a very effective recovery strategy so you feel more engaged the next day at work, you feel more rested, and you’re gaining back the energy that you lost throughout the whole day working.

But I’m not sitting there idle. I’m doing something. As long as it’s something non-work related, I am psychologically detaching because I’m forcing myself basically to think about something else. So this could be learning a new language. My editor for the book, he learned to play, he taught himself how to play guitar. So really anything that you get joy out of that you can focus on is my favorite recovery strategy for workaholics because it really does seem that a lot of people also struggle with being at rest.

Mills: You mentioned Workaholics Anonymous and I’m wondering, I mean, are they structured the same way that say Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous are structured? Are there 12 steps that you have to go through the same as in those other organizations?

Clark: Yeah, they are. I think it is modeled after. They have the 12 steps, the workbooks, they have sponsors. I’m not a member, but learning about it from my research, it seems very similar to AA, for example.

Mills: What are you working on now? I mean, what are the big questions that you’re trying to answer?

Clark: Well, one of them is looking at these mastery experiences as recovery, and is this actually a more beneficial strategy for people higher in workaholism? And we really don’t know enough about that, especially when we think about on a daily basis. So how does engaging in a mastery experience at night help you the next day at work? Are you more productive? Are you more engaged? And there’s really very little research looking at that particular question. I’m currently working on updating my meta-analysis because that is about 10 years old now. Time goes by fast. So we’re updating that and including all of the studies that have been conducted in the last 10 years since that was done. And so looking to see, are we seeing the same trends in terms of outcomes of workaholism? And so I’m excited about doing that update. So those are some of my main ones right now.

But yeah, really looking at day-to-day dynamics I think is something that I want to keep diving into and tracing people from day to day. What are you thinking about when you’re not at work and what is it about your workaholism that you struggle with the most to turn off?

Mills: Well, this has been really interesting and I think you’ve given some good ideas to some of our listeners who may have some of these tendencies. So I want to thank you for joining me today, Dr. Clark.

Clark: Thank you so much for having me.

Mills: You can learn more about the psychology of workaholism in the October issue of APA’s magazine Monitor on Psychology . It’s available for free at www.apa.org/monitor . You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you’ve heard, please subscribe and leave a review. If you have comments or ideas for future episodes, you can email us at speakingofpsychology@apa.org .

Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I’m Kim Mills.