Workaholism: The Only Addiction We Applaud

The real advantage does not come from more effort. It comes from effort aimed in the right direction.

In a way, we are all modern-day Sisyphus. We indulge in repetitive work without resolution because most of the time it gives an illusion of progress. We tend to measure success by hours logged or activity performed rather than outcomes achieved, which keeps the boulder rolling but never helps us reach the summit. A founder wears workaholism as a badge, thinking it to be an entry pass to success and acceptance. In fact, workaholism is the only addiction we all approve. In reality, this addiction is not towards work but the reassurance that work provides.

Take this simple test: Have you been creating work after the necessary work is finished; checking messages during the first unstructured minute of the day, turning every concern into a project, saying yes before evaluating capacity or strategic value, taking the laptop on holidays ‘just in case’?

These are all examples where work is used as an emotion-regulation strategy, where individuals stay busy enough to avoid confronting questions about their trajectory. Perfectionism is one of the most consistent personality correlates of work addiction, especially the evaluative side: fear of mistakes, self-criticism, concern over others’ judgments, and uncertainty about whether performance is sufficient. Workaholism goes without scrutiny because most of the time it delivers - money, praise, status, investor trust, parental approval… and also a calendar full enough to make your anxiety look like ambition.

Data surrounding the mental health of builders, creators, and entrepreneurs shatters the myth of the invincible founder. 72% of entrepreneurs report a lifetime history of at least one mental health condition, compared to just 48% of the general population.

To the outside observer, the relentless drive of the founder or the high performer appears as unwavering ambition. The individual is praised for their discipline, congratulated for their output, and socially reinforced for their capacity to outwork their peers. However, psychology identifies a fundamentally different mechanism operating beneath this facade. The core problem is not an excess of ambition, but rather a deficit in distress tolerance, manifesting as a phenomenon known as “experiential avoidance”.

Why workaholism is dangerous

Work is a uniquely dangerous escape because it receives applause. If you drink every evening to avoid your thoughts, people worry. If you scroll for five hours to avoid your thoughts, people call it addiction. If you work every evening to avoid your thoughts, people call you relentless.

Workaholism is associated with perfectionism, but also poor recovery, burnout, sleep disturbance, and work-family conflict. In a 2026 pulse survey of 50 Indian founders, investors, and ecosystem participants, 88% admitted working at least 50 hours per week, 71% experienced burnout at least several times a year, and 41% slept six hours or less.

Most founders do not merely work hard. They use work to regulate guilt, uncertainty, inadequacy, and fear. Because work produces immediate relief, the founder learns to convert every moment of boredom into activity. It gives a sense of motion, but one that lacks direction.

I recently met a founder who has built a marketing agency from scratch. She did whatever she could do (despite all the odds) to build a very successful business. But now she is at a crossroads, facing a difficult decision about the impact of AI and how the market is likely to evolve.

With such ambiguity, it is extremely hard to take decisive action; instead, it becomes easier to continue hustling. We drive our self-worth because we are creating output. However, just thinking about what we should become, how to navigate industry challenges, and how to build a competitive moat does not necessarily have one correct answer - these are rather ambiguous and complex problems with very little to show. So instead of just adopting boredom and sitting with perhaps a more complex problem, we itch to solve the next customer problem, add one more product feature, or scroll on X, LinkedIn if nothing else.

Work as an emotion-regulation strategy

Work can function as short-term relief from guilt, anxiety, inadequacy, and other unpleasant internal states. People tend to treat visible effort as evidence of moral character, even when that extra effort does not improve the outcome. Because effort is socially and morally rewarded, work becomes a respectable way to avoid hard questions. Work becomes an avoidance behaviour when opening the laptop functions less as movement toward a chosen value and more as movement away from anxiety, guilt, loneliness, uncertainty, shame, or fatigue.

When work is used as an emotion-regulation strategy, clarity is the first casualty. Individuals stay busy enough to avoid confronting fundamental questions about their trajectory. Behaviorally, this manifests in compulsive micro-actions: answering emails during family dinners, taking 7 AM calls that project commitment but result in profound exhaustion by 2 PM, and manufacturing crises to justify continued engagement. Boredom and quiet create discomfort. Work offers relief.

We do not merely reward results. We reward looking as if you are trying very hard. In a series of eight experiments involving 5,502 participants, it was observed that people treated visible effort as evidence of moral character, even when that additional effort did not improve the quality or economic value of the outcome.

In a workaholic brain decision-making degrades because the nervous system is stuck in threat-detection mode. The individual becomes reactive rather than strategic. A founder takes on the extra client or build the unnecessary software feature because slowing down to evaluate the necessity of the task feels more frightening than simply overcommitting. Achievement transitions from a source of satisfaction to a momentary form of pain relief, creating a cycle where the completion of a goal provides only a fleeting respite before the anxiety returns.

Professor Kamila Wojdylo explains workaholism not simply as working long hours, but as an addictive, emotionally driven pattern in which a person uses work to regulate distress, compensate for low self-worth, and obtain psychological relief.

Low self-worth or negative emotion → compulsive work → temporary achievement or relief → standards rise and distress returns → renewed craving for work

For instance, a founder may feel anxious about being judged as incompetent. They work late into the night, obtain a sense of control and achievement, and briefly feel better. But because the underlying insecurity has not been resolved, they create a larger workload and become dependent on the next burst of productivity.

A 2026 Founder Mental Health Survey in the US found that founders rated being trapped in operational detail more severely than several external threats, and also reported avoidance of difficult conversations and hard calls.

Here’s a question for self-assessment:

Are you working because the work is meaningful, or because you cannot bear how you feel when you are not working?

Real work needs direction

I had two versions of me as an entrepreneur. One, when I was in all the meetings - from all-hands engineering calls to product prioritisation to sales meetings. I perhaps took pride in being the hardest worker in the room, but I wasn’t really the most productive. The second version of me emerged after COVID, following a stroke, when I understood that the real displacement doesn’t come from more effort. It comes from effort pointed in the right direction.

My recovery time gave me a chance to think over questions like: Does business necessarily just need more effort; why can some founders work 15 hours a day but struggle with one unstructured hour; why does an empty calendar create anxiety instead of relief, and why does a founder build another feature even when they already know the current problem is distribution?

The answer to all these questions is a simple ritual I implemented - to sit with myself and think about the highest value problem (not the hardest) every morning. Following this, I started taking my first meeting at noon, only after I had done all my thinking.

WHO and ILO estimate that working 55 or more hours per week is associated with a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of death from ischemic heart disease compared with working 35-40 hours.

Healthy engagement is energised by interest, meaning, or deliberately chosen goals. Compulsive overwork is maintained by internal pressure, relief-seeking, contingent self-worth, and difficulty disengaging, even when further work is unnecessary or harmful.

Before you create more work, ask yourself: What question is this work helping me avoid?

You may be highly capable at forcing an output out of yourself, but all the while becoming less able to sense internal needs or revise goals flexibly. Mentally disengaging from work during non-work time is not about simply being away from the desk. It is the ability to stop performing and rehearsing work internally.

This is where Karma Yoga and Work Craving Theory meet. Both suggest that the decisive issue is not merely how much one works, but whether work is being used as a substitute for inner stability. In a study carried out across 91 independent samples and more than 38,000 workers, greater detachment was associated with less exhaustion, better sleep, higher life satisfaction, less fatigue, and better recovery.

Workaholism is not a behavioural addiction to productivity, but an emotional defence mechanism against internal experiences. Blaise Pascal called it ‘diversion’ long ago. We fill our lives with activity partly to avoid an unmediated encounter with ourselves, uncertainty, mortality, and dissatisfaction. The modern workplace gives it diversion dashboards, revenue targets, notifications, and social media legitimacy.

But the choice is still with you - to reframe the problem from “I need better habits” to “I have trained myself to override every internal signal, including the ones that would tell me whether this goal is still mine.”

Build your life because you genuinely want to inhabit it, not because you are terrified of who you would be without it?