Taris stresses that the “workaholic” label doesn’t apply to people who put in long hours because they love their jobs. Those people are considered engaged workers, he says. “That’s fine. No problems there.” People who temporarily put themselves through the grinder to advance their careers or keep up on car or house payments don’t count, either. Workaholism is in a different category from capitalism.

The growing consensus is that true workaholism encompasses four dimensions: motivations, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, says Malissa Clark, an industrial/organizational psychologist at the University of Georgia in Athens. In 2020, Clark and colleagues proposed in the Journal of Applied Psychology  that, in sum, workaholism involves an inner compulsion to work, having persistent thoughts about work, experiencing negative feelings when not working, and working beyond what is reasonably expected.