Work intruding on time off is the most common early sign. Researchers call it salience, meaning work has become the dominant activity in your thoughts, not just your schedule. The question is not whether you enjoy thinking about work, but whether you can stop.

When work starts displacing basic needs, the cost is no longer abstract. Sleep is usually the first thing to go, and lost sleep then reduces focus and emotional control, which makes the pattern harder to break. This question measures how far work has moved up the queue.

This is the tolerance question. In addiction research, tolerance means needing more of something to get the same effect. At work it often looks like volunteering for extra projects, checking email on holiday, or never feeling finished. The amount keeps rising while the satisfaction does not.

This is the withdrawal question. It is not a clinical syndrome, but the experience is widely reported: discomfort, irritability, or a sense of something being wrong when work is unavailable. If rest feels like a problem to be solved, that is worth noticing.

Work can be a very effective way to avoid difficult feelings, because it is productive, socially approved, and absorbing. That is exactly what makes it a good hiding place. This question asks whether work is being used to change how you feel rather than to get something done.

Work-family conflict is one of the most consistently documented costs in the research. It rarely arrives as a single dramatic event. It shows up as missed evenings, cancelled plans, and being physically present but mentally elsewhere. This question looks at whether other people are paying for your work.

The physical cost is well documented: exhaustion, headaches, digestive problems, and in the longer term cardiovascular strain. Recent research also links work addiction to emotional dysregulation and poorer physical health. This question asks whether your body is already keeping score.

This is the relapse question. Deciding not to work and then working anyway is one of the clearest markers of a compulsive pattern. Most people who struggle with overwork have made that decision at some point. What happens next is the signal.

Secrecy is a useful signal because it is self-generated. If you find yourself minimising the hours, or not mentioning the weekend work, part of you already knows it would be questioned. This question measures how much the habit has moved out of view.

Guilt about rest is one of the clearest differences between healthy engagement and compulsion. Engaged people can stop and recover. Compulsive workers experience rest as failure. This question looks at what happens inside you when the work stops.

Continuing a behaviour despite obvious harm is the strongest single indicator in most addiction frameworks. If you can see that the hours are damaging your health or your relationships and still cannot stop, the issue is no longer time management.

Rest is usually the first thing work takes, and it happens in small pieces rather than one big decision. An email at dinner, a call on a day off, a laptop opened on Sunday evening. Each one interrupts recovery, and recovery is what makes the rest of the week sustainable. This question asks how often that interruption happens.