“They intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.”—Aldous Huxley

Every year July 5 marks National Workaholics Day—dedicated to workers chained to their desks. This unofficial holiday raises your awareness that work addiction can be devastating for the workaholic, life partner, and children—even jeopardize company productivity and relationships with coworkers. If your work or that of an employee takes top priority over everything else in life—relationships, play, important social events and your own self-care and health—it’s important to recognize the problem and take constructive action.

The 10 Red Flags

The following 10 signs emerged from my extensive study of work addiction. All of them are not present in every case, and they might appear in various configurations in different people. But they are useful guides to help you recognize the best-dressed of all the addictions: work addiction.

1. Rushing and hyper busyness. Nothing moves fast enough. The more you can cross off your list, the better you feel. When a project is left hanging, you feel anxious and have trouble relaxing. To curb your anxiety, you engage in two or three activities at once. You schedule back-to-back appointments without enough time to complete tasks, the pressures of which provide an adrenaline rush. Or you create mini crises such as flipping your lid if your computer is down or you have a paper-clip shortage.

2. Need to control. You have difficulty delegating authority because you worry that delegating tasks or asking for help is perceived as a sign of weakness or incompetence. When a project is out of your hands, you feel a loss of control. You think no one else can achieve the same level of excellence as you, and solo working gives you the security that you’re in charge and can do it your way.

3. Perfectionism. You judge yourself and others by inhuman standards. There’s no room for mistakes. If you’re a perfectionist workaholic, you’re difficult to work for and with because nothing is ever good enough. These unrealistic, inhuman standards lead to failure and anger at colleagues for not meeting unreachable standards that are your constant companions.

4. Difficulty with intimacy and crumbling relationships. You have a pattern of forgetting, ignoring or minimizing the importance of family rituals and celebrations. You miss your child’s first recital or soccer win or your wedding anniversary. Even if you make it to an event, you have difficulty concentrating because your mind is back at the office or you’re on your cell phone. Your mind stays in the future, and you have trouble being present with coworkers, loved ones and friends. Intimate relationships become brittle, and you start to feel like a stranger in your own household.

5. Work binges. Chances are you’ve occasionally worked overtime to meet a deadline. But if you’re a workaholic, you strangle yourself with short deadlines and you get a temporary high when you binge to complete them. You prefer to work nonstop for days on end than to spread tasks over a reasonable time period. You might sleep off a work binge in your clothes like an alcoholic sleeping off a bender. When loved ones complain, instead of hiding booze, you conceal your laptop under a car seat or slip out your cell phone in the middle of a social event. It’s as if you need a work “fix” to get you through the evening.

6. Restlessness and inability to relax. You have a constant voice in your head that says you haven’t earned the right to relax. You consider fun an unproductive waste of time because you have nothing to show for it. You think leisure activities are frivolous, and when you get restless, you turn hobbies and recreation into productivity or moneymaking ventures, and you turn friendships into work partnerships.

7. Brownouts, work trances and “DWW.” Work trances or brownouts are parallel to alcoholic blackouts. During a work trance, you have memory lapses because you’re preoccupied with work. You tune out the here and now and forget previous conversations or meetings because your wandering mind is stuck in a work problem. Driving while working (DWW) can cause you to zoom through stop signs, past destinations or end up someplace unfamiliar to you.

8. Impatience and irritability. You hate to wait and try almost anything to get to the front of the grocery, restaurant or movie line. You’re the one drumming your fingers at the doctor’s office, gazing into your cell phone, pounding your laptop keypad or wielding a fast-scribbling pen. You start projects before gathering all the information and make avoidable mistakes because you bypass research—all because of your impulsivity and refusal to take the appropriate time.

9. Self-inadequacy. You seek self-worth through performance, achievement and accolades to prove yourself to be accepted by others. Your sense of inadequacy or poor self-esteem cause you to emphasize productivity at all costs with concrete results that give you a temporary high and feeling of value.

10. Self–neglect. Self-care is at the bottom of your list. Your job trumps everything. You pay little attention to your physical or mental health, which progressively go downhill. Nutrition, restorative rest and exercise are unimportant. When coping mechanisms such as chain-smoking, caffeine abuse and compulsive eating are added to the scenario, your health further deteriorates. When serious symptoms such as headaches or heart and gastrointestinal problems crop up, you don’t have time to go to your doctor. Although you know in the back of your mind there’s a problem, your denial rules and you convince yourself to ignore it.

How Do You Celebrate?

You can celebrate National Workaholics Day by remembering that a full life outside of work is the best predictor of a positive, successful career. A full personal life acts as a psychological buffer and neutralizes job stress and recharges you with the energy to get back in the saddle.

1. If some of the red flags sound like you, take the day off to ponder what you’re using your job to escape from. Consider the other aspects of your life that you have neglected that need attention. A special relationship? Children? Friends? Or yourself?

2. Develop a work moderation plan geared to work/life balance—a broad framework that provides maximum flexibility and life balance like four spokes in a wheel that make it well-rounded: career, play, relationships and self. Your goal is to give time and thought to your work in proportion to other life domains. Name three or four actions you can take in each of the four areas to make your wheel roll smoothly instead of wobble.

3. Take the day off, step back and take it easy. Perhaps do nothing or something totally out of your comfort zone where you can slow down and relax such as an afternoon nap, read a book for fun, watch videos on YouTube or take a much-needed vacation.

4. If you’re not a workaholic, July 5 is an opportunity to celebrate the workaholic in your life and recognize all that she or he has accomplished. Ask your workaholic to take the day off with you to do something fun such as a hike, swim or day trip.

5. Let your workaholic know how important the relationship is to you, express any mental and physical health concerns using compassion—not judging or preaching—and encourage him or her to consider more work/life balance.

Celebrate the month of July by taking better care of yourself, spending fun moments away from work and investing in real time with those you love and care about. You’ll have a happier, healthier and more productive personal and professional life.

Happy National Workaholics Day!