Workaholism in the Remote Work Era: Why It's Rising and How to Stop It

The office had a commute home.

It was not always pleasant and it was rarely efficient. But it served a function most people did not appreciate until it was gone. The twenty minutes on the train or in the car between the office and home was a decompression transition. The body and mind had time to shift modes. By the time you walked through the front door, the work day had ended in a physically and temporally distinct way.

Remote work removed that transition. The desk where work happens is in the same building as the couch, the bed, and the kitchen. The ergonomic office chair you sit in at 9am may still be visible at 9pm. The laptop is always within reach. The notifications do not stop because you are technically home. And without the physical and environmental cues that previously signalled the end of the working day, a growing number of Australians cannot switch off.

This is the mechanism behind the workaholism pattern that has risen sharply since remote work became mainstream. It is not a character problem or a willpower problem. It is an environmental design problem. And environmental problems have environmental solutions.

The Scale of It in Australia

What the Research Shows About Remote Work and Overwork

Over 40 percent of employed Australians worked from home in 2024, according to the ABS. Research published across multiple occupational health studies since 2020 has consistently found that home-based workers work longer hours than office-based counterparts and experience greater difficulty separating work from non-work time.

A 2024 national survey commissioned by the Australian Chiropractors Association found that 86.7 percent of Australian workers experienced a musculoskeletal disorder either at work or because of their work environment. The connection to workaholism is not incidental. Extended working hours in a sedentary home office environment compound both the psychological and physical costs of overwork. The same person who cannot stop working is also the person accumulating physical fatigue from sustained sedentary sitting that accelerates the burnout process.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions and multiple university research groups have documented what they call the always-on culture of remote work: the expectation, often self-imposed rather than employer-driven, that availability and responsiveness should be continuous because the technology that enables work is always present.

THE KEY MECHANISM:  Workaholism in remote work is not primarily caused by employers demanding more. Research consistently shows it is driven by the removal of the environmental and temporal cues that previously regulated work-rest transitions. The office building, the commute, the separate physical space — these were doing behavioural regulation work that most workers did not realise they depended on.

 

The Difference Between Working Hard and Workaholism

The distinction matters because the interventions are different. Working long hours on a demanding project with a deadline is not workaholism. It is an intensity that a healthy worker can sustain temporarily and recover from with adequate rest.

Workaholism, as defined in occupational health research including work by Professor Mark Griffiths at Nottingham Trent University and Wilmar Schaufeli at Utrecht University, is characterised by three features: cognitive preoccupation with work even when not working, compulsive work behaviour that persists despite negative consequences, and inability to disengage even when the opportunity and desire to do so are present.

The remote worker who sends emails at 11pm because they feel they have to, not because the email is urgent, and who feels guilty or anxious when they are not working, is exhibiting the compulsive dimension. The remote worker who sends emails at 11pm because a genuine deadline requires it and then sleeps through the night without thinking about work is not.

The table below maps the specific warning signs and distinguishes them from the surface behaviour that can look similar but is not workaholism.

Warning signs based on occupational health research on work addiction, including criteria developed by Griffiths (2005) and the Bergen Work Addiction Scale (Andreassen et al., 2012). These are indicators, not a clinical diagnostic tool. If you are concerned about your relationship with work, a psychologist or GP is the appropriate first step.

Why Remote Work Specifically Enables Workaholism

The Environmental Cue Collapse

Behavioural psychology has established that human behaviour is significantly regulated by environmental context. The same person behaves differently in a library than in a pub, in a doctor's waiting room than at a backyard barbecue. The environment creates expectations, triggers habits, and signals appropriate behaviour.

Office work created a strong environmental context for both working and stopping. Arriving at the office building triggered the work mode. Leaving it triggered the transition. The physical separation of the work space from the home space was doing cognitive regulation that the worker did not consciously manage.

Remote work collapses this context. The home office occupies the same physical space as the home itself. Many Australians do not have a dedicated room and work at a kitchen table or in a corner of the bedroom. The environmental signals that previously regulated the work-rest transition are absent. Without them, the default behaviour is to continue working because there is no signal to stop.

The Visibility of Work in the Home Environment

When work equipment is visible from non-work spaces, it maintains a low-level cognitive presence that prevents full psychological disengagement. A laptop visible from the couch is a constant reminder of potential tasks. This is not a metaphor. Cognitive science research on attention and environmental cues shows that visible task-related objects maintain task-relevant cognition at a level that interferes with the restorative function of rest.

In a physical office, work is not visible from home. In a home office, work is never fully invisible. The result is a chronic state of partial engagement that prevents the recovery that rest is supposed to provide. The worker who spends the evening on the couch with the laptop visible in the background is not fully resting. The cognitive cost of the ambient presence of work accumulates across evenings and weekends.

The Technology Dimension

Remote work is enabled by technology that has no off switch baked in. Email, messaging platforms, project management tools, and video conferencing are all available continuously on the same device. The smartphone that sits on the bedside table is the same device used for work messaging. The boundaries that previously existed as physical barriers, the locked office door, the work computer that stayed at work, are now entirely self-imposed.

Research on smartphone use and psychological detachment from work, published across multiple occupational psychology journals, consistently shows that the availability of work technology in personal spaces is associated with reduced psychological detachment and increased work-life conflict. The correlation holds even when the person does not actively use the device for work during personal time. The presence of the device is sufficient to maintain the psychological connection to work.

The Physical Cost of Not Stopping

What Extended Sedentary Work Hours Do to the Body

The physical consequences of workaholism in remote work are not limited to burnout and psychological exhaustion. Extended sedentary working hours generate the same physical load that affects any sedentary worker, but across a longer daily duration and with fewer of the incidental movement breaks that office environments provide.

Research from the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute shows the average Australian adult already sits for approximately nine hours per day across work and leisure. For a full-time remote worker who cannot stop working, that figure is significantly higher. Safe Work Australia classifies more than seven hours of sedentary behaviour per day as a high-risk threshold. Workers who cannot disengage from work during the evening hours are adding to a sedentary total that already exceeds that threshold during the working day alone.

The 2024 JAMA Network Open study by Dr Sean Docking at Monash University projected A$638 billion in lost Australian GDP from long-term back problems over the decade 2024 to 2033. The mechanism that drives this figure, sustained sedentary behaviour without adequate movement and postural variety, is the same mechanism that workaholism accelerates. The worker who cannot stop is also accumulating the physical load that produces chronic back pain faster than the worker who stops.

The Fatigue Loop That Makes Stopping Harder

There is a specific physiological loop that makes workaholism harder to address once it is established. Extended working hours generate physical fatigue. Physical fatigue impairs cognitive function, including the judgment and impulse regulation that would normally allow a person to recognise when they should stop. Impaired judgment makes it harder to enforce boundaries. The failure to enforce boundaries extends the working hours and deepens the physical fatigue. The loop runs continuously.

A 2024 study in Scientific Reports on office workers found that physical and mental fatigue mutually reinforce each other. Physical fatigue impairs cognitive function, slows reaction time, and disrupts judgment. The worker in a workaholism pattern who experiences end-of-day exhaustion but continues working anyway is not demonstrating exceptional commitment. They are demonstrating impaired judgment about when to stop, produced by the fatigue that their extended working hours have generated.

What Actually Works: Rebuilding the Boundaries That Remote Work Removed

Why Generic Advice Fails

"Set better boundaries" is the most common advice given to people experiencing workaholism in remote work. It is not wrong. It is just incomplete. It describes the outcome without providing the mechanism.

The worker who cannot stop working does not have a lack of knowledge that they should stop. They have a lack of environmental reinforcement for stopping. The environment that previously provided that reinforcement, the physical office, the commute, the spatial separation, has been removed. Telling someone to set better boundaries without rebuilding the environmental conditions that support those boundaries is like telling someone to lose weight without changing what food is available in their kitchen.

The interventions that work target the environment first and the behaviour second.

The Five Interventions That Address the Mechanism

Interventions are drawn from occupational psychology research on psychological detachment from work, including Sonnentag & Fritz (2007), Cropley & Millward (2009), and the broader literature on boundary management in telework. The combination of physical, temporal, and spatial interventions is more effective than any single approach.

The Physical Chair as a Boundary Marker

The dedicated work chair intervention deserves specific attention because it is practical, evidence-adjacent, and connects directly to the physical wellbeing dimension of the workaholism problem.

When a specific chair is used exclusively during work hours and vacated at the end of them, it becomes a physical state change that the body learns to associate with working mode. The act of sitting in the chair begins to trigger the cognitive engagement appropriate to work. The act of leaving it begins to trigger disengagement. Over time, the chair becomes an environmental cue that supports the temporal boundary rather than undermining it.

This is the same mechanism that makes going to a gym useful for people who struggle to exercise at home. The environment signals the activity. The activity becomes associated with the environment. The association strengthens the habit.

A quality ergonomic office chair serves this function better than a dining chair used for both work and meals, or a couch used for both working and watching television, because it has no alternative use. It is specifically a work chair. Leaving it is a clear environmental transition. For remote workers trying to establish a cleaner work-rest boundary, a dedicated work chair is a practical physical intervention that supports the psychological boundary.

The Sihoo M57 at $329 provides the specification for this purpose at a price accessible to individual home workers. The full mesh construction makes it physically distinct from a couch or dining chair. The ergonomic features, adjustable lumbar, 3D armrests, correct seat height, ensure it is also doing the right physical support work during the hours it is in use. For workers at six or more daily hours, the Sihoo Vito M90 at $379 provides the adaptive lumbar support that extended hours require.

The Shutdown Routine That Replaces the Commute

The commute home performed a specific psychological function: it provided transition time between work mode and home mode. The mind had a period of passive engagement, the train, the drive, during which it could process the day and begin disengaging from work tasks. Research on commuting and psychological wellbeing, including work from the Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford, found that many workers reported missing the commute specifically for this transitional function despite the time cost.

Remote workers need to deliberately create this transition. A shutdown routine is the most practical replacement: a brief, consistent sequence of actions that signals the end of work. The specific actions matter less than the consistency. Closing the laptop and placing it out of sight. A ten-minute walk outside. Changing clothes. A cup of tea made in a deliberate non-work gesture. The routine works because consistency builds association. After several weeks, the routine itself becomes the decompression signal that the commute previously provided.

The critical element is physical: something that involves the body, not just the mind. Deciding to stop working is not the same as doing something physical that signals stopping. The body needs a state change signal, not just a cognitive decision.

When It Is More Than an Environmental Problem

The Clinical Dimension of Work Addiction

Not all workaholism in remote workers is an environmental design problem. For some people, the compulsive dimension of the behaviour existed before remote work and remote work simply removed the external structures that previously masked or constrained it.

The Bergen Work Addiction Scale, developed by Andreassen and colleagues in 2012 and validated across multiple studies, is a brief seven-item instrument used by occupational psychologists to assess work addiction. Scores above a clinical threshold on this scale are associated with elevated anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, and relationship difficulties that are not resolved by environmental interventions alone.

If the workaholism pattern persists despite implementing the environmental interventions above, or if the inability to stop is accompanied by significant anxiety when not working, relationship strain, or physical health deterioration, a psychologist or GP assessment is the appropriate step. Environmental design supports boundary management. It does not treat underlying anxiety or compulsive behaviour patterns that require clinical support.

Beyond Blue and the Australian Psychological Society both provide resources for Australians experiencing work-related psychological distress. For urgent support, Lifeline (13 11 14) provides 24-hour crisis support.

The Home Setup That Supports Stopping

What the Physical Environment Can Do

Rebuilding the work-rest boundary in a home environment does not require a dedicated office room, a renovation, or a significant budget. The minimum viable setup that supports psychological detachment from work involves three elements.

• A dedicated work chair that is vacated at the end of the working day. The chair becomes the physical marker of the working state. Leaving it is the transition action.

• A screen position that is not visible from the rest area. The laptop or monitor should not be in the line of sight from the couch or bed. If space prevents physical separation, the laptop should be closed and placed face-down or in a bag at the end of the working day. Invisible is better than visible.

• A consistent shutdown time and a shutdown routine of at least five minutes. The routine is the replacement commute. It does not need to be complex. It needs to be consistent.

These three elements work because they target the same mechanism that remote work disrupted: the environmental differentiation between work space and rest space. They do not require perfect discipline or unlimited willpower. They rebuild the environmental scaffolding that supports the behaviour.

For the broader home office setup that supports both effective working and effective stopping, the complete guide to home office ergonomics covers the physical setup from chair to screen position in detail.

Conclusion

Workaholism in remote work is not a moral failure.

It is the predictable outcome of removing the environmental structures that previously regulated work-rest transitions, and expecting that willpower and good intentions would fill the gap. They do not. The office building, the commute, the physical separation of work and home spaces, these were doing cognitive and behavioural regulation work that most workers did not know they depended on until it was gone.

The workers who manage remote work without sliding into compulsive overwork are not more disciplined. They have, deliberately or accidentally, rebuilt some version of the environmental structures that remote work removed. A dedicated work space within the home. A physical shutdown routine. A consistent end time. A work chair that they leave at the end of the day and do not return to until the next morning.

The environmental interventions in this guide are not about working less. They are about working in a way that preserves the recovery time that makes the working hours actually productive. A worker who cannot stop is not getting more done. They are accumulating fatigue, impairing their judgment, and shortening the hours at which they are genuinely effective. The ability to stop is not the opposite of dedication. It is the condition that makes dedication sustainable.

Browse the full range of best ergonomic office chairs in Australia and find the chair that supports both your working hours and your ability to leave them behind.

Better Comfort Starts Now.

Sources Referenced

• ABS: over 40% of employed Australians worked from home in 2024 — abs.gov.au
• Australian Chiropractors Association national survey 2024: 86.7% of Australian workers experienced an MSD at or because of work — chiro.org.au
• Griffiths MD (2005): A "components" model of addiction within a biopsychosocial framework. Journal of Substance Use, 10(4): 191-197 — work addiction criteria
• Andreassen CS et al. (2012): The development of a Bergen Work Addiction Scale. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 53(3): 265-272
• Sonnentag S & Fritz C (2007): The Recovery Experience Questionnaire: Development and validation of a measure for assessing recuperation and unwinding from work. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 12(3): 204-221
• Scientific Reports (2024): Physical and mental fatigue mutually reinforce each other in office workers — nature.com/articles/s41598-024-68889-4
• Docking SI et al. (2025): Productivity Losses Due to Long-Term Back Problems in Working-Age Australians. JAMA Network Open. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.27284
• Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute: average Australian adult sits approximately 9 hours per day across work and leisure
• Safe Work Australia: Sitting and Standing Hazards — 7-hour sedentary threshold — safeworkaustralia.gov.au
• Amiri B, Behm DG, Zemkova E (2025): Core Exercises in Alleviating Muscular Fatigue from Prolonged Sitting. Sports Medicine Open, February 2025. DOI: 10.1186/s40798-025-00816-x
• Wellbeing Research Centre, University of Oxford: commuting and psychological wellbeing research