“I’m a recovering workaholic,” admits Jullien Gordon, a nationally recognized speaker and founding partner of New Higher, in a recent LinkedIn post.

Workaholism, he says, looks similar to high performance on the outside — but they’re actually nothing alike.

Gordon has spent the last year doing research and conducting experiments on himself to understand the difference between workaholism and high performance. He found that while they both look like hard work, “the big difference is how the individual feels on the inside about who they are in relationships to their work,” he explains.

A high performer works hard in “healthy sustainable ways and feels happy and inspired,” he says. Meanwhile, a workaholic “works hard in unhealthy unsustainable ways and feels unhappy and burned out.”

The No. 1 goal of a workaholic is to be busy at all times — as they believe that the busier they are (or appear), the more important they must be.

“Workaholics fill any space in time with busy work because they feel insecure doing nothing,” Gordon explains. “The insecurity comes from not knowing their value.”
entire LinkedIn post