PhronesisWe apply the Displacement Framework to workaholism, formalizing it as a productivity wrong attractor W_work in which work has become the primary mechanism for managing underlying displacement rather than an intrinsically meaningful activity. The balanced-life ground state S°_balanced is defined by five criteria, with the capacity to stop working when work ends identified as the diagnostic marker distinguishing workaholism from high engagement.
Three interlocking maintenance mechanisms construct W_work: anxiety management through work (work as displacement suppressor for anxiety that would otherwise surface during rest), identity fusion (self-worth organized exclusively around productivity metrics such that non-working identity is absent or aversive), and achievement displacement (external accomplishment substituting for other displaced needs — connection, meaning, safety).
Nine formal propositions are derived covering: the stopping criterion as diagnostic marker, Sunday dread and vacation anxiety as wrong-attractor signatures, the productivity-identity fusion and its achievement-expiry dynamics (each accomplishment provides brief relief then expires, requiring the next achievement), accumulated Φ across burnout, cardiovascular disease, relationship dissolution, and karoshi (death by overwork), the organizational landscape as wrong-attractor enabler (availability expectations, productivity culture), return path sequencing (anxiety treatment before identity reconstruction before behavioral structure), behavioral overwork reduction as exposure therapy for the stopping cost, and the distinction between workaholism and flow state (intrinsic absorption vs. anxiety-driven compulsion).
The smartphone landscape transformation — eliminating the physical separation between work and non-work environments — is identified as a structural amplifier of W_work at the population level.