Sally McGrath's relationship with work used to be all consuming, to the point she became withdrawn from life.
She admits she was addicted to work.
"When I wasn't at work, I was thinking about work," she said.
The former property consultant manager said she was a "perfectionist, workaholic, control freak".
"I wasn't a pleasant person to be around for quite some time," Ms McGrath said.
"I became very intolerant and had a very, very low threshold for patience."
Her work addiction lead her to become burnt out three times and needing periods off work, before ultimately leaving her job.
She said some of her symptoms included excessive fatigue and recurring illnesses.
"My life just felt like one perpetual to-do list," she said.
Ms McGrath said her perfectionism was one trait that lead to her being a workaholic.
But she said growing up surrounded by hard-working parents and grandparents may have also contributed to it.
'More prevalent' than gambling addiction
Researchers around the world are trying to learn more about the issue of work addiction through a major survey of workers from more than 60 countries.
One of the lead researchers, Polish behavioural addiction expert Paweł Atroszko, said work addiction was a "compulsion" to work, something he estimated affected up to one-in-five workers.
"If you compare it to other well-established addictive disorders, like gambling or video-game disorders, it's much more prevalent than that," the Associate Professor said.
He said people addicted to work experienced withdrawal symptoms including anxiety, physical discomfort, irritability and loss of control when they tried to stop working on weekends or holidays.
Dr Atroszko said work addiction was most common in people who were self-employed or in management roles, which could have a flow-on effect to other staff.
"If they are addicted, they will affect their employees … [and] they may create a workaholic culture," he said.
Dr Atroszko said he hoped the survey would lead to better understanding of the key factors that contribute to work addiction.
Working from home a contributing factor
Rachael Potter from the University of South Australia has been leading the research in Australia.
She said working from home, which increased during the pandemic, had contributed to work-addiction issues.
"There's a real blurring between the boundaries of work and home," she said.
"With COVID, it's really challenged what is the normal working day.
"People are much more at risk now of checking their emails late at night, especially responding to supervisors, they feel obliged to do that.
"So it's now looking at how do we protect those boundaries between work and home when so many people are working from home still?"
Dr Potter said she hoped to learn how the country's relatively-long working hours impacted on the propensity of Australians to be addicted to work.
She said the preliminary survey results indicated 30 per cent of Australian workers showed "high risk" of work addiction, with females and other genders more likely to be addicted than males.
Dr Potter hoped the survey's results could lead to workplace reform.
"We want to ensure we can funnel in resources and strategies that can reduce the likelihood of people experiencing this," she said.
Ms McGrath said she also wanted to see people and workplaces shake the shame and stigma, sometimes associated with burnout, because she said it lead to people not voicing their experience out of fear they would not get a promotion or pay rise.
A number of private businesses across Australia have already introduced shorter working weeks in a bid to boost wellbeing and productivity.
A Senate committee report in March, that looked into work and caring arrangements, also recommended workplace changes, including suggesting the government trial a four-day work-week and consider introducing a law to stop employers from contacting workers outside hours.
