It's a dirty little secret: Some of us need to be told when to go home from work. They are the workaholics, adored by their bosses, detested by their co-workers. Maybe even detested by themselves, because they know what they are doing is unhealthy, and a one-way ticket to burnout if not changed.

How do you know you're a workaholic?

If you can answer "True" to two or more of the following statements, you may be one.

• You can't remember the last time you ate a meal at home.
• You know the names of the cleaning crew (who start working after 9pm).
• You can't quite remember your children's birthdays.
• You think about work during off-hours and recreational activities.
• You take work home...and do it.

What's wrong with being a workaholic? In certain cases, nothing at all. A genuine fascination for your job is a gift few people share. Unfortunately, more people hate every humiliating minute at work and give themselves credit for showing up at all.

In some extreme and temporary situations, as when you are going through a divorce or other personal crisis, work can become a structure that holds your life together until you start feeling yourself again. Better you should be burning the midnight oil than drinking the midnight vodka.

But when working becomes such a habit that it's the main thing, or the only thing in your life, then you are a workaholic. Maybe you don't have a problem with that, but if one or more of your loved ones do, then you are a workaholic.

If you have an overwhelming need to feel invaluable and irreplaceable, then you are a workaholic.

Time for a Reappraisal

If, on the other hand, you cheerfully answered "True" to all the above questions, then dictated a couple of memos, roughed out a sales plan for the next six months, called a few people on your cell phone, wrote a speech, fired somebody - all while attending a half-day conference - you ought at least to be making more money.

Heck, if you work that hard, and like it that much, you ought to be the boss. If you don't expect to be boss in the next two years (if you are a workaholic, you already wrote your five-year career plan), you ought to be in business for yourself. Why rent out all that energy, when you could be the sole proprietor and stockholder?

If you are not already the boss, not planning to be the boss or not suited to self-employment, you, as a workaholic, risk becoming a stooge. Not a stooge as in The Three Stooges. A stooge as in the puppet or tool of someone else.

You are obliged to do the job you were hired for. That job should fill your day, and may spill over into some extra work on special or emergency problems.

But if you're busy all the time, as in no time for lunch, as in regular 12-to-16-hour days, as in forgetting to pay your bills, you have to ask yourself why there is only one of you doing that job. Or why you aren't getting paid the salary of the two people whose work you are, in effect, doing. Because you can bet that your boss will never ask such questions.

There is one more possibility. You may be inefficient. You may become fascinated by inconsequential details and lose sight of your overall goals. You may not know how to manage your time.

How To Go Home

• Read a book on time management. You may need to learn more efficient work techniques.
• Cut back an hour, or a half-hour, on your work day. If that doesn't get you down to nearly a normal work week in a month or so, try going cold turkey. Ten times a day, repeat to yourself: "Nine to five, nine to five, nine to five..."
• Get a hobby. This may take several tries, since, as a workaholic, you will be inclined to turn your hobbies into obsessions. Remember that a hobby is fun, relaxing or exhilarating - and you don't get paid for it.

• Socialize with people who are not your co-workers. You say you don't have any friends who are not co-workers? Tsk, tsk. Find some. Make it your hobby.