Working late is paying you something, or you would have stopped. Usually it is one of six things: relief from anxiety, status, identity, escape from home, structure, or the feeling of being needed. Name which one is yours, then find a second route to it. Removing the work without replacing the function is why boundaries collapse in week three.
Why this question comes before any more rules
You have probably already tried rules. A finish time, a no-weekends policy, notifications off. They work for a fortnight and then quietly stop.
That is not weak discipline. It is what happens when you remove something that was doing a job without arranging for the job to get done. If work was the thing keeping a low anxiety manageable, then an empty evening does not feel like freedom, it feels like the anxiety with nothing on top of it. So you go back, and then you conclude you are the problem.
The useful move is to stop asking why you cannot stop and start asking what stopping would cost you.
Two honest cautions before the list. Some of what you get from working late is real and good, and the aim is not to talk you out of caring about your work. And sometimes the answer is not psychological at all: if the hours are the only way the job gets done, that is a workplace matter, and [burnout or overworking, which is it](/guides/work/burnout-or-overworking-which-is-it) has the test.
The six functions
Read these as a list to choose from rather than a diagnosis. Most people find one dominant and one secondary.
Relief from anxiety
The most common. Work does not make you happy, it makes the alarm quieter. While you are working, the thing that would otherwise be nagging is being addressed, so the discomfort drops. That is a reliable, fast, socially approved way to feel less bad, which makes it very hard to give up.
The tell: you feel worst in the first hour after stopping, and better the moment you open the laptop again.
Status
The hours are the thing people admire. You are the one who stays, the one who replies, the one who can be counted on at midnight. Nobody has ever praised you for leaving at half five.
The tell: you would mind less about doing the hours if nobody knew you did them.
Identity
Not what you do, but who you are. Take the work away and there is a question underneath about what is left, and the question is uncomfortable enough that you would rather not reach it.
The tell: "What do you do?" feels like the most confident answer you have about yourself.
Escape from home
Sometimes the office, or the laptop, is the least difficult room in the house. A tense marriage, small children, grief, a flat you cannot afford, an argument that is easier to postpone.
The tell: the pull is strongest at a particular hour of the evening rather than during a particular project.
Structure
Work supplies the day's shape. Without it there is unstructured time, and unstructured time is where people who have been busy for a decade tend to feel worst.
The tell: weekends and holidays are harder than weekdays, and you find work to do on them.
Being needed
The messages, the escalations, the thing only you know. Being necessary is a genuine human need and work delivers it more reliably than almost anything else.
The tell: you find it harder to delegate than to do it, and quietly prefer being the bottleneck.
Find yours in a week
Do not decide this from the list. Collect evidence.
For seven days, at the moment you carry on past your finish time, write four things down. Twenty seconds.
- **The time.** Exact.
- **What you were about to do instead.** Be specific: go downstairs, sit with your partner, go to bed, nothing.
- **What you felt in the ten seconds before you carried on.** One word. Anxious. Bored. Flat. Wired. Guilty.
- **What carrying on gave you.** One word. Calm. Purpose. Escape. Company.
At the end of the week, read the fourth column. Most people find the same word two or three times and are mildly surprised by it. That word is your function.
The same method written up longer, for any compulsion, is in [writing your own trigger map](/guides/other/writing-your-own-trigger-map).
Where else to get it
Replacements have to match the function, not the activity. Swapping work for another demanding project is why so many attempts fail.
**If it is anxiety relief.** You need something that reliably lowers the alarm without a backlog attached. Physical effort, a walk with someone, or a fixed short practice you do at the same time nightly. Also worth saying plainly: persistent anxiety is treatable, and a GP appointment about the anxiety itself is more useful than a better shutdown routine.
**If it is status.** Find a place where you are respected for something other than availability. That can be inside work, by making the output visible rather than the hours, and it can be outside it entirely. The uncomfortable version of this is deciding whose admiration you are actually working for.
**If it is identity.** Build one thing you do regularly that has nothing to do with your job and that you would still do if you were sacked tomorrow. It will feel trivial for months. That is normal, because identity comes from repetition rather than from significance.
**If it is escape from home.** Working later does not fix the thing you are avoiding, it just postpones it at a cost. This is the one where the useful step is usually a conversation, or relationship counselling, or help with whatever is actually hard at home. [Repairing what work took from home](/guides/work/repairing-what-work-took-from-home) starts there.
**If it is structure.** Put scaffolding into the empty hours. Fixed, recurring, involving someone who expects you. A class, a league, a standing dinner. Loose plans do not hold, because unstructured time is exactly the thing you are trying to fill.
**If it is being needed.** Get needed somewhere with an end time. Coaching, volunteering, a family commitment with a defined slot. And at work, hand over one thing that only you can do, which will feel worse than it should and is the point.
When the function is doing real work
One caution. If what the work is holding down is grief, a bad relationship, or something you have not looked at in years, this exercise can uncover more than you were expecting. That is not a reason to avoid it, and it is a reason to have someone to say it to.
SMART Recovery UK runs free meetings grounded in cognitive behavioural therapy, on 0330 053 6022. Workaholics Anonymous runs free meetings, mostly online, whose self-check asks whether you "get more excited about your work than about family or anything else". Choosing between routes is covered in [Workaholics Anonymous, therapy or a new job](/guides/work/workaholics-anonymous-therapy-or-a-new-job). If you need to talk to someone tonight, the Samaritans are on 116 123, free, at any hour.
Common questions
**What if the answer is that I just like my work?** Then keep it. Liking your work is not the problem, and this whole exercise is about the part you do not choose. The test is what happens when you try to stop for an evening: enjoying something and being unable to leave it are different experiences, and you can tell them apart from the inside.
**Can it be more than one function?** Usually. Most people have a main one and a second that shows up at particular times, for example status during the week and escape at the weekend. Work on the main one first, because the second often shrinks with it.
**Does knowing the function actually change anything?** By itself, no. It changes what you put in the gap, which is the part that decides whether a boundary survives past a fortnight. Insight without a replacement is just a better description of the same evening.
**What if nothing I try replaces it?** Then aim lower and repeat more often. The replacement does not have to feel as good as the work did at first, and it will not. It has to be there, regularly, long enough for the evening to stop being empty.
Sources
- [NHS, Addiction: what is it?](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/addiction-support/addiction-what-is-it/): The definition of addiction, work named directly, and the Samaritans line.
- [Workaholics Anonymous, Am I a Workaholic?](https://workaholics-anonymous.org/am-i-a-workaholic/): The self-check questions on excitement about work over family, and on agitation when idle.
- [HSE, What are the Management Standards?](https://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/standards/overview.htm): The six workplace areas, useful for separating a personal pull from a job that genuinely cannot be done in the hours.
