I've achieved my day's goals unless I'm at least a half hour late for each meeting. Some of us feel a quiet inner panic that if we fail to stay in high gear everything and everyone will turn on us. Maybe we do have a person or group who tries to push us beyond our human limits. Or perhaps the slave-driver is in our own heads. Either way, our hidden fear is that our personal contributions to life will not be good enough.
Workaholics have trouble with humanness.
Humans need sleep, make mistakes, have feelings and needs. After all, I don't look like one. However, perfectionism doesn't always line up canned goods in alphabetical order, or wash a car in sub-zero weather, or refuse to leave the house if one hair is out of place. It's more subtle than that. While on a business trip, I drove up to a motel entrance and walked into the lobby.