यत्तु कामेप्सुना कर्म साहङ्कारेण वा पुनः।क्रियते बहुलायासं तद्राजसमुदाहृतम्॥
yat tu kāmepsunā karma sāhankāreṇa vā punaḥkriyate bahulāyāsaṃ tad rājasam udāhṛtam
Word by word
The verse says
But work done by someone chasing what he wants, or done with the sense of I, and done with a great deal of strain: that is called driven.
In plain words
The second kind, and the tell is in the last phrase.
Bahulāyāsa - a great deal of strain. Enormous effort. The work costs far more than the work.
That is the diagnostic. Not that the person is lazy or dishonest. That everything takes more out of them than it should.
Where you've felt this · at work
A colleague sends you a two-page message about a half-page problem. He has copied in four people who do not need to be there. The problem could have been solved in a short conversation and will now take three days. He is working extremely hard. Almost none of the work is on the problem.
Going deeper
Disproportionate effort is the symptom named here, and it is more diagnostic than any amount of self-examination.
When the sense of I is in the work, the work acquires a second job. It has to get the thing done and it has to establish something about you at the same time. The second job is invisible, has no completion criteria, and consumes most of the energy.
That is why the strain is the giveaway. You can lie to yourself about your motives indefinitely, but you cannot hide how tired you are at six o'clock from a task that should have taken an hour.
So the question to ask is not whether you are being egotistical, which nobody ever answers honestly. It is simpler: is this costing more than it should? When the answer is yes and the task is not objectively hard, something else is being carried alongside it.