"work absorbed" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use it when discussing an individual's diligence or dedication to their work, or to describe an entity that is completely focused on its work. For example: "The students were work absorbed, steadily making progress on their projects."
I'm sure that if we'd been able to get the word out to thousands of people with the click of a mouse, we wouldn't have hung up our placards and called it a day; that drudge work absorbed the lion's share of our time and our capacity to think up new and exciting ways to make change.
As the American poet John Ashbery pointed out in an influential 1968 essay on the nature of the avant garde, where once an innovative artist had to wait a whole career to see their work absorbed into mass culture, in the modern age it happens with increasing speed.
His own work absorbed most of his time and away he toiled.
Emma Watkinsons work absorbed me into a dream like a sponge wiping up a glass of spilled reality.
Instead, human-rights work absorbs most of her time.
Marguerite found the work absorbing and she stayed with it long after the war, while food rationing persisted.
An I.B.M. newspaper advertisement seeking programmers noted, "Those who enjoy playing chess or solving puzzles will find this work absorbing".
The other work absorbing his attention this morning is the installation he has had built that will be a talking point and crowd-puller at Frieze.
The work absorbs a lot of new influences: African drumming (bouncy irregular stresses within a regular pulse), the player-piano studies of Conlon Nancarrow (mad machine music) and European folk music revisited (songs and nursery tunes springing out of tonal nowhere and vanishing again).
As he works, absorbed in integrating his rose-colored touches with the original tones of a maiden's gown, it is possible to see each tiny area of loss coming together, being healed.
Assiduous craftsmanship is part of what makes Mr. Pettibone's works absorbing.
