The overworking disease

Unfortunately working extra hours and overworking has become a ‘badge of honour’ to try and prove that you are a hard worker and somehow to justify that you are valuable to your business. I strongly disagree and consider overworking a disease that must be cured. Overworking leads to burnout.

Overworking and burnout

Those who work outside their normal hours might try and justify it as being ‘dedicated’ and ‘ambitious’ or that they are demonstrating to their manager or their business that they are a valuable worker. I see that this is actually demonstrating the opposite – but what are the problems?

People who over-work make compromises for themselves – sacrificing time for friends, family, social lives and sleep. They damage their health through poor diet, often increasing their consumption of fast food or convenience foods, or craving sweet junk because their brain needs sugar. A focus on extra time at work often prevents professional development, such as attending conferences or training and reduced opportunities for networking.

A well-balanced person should have outside interests and hobbies, and positive relationships with friends and family – not just for their psychological well-being, but also to provide them with brain exercise and exposure to new thought patterns. The exposure to different stimulations is more productive than just following one approach with work.

Too much work can lead to burnout, and reduce productivity and creativity. This is why I try to ensure that my own teams are striking the right balance for them.

Burnout has been measured to affect as many as 44% of employees, so is far too common. What is it about today’s society that makes overworking to be a mainstream activity? Did it all change in 1971? One thing is clear – it has become a standard approach, where it is accepted by all society – “sorry, I can’t come because I need to work”.

What your overworking tells me

If you are putting in extra hours, it shows me some problems;

• You cannot manage your own time and priorities
• You are a slow worker
• You are not an effective or efficient worker
• You cannot delegate or share your load with your colleagues
• You cannot collaborate well with colleagues
• You are distracted during normal work hours
• Your manager has not given you enough direction to allow you to achieve desired outcomes
• You have too many individual tasks, instead of a focus on outcomes
• You cannot manage upwards to set expectations of your manager or the business
• You cannot say no to your manager
• Your manager does not respect your time, or you as a person
• You are greedy for overtime or bonuses, or trying to accelerate your career path
• You have fear; losing your job, not keeping up with colleagues, or that you are in the wrong job
• Your job is paying you too little for the value you give, so instead you have to give more time
• Your priorities are wrong

Notice how many of these relate to an individual’s responsibilities? Only a few reasons that are the responsibility of the manager – which shows that the employee is not managing the expectations of the manager.

There can also be other reasons, out of an individual’s control;

• The company or department is understaffed – demonstrating a poor alignment to business strategy or poor planning
• The tools, systems or processes are inadequate or ineffective – demonstrating that the business does not focus on getting the right tools for the job
• The company or department cannot prioritise, or define strategic goals as opposed to reactive tactical approaches

Don’t overwork – it is not a positive

Over working, reaching burnout and sacrificing your self is not only damaging to you as a person personally, but also professionally. This is not just my opinion, many highly successful people such as Warren Buffet and Steve Jobs also avoid overworking and burnout.

You are judged on your results, not your efforts

There’s a large body of research that suggests that regardless of our reasons for working long hours, overwork does not help us. For starters, it doesn’t seem to result in more output. In a study of consultants by Erin Reid, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, managers could not tell the difference between employees who actually worked 80 hours a week and those who just pretended to. While managers did penalize employees who were transparent about working less, Reid was not able to find any evidence that those employees actually accomplished less, or any sign that the overworking employees accomplished more.

https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours-backfire-for-people-and-for-companies