FEATURE
Worked to Death
Can too much hard work hurt you?
Thirty-three percent of Americans work more than 40 hours a week and 11 percent work more than 50 hours according to a 2013 Rasmussen survey. Yet a number of studies have demonstrated that consistently working more than 40 hours a week does not result in increased productivity. On top of that, too much work can threaten health and destroy personal relationships. In Japan, where unpaid overtime is common, karoshi or “death by overwork” is a legally recognized cause of death.
Work can get out of control for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s the culture of the workplace. Other times, overworked employees equate being a good person with being a hard worker, or they use work to avoid other responsibilities.
Is it you?
Ask yourself: Do you get more excited about your work than about family or anything else? Do you take on extra work because you are concerned that it won’t otherwise get done? Are you afraid that if you don’t work hard you will lose your job or be a failure? Have your long hours hurt your family or other relationships? If you answer “yes,” there is a good chance you’re a workaholic. If you want to be sure, take the full quiz at www.workaholics-anonymous.org.
Workaholics don’t just work hard; they allow work to take over their life. Like other “-aholics”, work becomes a way to escape responsibilities and avoid unwanted emotions.
As one worker put it at a recent Workoholics Anonymous talk on stress, “I’ve cried on my way to work. I’ve cried on my way home from work…and still worked 50-60 hours in slavish devotion (or so it seemed to me) to my employer. I’ve lost friends over my workaholism, become distant from my family.”
A culture of overwork
More often the pressure to work long hours comes from the workplace. Although American labor productivity has increased at least 80 percent since the 1960s, that hasn’t translated into fewer hours. Instead, workers put in about 160 hours a year more than they did five decades ago.
More work means less time for children, for sleep, for meals at home, and for volunteering or exercise or vacations, just to name a few important considerations. Even pets suffer when home alone for long hours.
But if you’re consistently working over 40 hours a week because your boss or your job demands it, what can you do?
John de Graaf, the executive coordinator of Take Back Your Time, a movement devoted to fighting overwork, recommends an honest conversation with your employer, ideally before you take the job. While not everyone can do this, he acknowledges, workers with in-demand skills often have more clout to negotiate.
“Make the case that workers who go home at regular hours and take vacation time are more productive in the long run,” he says. “This fact is supported by several well known studies including one published in the Harvard Business Review in 2009.”
“The price of overwork is huge for businesses but they don’t see the big picture,” de Graaf adds. “Workers who don’t take a vacation are 30 to 50 percent more likely to have a heart attack and women in particular who don’t take vacation are two to eight times more likely to suffer depression.”
Still, many workers say they’d rather have more money than more time off, says de Graaf. “But success isn’t measured just by money,” he points out. “Being healthy, socially involved, and spending time with family are important to success; so is having time to exercise eat well, and sleep properly.”
Laura Lyjak Crawford