Search results for: “overwork”

  • The Cult Of Overwork

    The Cult Of Overwork

    60-hour workweeks (or more!) kill people. That seems bad and we should probably stop it. In this video I explain how we get back to or even below 40 hours of work a week.

    References from the videos

    CNN’s article on “The Secrets Of Greatness.

    Jack Ma and the 996 Rule.

    Working hours in different countries.

    The first org chart.

    The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, by Juliet B. Schor.

    The Industrial Revolution In Manchester.

    Rutger Bregmann: Utopia For Realists.

    Tom Markert: You Can’t Win A Fight With Your Boss.

    HBR: Long Hours Backfire For People And For Companies.

    Long working hours hurt cognitive performance.

    John Pencavel: Productivity for WW1 Munitions Workers.

    Overtime in game developers doesn’t work.

    Why Crunch Mode doesn’t work.

    Negative Health Effects Of Overwork.

    Very few people can get by on less than 7 hours of sleep.

    Gender bias in overwork cultures.

    Men pretend to work 80-hours weeks.

    What’s really holding women Back.

    People overestimate their working hours.

    People underestimate health risks of overwork.

    Yvon Chouinard’s work days.

    Fred Gratzon: The Lazy Way To Success.

    Henrik Rosendahl’s work days.

    There are some career benefits to overwork.

    Interview with Rich Sheridan at Menlo.

    Richard Sheridan: Joy Inc.

    Knowledge Workers Are More Productive From Home.

    Longer school days do not lead to better academic outcomes.

    Homework does not help students.

    Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule debunked again.

    Hazing reinforces hierarchy, conformity and discipline.

    Benjamin Hunnicutt: Kellogg’s Six-Hour Day.

    European Union – right to disconnect law.

    Universal Basic Income Explained.

    Valve’s employee handbook.

    US workers don’t take all their vacation days.

    30-hour work week at Toyota Center Gothenburg.

     

  • The Cult of Overwork is Killing Startups

    The Cult of Overwork is Killing Startups

    The New York Times has a great article called “In Silicon Valley, Working 9 to 5 Is for Losers” that examines workaholism in startups. It even quotes one entrepreneur as saying “I rarely get to see my kids. That’s a risk you have to take.” I wonder if he asked his kids if that was a risk they were willing to take.

    The piece also quotes from this excellent article by David Heinemeier Hansson, where he points out that startup investors are the main driver of this culture:

    There’s an ingrained mythology around startups that not only celebrates burn-out efforts, but damn well requires it.

    It’s not hard to understand why such a mythology serves the interest of money men who spread their bets wide and only succeed when unicorns emerge.

    There’s little to no consequence to them if the many fall by the wayside, spent to completion trying to hit that home run. Make me rich or die tryin’.

    It’s bullshit. Extractive, counterproductive bullshit peddled by people who either need a narrative to explain their personal sacrifices and regrets or who are in a position to treat the lives and wellbeing of others like cannon fodder.

    These two articles do a great job of exposing the toxic overwork culture in many startups but I just want to add five few quick points on the topic:

    1: If hours are all that matter, an entrepreneur working 80 hours a week will be beaten by one working 90 hours a week. Where does it end?

    2: Many of the mental qualities that make a startup successful are lost when people are overworked, tired, stressed and unhappy, including networking, creativity and effective decision making.

    3: Permanent overwork kills people. For instance, those working a 55-hour week face 33% increased risk of stroke.

    4: Permanent overwork doesn’t result in increased output.

    5: Pointing to successful startups that worked 80 hours a week proves nothing. What about all the startups that worked 90 hours a week and failed?

    Imagine starting your own company and ending up creating a workplace where you hate to work. How stupid is that?

    On the other hand, employees of a startup where people are happy to work and have full lives outside of work, will be more productive, motivated and innovative, boosting the startup’s chance of success.

    Even if working crazy long hours did enhance a startup’s chance of success (which it does not), it would still be wrong because it hurts employees physically and psychologically.

    Related posts

     

     

  • On overwork

    Thought: Only the truly incompetent need to work 80 hours a week to succeed at something.

    Discuss.

  • New research: Overwork kills productivity AND employees

    Yikes – overwork can kill you:

    … those working a 55-hour week face 33% increased risk of stroke than those working a 35- to 40-hour week.

    And to make matters worse, all those extra hours don’t even mean you get more work done:

    [Overwork] … doesn’t seem to result in more output.

    So overwork is killing employees while not improving business results. Can we stop it already?

    It’s a topic I’ve talked about a lot on this blog.

  • Overwork

    Once and for all: Consistently working more than 40 hrs/wk means you get LESS work done.

    End the #cultofoverwork.

  • The Cult of Overwork is alive and well. Sigh!

    The Cult of Overwork

    European workers don’t work enough hours compared to Americans. That is the message in this article written by a London-based venture capitalist. From the article:

    As anyone who’s ever been there or visited will attest, in Silicon Valley everyone is working *all of the time*.

    And while this might seem unhealthy, not scalable, obsessive, manic or simply ridiculous, from an ecoystem perspective it’s basically unbeatable. If you want to build companies and ride the wave of innovation, it’s a 24/7 preoccupation — not just a lifestyle business. By contrast, I am in London-based startups’ offices all the time and I am gobsmacked when they are nearly empty by 6:30 PM.

    I can see where he’s coming from – I really can. It’s so easy to equate “working long hours” with “commitment” and “success”. When you see the office full of people late at night, you automatically think “WOW, these people are serious – they’re going places.”

    You’d be forgiven for thinking so, but you’d be no less wrong. Please show me a single study that demonstrates the link between massive overwork (ie. working 60, 70, 80 or more hours a week for long stretches of time) and increased worker productivity and corporate success.

    On the other hand, there’s stuff like this:

    In 1991, a client asked me to conduct a study on the effects of work hours on productivity and errors…

    My findings were quite simply that mistakes and errors rose by about 10% after an eight-hour day and 28% after a 10-hour day…

    I also found that productivity decreased by half after the eighth hour of work. In other words, half of all overtime costs were wasted since it was taking twice as long to complete projects. After the study was done, a concerted effort was made to increase staffing.

    (Source)

    The cult of overwork is the prevailing belief that the more hours people work, the better for the company. That notion is not only harmful, it is dead wrong, as this story from Arlie Hochschild’s book The Time Bind demonstrates.

    One executive, Doug Strain, the vice chairman of ESI, a computer company in Portland Oregon, saw the link between reduced hours for some and more jobs for others. At a 1990 focus group for CEOs and managers, he volunteered the following story:
    “When demand for a product is down, normally a company fires some people and makes the rest work twice as hard. So we put it to a vote of everyone in the plant. We asked them what they wanted to do: layoffs for some workers or thirty-two-hour workweeks for everyone. They thought about it and decided they’d rather hold the team together. So we went down to a thirty-two-hour-a-week schedule for everyone furing a down time. We took everybody’s hours and salary down – executives too.”

    But Strain discovered two surprises.

    “First, productivity did not decline. I swear to God we get as much out of them at thirty-two hours as we did at forty. So it’s not a bad business decision. But second, when economic conditions improved, we offered them one hundred percent time again. No one wanted to go back!

    Never in our wildest dreams would our managers have designed a four-day week. But it’s endured at the insistence of our employees.”

    Interesting, huh? They cut back work-hours but production remains the same.

    So where exactly is the evidence (apart from our own unexamined bias) that overwork is a prerequisite for success?

    Your take

    What’s your take? Would you only invest your money in a company where the parking lot is always full – even on Sundays? What does tons of overtime do to you personally? Do you get twice as much done in an 80-hour week as in a 40-hour week? What does it do to your life outside of work?

    Related posts

  • Ask the CHO: Overwork

    Here’s a question that came in an email on Sunday(!)Clock:

    Hi Alex,
    I’ve just being surfing your website after typing in ‘overwork’ in Google and found it most interesting.

    I’m an environmental consultant working in a medium size risk management consultancy. I’ve just been working on a report for a client on Sunday while my two kids and husband wait for me to finish.

    I am contracted to work 4 days per week but usually end up working 5-6 days. My company has an unstated policy of never ever saying no to work, no matter how small the job. We have won several large tenders lately which has resulted in massive increases in workload for everyone (I am currently on 216% of my target for the month).

    We deal with the clients ourselves (which is usually empowering) but if work isn’t completed on time or of the quality they require then we get the nasty phone calls or emails. I am usually known in the company as having good client relationships and lots of repeat business but I don’t answer the phone anymore.

    Sorry for the sob story but could you offer any suggestions?

    Cheers

    Kirsten

    This is an interesting follow-up to my previous posts on working at home, flexibility at work, The Cult of Overwork and this question from another reader.

    I asked Kirsten if I could post her question here and ask for your input and she agreed and is looking forward to reading any input we can give her.

    So what do you think can be done in this situation? Is this typical? What if the problem is more systemic to the way the the whole business is set up?

  • Ask the CHO: Implied overwork

    ClockOffice Lady asks this question:

    I have a question, can anyone help? On our contracts, we are supposed to work 39 hours a week (excluding lunch hours).

    So we all come in at 9 am and leave at 6 pm. But since we are supposed to work 39 hours only, we supposedly can leave at 5 pm one day of the week.

    But of course nobody does and everyone works until at least 6 pm five days a week.

    According to instructions, “of course??? we can leave at 5 pm one day of the week….we just need to inform our supervisors first.

    I of course also work until at least 6pm everyday, but sometimes, there are things that I wanna do that I want to leave early for.

    Should I really not ask even though I am entitled to it? :(

    I’m fairly sure that this kind of situation is quite common. The rules say “work X hours a day”. Practically everyone works more or way more.
    (more…)

  • Ask the CHO: Fighting the cult of overwork in upper management

    Ask the CHOStan has some questions about the cult of overwork:

    1) When/where did the cult of overwork start? Or has business/marketing/office work always been a race towards more & more hours?

    2) Upper management at our company work 6+ days a week, have sacrificed their family lives for the past 15 years to build the company, and in general are not a fun bunch. Is it worth trying to change the corporate culture one step at a time, or should we just give up?

    Thanks for the great questions, Stan. Here’s what I think.
    (more…)

  • The cult of overwork (again)

    The cult of overwork is the prevailing belief that the more hours people work, the better for the company. That notion is not only harmful, it is dead wrong, as this story from Arlie Hochschild’s book The Time Bind demonstrates.

    One executive, Doug Strain, the vice chairman of ESI, a computer company in Portland Oregon, saw the link between reduced hours for some and more jobs for others. At a 1990 focus group for CEOs and managers, he volunteered the following story:

    When demand for a product is down, normally a company fires some people and makes the rest work twice as hard. So we put it to a vote of everyone in the plant. We asked them what they wanted to do: layoffs for some workers or thirty-two-hour workweeks for everyone. They thought about it and decided they’d rather hold the team together. So we went down to a thirty-two-hour-a-week schedule for everyone furing a down time. We took everybody’s hours and salary down – executives too.

    But Strain discovered two surprises.

    First, productivity did not decline. I swear to God we get as much out of them at thirty-two hours as we did at forty. So it’s not a bad business decision. But second, when economic conditions improved, we offered them one hundred percent time again. No one wanted to go back!

    Never in our wildest dreams would our managers have designed a four-day week. But it’s endured at the insistence of our employees.

    Interesting, huh? They cut back work-hours but production remains the same.


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