-Laelth

I have, at times in my life, worked lots of night and weekend hours during work crunch times. But never on a prolonged basis. Especially in the past several years, I've made a point of not overdoing it and have gotten the best performance reviews of my life during that period.

Funny how that works.

I suppose some of it is the improved performance that (sometimes) comes with experience, but I really think in large part I'm more effective when I allow myself time with loved ones, hobbies, semi-professional pursuits, and other enjoyable activities. And when I'm working, I do the very best I can and am known as a team player. (No brag, just fact.)

And I do not have more respect for colleagues who "go the extra mile" and do work over holiday breaks, send a flurry of emails on the weekend, call off their vacations, etc. These people have my pity and/or disgust -- depending on whether they're forced into it or choose sacrifice their personal lives in pursuit of their employer's goals.

(This, of course, doesn't apply at all to people like musicians or authors on book tour -- working nights and weekends is a core part of their work. But they also generally have flexibility during "normal work hours" that most of us don't have.)

One of the sickest examples I recall from my work life: An exec in my organization sent an email from a fishing boat off the coast of Mexico while on vacation, informing everyone in his chain of command that they should be logging more than 40 hours of work each week. This guy sent this for real! This means he was looking at hours worked for his whole team (a lot of people) while on fucking vacation!! And he felt the need to set them straight from the deck of a boat in the ocean, on vacation. He got divorced within a year after that, as I recall. Still married to the job, though.

Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be working right now! After all, it is Monday morning. But you won't catch me working tonight or over the weekend unless it's some kind of rare, extreme emergency.

I think there are a lot of people who would agree with you. I also find your last paragraph interesting.

Decades ago - that is, before the internet was widely available - people would gather in a breakroom to chat or take smoking breaks or long lunches or engage in personal calls. Those things still occur, but added to that downtime is the new realm of downtime associated with checking personal email, looking in on facebook, checking the news or weather, chatting, texting or just aimlessly surfing the net. I think all this new downtime sort of blurred the lines between work and personal time at the workplace. As a consequence, work has intruded into the home more and more over the past 20 years or so.

I came from an office environment where only certain websites related to work were whitelisted (lunchtime was free-for-all, within the bounds of good taste). At that time I didn't have the kind of phone capable of surfing or emailing at that time, so I was pretty good about staying on task and trying to get through work as quickly as possible. But eventually work came for me, especially after the 2008 election, and more and more of my time at home was spent on work. It intruded into my personal space and time at home so much that I became less and less motivated to push myself at work.

I could see that it was unsustainable, not to mention unfulfilling, so I changed careers. I realize that's not an option for many people and it was a difficult choice for me and my family at the time (still haven't earned as much as I did then), but it's getting better.

I happen to be most familiar with writing software, where there's lots of people who work a ton of extra hours.

Problem is you can only do about 30-35 productive hours of software development per week on a "normal" basis. You can do very short periods of "crunch time", but beyond that you are still putting in 30-35 productive hours even though you're working 60.

Why? Mistakes. When you're tired, you make more mistakes. And it takes time to find and fix those mistakes.

There's some fields where more hours means getting more done, but not that many. Too many fields require being "on the ball" mentally, and extra hours ruins that.

And organizations that try to maximize productivity by keeping the pedal to the metal at all times are unfortunately the ones that tend to ignore the symptoms.

It's harder to see in a crappy economy, because most of the burnout victims have nowhere to go. But with the economy improving, there will be more opportunities to move around.

total average hours worked per year (when fully employed).

When the donkey gets old, injured, or just tired, turn it loose and get another one to take its place.

some of the coolest businesses are very week-end oriented -- entertainment, ski resorts, hospitality, theater and performing arts, catering, entrepreneurs, and the like. Might be better to look at total hours worked.

Why,

Because I'm important LOL


You beholden to the man! Not really, If I need to take a half day off whenever I need to or have something come up it's no big deal. Sometimes shit just needs to get done....

I was born in 1957, and growing up in the 60's I remember hearing that all the new technologies and increases in productivity would boost the standard of living for the average American while giving us more free time to spend with our families and enhance the quality of our lives.

The new technologies came about and productivity has indeed increased, but nearly all the benefits have gone to the ownership class. Vast wealth is being created, but the standard of living for the average American is falling while those with jobs are working more and more hours with little or no gains to show for it.

WTF happened to the future?

and they're much better than 5-8s. After three days of off time every week you almost forget what irritated or pissed you off last week and you're ready to start fresh. If more companies went to that, I think they'd be surprised at the jump in morale/drop in turnover.

Of course I mostly work long stretches of 7-12s (By choice. 44 hours of overtime FTW.) so most of the time neither applies.