There’s a large body of research that suggests that regardless of our reasons for working long hours, overwork does not help us. As well as damaging employee’s health and well-being, it doesn’t seem to result in more output for the companies.
The story of overwork is literally a story of diminishing returns: keep overworking, and you’ll progressively work more stupidly on tasks that are increasingly meaningless.
This is something business first learned a long time ago. In the 19th century, when organized labor first compelled factory owners to limit workdays to 10 (and then eight) hours, management was surprised to discover thatoutput actually increased – and that expensive mistakes and accidents decreased. This is an experiment that Harvard Business School’s Leslie Perlow and Jessica Porter repeated over a century later with knowledge workers. It still held true. Predictable, required time off (like nights and weekends) actually made teams of consultants more productive.
Now, this is not to say we can never pull a long day. We just can’t do it routinely. Most of the research I’ve seen suggests that people can put in a week or two of 60 hours to resolve a true crisis. But that’s different from chronic overwork.
If you work too often too long too meaningless please share this information with whoever is able to change this trend.
Read the whole article at HBR.
