Overwork and Job Performance

I received yet another newsletter from Andrew Ross Sorkin’s DealBook that discusses about how overwork can not only adversely impact your health but it can also impact your job performance. No surprise there.

If you subscribe to the New York Times, then you can do a search for “Companies Can’t Stop Overworking” by Corinne Purtill.

The part of the article that stood out the most to me is this quote:

“For the first 49 hours of the week, there was a direct relationship between time and productivity — the more employees worked, the more they got done. Starting at hour 50, employees still produced more the more they worked, but the output for each additional hour worked started to shrink. And after about 64 hours, productivity collapsed — there was little to show for all that extra time except for a lot of additional on-the-job injuries. Mr. Pencavel also found that workers who worked seven consecutive days without rest produced less than people who worked the same number of hours over six days in a week.”

“Companies Can’t Stop Overworking”, Now York Times, Corinne Purtill, April 10, 2021.

There is definitely a search for a more sane way of working, especially since the onset of the pandemic, but as long as America has a cultural storyline of heroism and beating against all odds, overwork will stick around. We feed on the heroic exploits of the military guys who survive extreme battle or the super athlete who keeps on practicing after all has declared finished for the day.

“Do whatever it takes to get the job done.”

We feed ourselves these stories of long hours at start ups, sleeping under the desk and eating junk food. There’s the stories of overcoming floods to service customers. The red eye to deliver the winning presentation.

As long as we have these hero stories, we will have people overworking in the hopes of achieving those nebulous glories.