Laura Stack says the Japanese rightly recognise the deadly dangers of too much work and call it ‘karoshi’ — a word that has no equivalent in Western languages.
The Japanese have a word for working too much: Karoshi.
It’s applied to people who literally work themselves to death… or suicide because they can’t keep up.
Japan’s intense work culture encourages overwork, to the point where families of victims can sue the Government and the victim’s company for compensation.
In Western languages, there’s no equivalent for karoshi, nor do we officially recognise it as a cause of death — but it happens.
Instead, we say those workers died from exhaustion, failed to take care of themselves, used too many stimulants, or suffered sudden strokes or heart attacks.
These are just results; they don’t address the root cause of people working too many hours.
It’s increasingly obvious that, in our search for ever more productivity, there’s a point of diminishing returns we cannot physically overcome.
Add this to the serious effects overwork has on your body, and it becomes clear that you can in fact, work too many hours.
Consider these guidelines while trying to determine how much work is too much for you:
Workweeks longer than 50 hours are rarely productive:
Studies reveal that productivity improves as you dial up from 30 to 50 hours.
However, after about 50 hours of work per week, benefits decrease with each extra hour until, at about 55 hours, productivity drops.
Some people keep improving until 65 hours or so; but on average, those who work 70 hours-plus are no more productive than those who cap their workweek at 55 hours.
Needless to say, excess work leaves us too little time to rest and mentally recharge our batteries.
Not everyone has the same number of optimal work hours per week.
Your ‘Goldilocks Zone’ may be around 60, while turning in superb productivity the whole way, or it may be 45 hours a week — even less.
Reflect on past experience, and if necessary, experiment with your workweek’s length until you determine your personal Goldilocks Zone — and stick to it.
Working long hours hurts your mental health:
Clearly, the classic 40-hour workweek was chosen for good reason.
Indeed, a 2017 study of nearly 8,000 Australian workers showed their mental health degraded after an average of just 39 hours.
Meanwhile, the British Mental Health Organisation puts the average number of work hours before “emotional degradation” at 49.
This variation may represent cultural differences, a slight variance in what the organisations measured, or sample bias, as the Australian sample included more women than men.
Because women in the study tended to care for children and do housework more often than men, most already work longer hours than men.
This study suggested that working women start to suffer after an average of 34 workplace hours.
Working long hours increases your cardiac risk:
A meta-study of almost 604,000 people demonstrated that those working longer hours significantly increased the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke.
The researchers based this conclusion on 25 other studies in Europe, the United States and Australia, with 55 hours again proving the ‘magic number’.
Past this the risk of heart attack and stroke increased by one-third.
Some sources assume this refers to 11-hour workdays spread over a five-day workweek.
In fact, the 55 hours can occur over a full seven-day week and prove just as dangerous.
Occasional ‘crunch times’ are okay:
However, they should not be extended over more than a couple of weeks at a time.
We’ve all gone through periods when we had to work harder than normal to finish a project on time or to cover for others during flu season.
You might end up working a flurry of 12-to-14 hour days for a couple of weeks, including weekends.
That’s generally okay, because most people are sprinters: We can run full tilt for a little while and make excellent progress before we need to rest.
Too many weeks of overtime, though, will likely overwhelm your ability to perform.
If working an extreme number of hours actually increased performance, it would be worth it; but it does not — at least beyond a certain point.
More than 55 hours of work per week tires out average people mentally and physically, ruining their productivity.
The lesson here is to cut back to your Goldilocks Zone before you overdo it.
No matter how productive you can temporarily become by working longer, harder, and smarter, you won’t be productive at all if you’re sick or burned out.
*Laura Stack is a keynote speaker, author and authority on productivity and performance. She has written seven books, including her newest: Doing the Right Things Right: How the Effective Executive Spends Time. She can be contacted at theproductivitypro.com
This article first appeared on Laura’s blogsite.
