S#¡T they don´t teach @ Business Schools. LESSON #2

ABOUT OVERWORKING

When one is young and naive, one aspires to get the best job one can get after graduating, this is why most of us, during the recruitment process, don´t ask the right questions (this will be the next lesson: ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS).

Here's the deal, it doesn´t matter the size of the company, if you have a managerial job, you will probably be overworked, there's just no way around it. And why is this you ask? Because they can... companies will overwork you because they can, they know that the job demand exceeds the job offers, so if you're not willing to cooperate, you're free to quit or get kicked out.

We see ourselves working more and more for a lousy paycheck, accumulating over 50 hours a week, but you will still be demanded to have lunch in one hour and arrive on time. In fact, in the US it’s become more and more common to eat at your workstation; this has become the rule, not the exception.

Work becomes something to survive rather than a place to be creative. While more hours worked means more work completed, the negatives of overworking may outweigh the positives. A Families and Work Institute study found that overworked employees dread their jobs and employer, make more mistakes, have higher stress levels, and are more likely to become depressed.

This is an oxymoron and an injustice, there is no way around it. I quote "Even though some people believe that stress helps them work better and working lots of hours is great, it’s actually damaging to both your health and your business. Not allowing yourself time outside of work can have numerous negative effects. Many people take overwork very lightly and see it as “the more hours you work the better it is for the business” when in fact, studies have shown that the first 40 hours a week are worth much more to the company than the next 20 or 30 thirty extra hours.

Juliet B. Schor (b. 1955) is a professor at Harvard University and he states: "In the last twenty years the amount of time Americans have spent at their jobs has risen steadily. Each year the change is small, amounting to about nine hours, or slightly more than one additional day of work. In any given year, such a small increment has probably been imperceptible. But the accumulated increase over two decades is substantial. Working hours are already longer than they were forty years ago. If present trends continue, by the end of the century Americans will be spending as much time at their jobs as they did back in the nineteen twenties."

The need to improve productivity and reduce costs has been obvious and probably necessary. However, in most organizations reducing the number of people employed has been much easier than reducing the work they do.People fill the gap by giving much more time to the organization than they contracted to do. This is good for the profits of the organization the short term. Its longer-range consequences are entirely destructive.

Sleep has become another casualty of modern life. According to sleep researchers, studies point to a "sleep deficit" among Americans, a majority of whom are currently getting between 60 and 90 minutes less a night than they should for optimum health and performance.

The juggling act between job and family is another problem area. Half the population now says they have too little time for their families.

There are at least two groups of people who overwork. The first are 'workaholics'. These people live for work. They are not responding to outside pressure. Workaholics have often had early experiences where the only way to get any love and approval was by working. They continue to seek this approval through their work. Of course they cannot get now what they needed in the past. Although these people are clearly victims of what happened to them, their behavior can be very difficult at work. They make work for people around them and then pressure others to be as 'committed' as they are.

Most of the people who overwork are not 'workaholics'. They are forced into this pattern of working. The economic climate makes them feel afraid of not conforming to the way others behave in the organization or what people expect. It is hard to say that you want to be with your partner or child and you will not stay late tonight. The quality of the work falls because of the resentment (sometimes unconscious) about having to be there.

My conclusion is the following: if you overwork, you will have less time to exercise, and a greater chance of unhealthy eating. This starts a vicious cycle in which you have a greater risk of having heart disease, and you’ll have less time to enjoy other thing you enjoy doing in life (other than work). And if you stop enjoying the other aspects of life, you’re missing out on living, and living to work is like dying.