The more hours you put in, the more work you get done. Right? Wrong! This misguided belief is actually fruitless – not only will you get less done, but your health and the quality of your work will be compromised.

According to research, working too many hours can be counter-productive and hazardous to your health. So how many hours should you work? Some experts reckon that the sweet spot is 40 hours – others even advocate for 32 hours to be the norm. Every extra hour you add on top of this makes you less productive, in the long and short term. And when you go over 50 hours a week, the wheels start to come off.

If you’re an entrepreneur, freelancer, or small business owner, you probably think that working only eight hours per day is a far-fetched dream. There are several reasons why we work overtime. You’ll likely find that there is more than one reason why you’re staying late day after day:

• You have a computer in your pocket or handbag. Technology has made it tough to switch off and resist the urge to check and respond to emails after hours.
• Many small business owners work from home, and it’s not always easy to make the switch between office hours and personal time.
• We have a culture of working overtime – our parents, mentors, and colleagues all clock more than eight hours a day, so why should we be different? Surely they can’t all be wrong?
• Working harder than your peers may give you a sense of pride or self-importance.
• The perceived economic benefits – we’ll make more money if we work harder – are often a driving force.
• Feelings of guilt, anxiety, or ambition.
• An overdeveloped sense of duty. We might feel that we are letting our colleagues or shareholders down if we’re not putting in extra hours.

Changing the way we think about working overtime is not easy. It often takes a near-breakdown or severe health issues before we realise that it’s time to put ourselves first and work second. Maybe your physical or mental health has been affected, or you have experienced relationship issues due to stress and hard work, which made you decide that it’s time to slow down. If not, you may not yet be convinced that your working habits need to change.

Take a look at the reasons why working too much is bad for you, and maybe you’ll make the decision to slow down before it’s too late:

Our productivity declines the more we work. When that happens, you start to fall behind on your duties and end up spending even more hours trying to catch up, fuelling a vicious cycle.

One study found that little productive work happens after we’ve worked 50 hours per week. Another study found that when there is a 10% increase in overtime in the manufacturing industry, there is a 2.4% decline in productivity, while white collar jobs have a 25% decrease in productivity if people work for more than 60 hours.

When we work too many hours over an extended period, fatigue starts to set in due to sleep deprivation. This causes sleepiness, weariness, irritability, poor concentration, and an increased risk of illness.

A study found that when people work 8.7% overtime, they have no fatigue-related problems, while people working 12.4% overtime have minor fatigue-related problems, and those working 15.4% have severe fatigue-related problems.

It is hard to maintain a healthy social life when we have too little or no free time to spend with family and friends. People working too much overtime tend to neglect their responsibilities outside of work and don’t get to spend enough quality time with their loved ones.

Working too hard can also affect your relationships with people near to you. A study found that 10% of people who work between 50 and 60 hours have relationship problems, while 30% of relationships are affected if people work more than 60 hours.

When working too hard, our cortisol levels rises. This has many negative effects on our physical and mental health. Increased stress levels can disrupt sleep, affect our appetite, increase our blood pressure, and affect our immune system, memory, and mood.

We usually don’t have time cook a healthy meal and grabbing junk food on the way home has become the norm. We also tend to eat more sugary, salty, and fatty snacks to deal with increased stress levels. Exercise is put on the back-burner.

Working too hard often indirectly causes or aggravates obesity, diabetes, drinking, and smoking. One study found that people who work more than 10 hours per day have a 60% higher risk of cardiovascular disease. Another study found that people who work more than 40 hours per week consume more alcohol and tobacco, and have a greater risk of weight gain and depression.

Burnout, depression, anxiety – all workaholics are familiar with the symptoms or at least the warning signs. One study found that working more than 11 hours of overtime per week increases our risk of depression.

An even scarier finding is that prolonged extended working hours can cause long-term brain damage and dementia. A study of middle-aged workers who worked more than 55 hours found that these people had poorer mental skills, impaired short-term memory, and a reduced ability to recall words.

If the reasons above did not sway you to clamp down on overtime, this may. You may be surprised to know that when you and your employees work too much, the bottom line of your business may be affected. Here are a few reasons why your profit may shrink:

• Greater absenteeism and paying more for sick leave.
• Higher turnover of employees, so you will need to train new staff members regularly.
• Overtime hours are paid at 50% more than normal pay. Not only do you pay more per hour, but your team’s productivity falls as well, which means you may end up paying double for the same output achieved during regular hours.
• People make more mistakes when overworked, which can become quite costly depending on the errors.
• You may lose sight of the bigger picture and end up working on tasks that are meaningless.

Maybe you’re now convinced that it’s time to decrease your working hours, but when you look at your workload, you probably think that there is no way you’ll be able to scale down. Here are a few tips that can help you to work less and get more done while feeling healthy and relaxed:

• Draw up a schedule for each day which includes periods of work, rest, exercise, sleep, and social time, and try to stick with it. When we have something to look forward to in the evening or over weekends, we tend to be more productive.
• There are many workflow management apps available that can help you to manage your time more efficiently. Try them!
• Break your work down into manageable chunks and focus on one task at a time – trying to do more than one task at a time may paralyse you and actually decreases your likelihood of finishing anything.
• Use automation and cloud accounting software, like Xero, to reduce your workload.
• Outsource the tasks you can to specialists, such as IT, marketing, or accounting.
• Stay on top of deadlines so that you don’t need to work overtime to finish on time.
• Try to be home in time to cook a healthy dinner and spend time with your children before bedtime.
• Book a holiday in advance. And don’t cancel it!

It’s okay to put in long hours for a week or so now and then to resolve a crisis, but we cannot persistently work too much overtime.

You may not see the implications immediately, but if you continuously work overtime, it will sneak up on you and strike at a time when you can least afford it.

Take a step back and assess your work-life balance and make the changes necessary to protect your health and relationships, as well as the future of your business. Remember, you get your best work done when you’re feeling rested and refreshed!

This guest post was written by Lydia Botha from Wicked Plum Marketing, an accountant turned content marketer and writer. Lydia writes about accounting, small business, and entrepreneurship with the sole purpose of helping small businesses succeed.

References:

https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours-backfire-for-people-and-for-companies

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2004-143/pdfs/2004-143.pdf

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/169/5/596.full