How Too Many Long Hours Can Be Bad for Your Career
By Hunkar Ozyasar
http://www.careerjournal.com/columnists/perspective/20050623-fmp.html
Approximately 2,500 years ago, Confucius told his students: "To go too far is as bad as to fall short." Excessive work, he said, is as undesirable as laziness. As simple as this advice may sound, most of us still fail to grasp it, thinking that the only downsides of overwork are fatigue and burnout. In reality, the side effects can be much more serious. Especially for managers, hard work can become toxic at extreme doses and "poison" a career.
First, working excessively long hours can mask weaknesses. These may surface too late, when problems are no longer easily fixed. Consider the manager who routinely does the work of her assistant because she failed to recruit the right person and train him properly. Her superiors may not notice the problem if she's willing to work hard enough. The individual may not even grasp the extent of her problem, as she will probably be busy praising herself for working harder than anyone else.
Consequently, this executive who needs urgent training in human management, instead, can be put in charge of a five-person team. This is when all hell breaks loose. Hard work can't make up for the inefficiencies she creates for five employees. After all, there are only so many hours in a day.
If this manager weren't willing to work insane hours, the problem would have been exposed earlier and addressed before her promotion. In the end, she would go much further in her career. If, however, the problem surfaces as a result of a failure, the manager will have not only a long-term weakness to address but also a fiasco to explain.
Another problem with working long hours is that such a lifestyle is extremely difficult to sustain. An analogy is a company that relies exclusively on price cuts to gain market share. Charging $1 for a product that costs 98 cents to manufacture is not a sensible strategy, because it leaves no room for error. The first labor strike or product recall can easily drive the corporation into bankruptcy.
Similarly, a manager who is working as much as humanly possible has little time to handle common life challenges -- a sick parent, a new baby or a new home purchase. Any additional time required for these things usually must come from working less, as there is often nothing else in such a person's life to cut back on. The ability to outwork others declines as the years go by. As you age, your body, too, will start to protest those all-nighters and refuse to run properly on pizza and Diet Coke.
A third reason why working long hours isn't a sound career strategy is the ease with which it can be copied. It is difficult for a competitor to come out of nowhere and know your customers as well as you do or match the rapport you have developed with top management. But someone can, and often does, appear out of the blue and send more e-mails, prepare more presentations and return more phone calls. To put it in consulting jargon, hard work isn't a "sustainable competitive advantage."
You might ask: "How do I know if I am working too hard?" Here are three ways to tell:
1. Compare your hours to your peers'. Keep an eye on how much time they're spending in the office and try to achieve similar or better results with fewer than average hours. If your hours are above average and your performance isn't, you're probably compensating for some kind of shortcoming.
2. Listen to how people define your strengths. Adjectives such as "hardworking," "dedicated," or "committed" shouldn't show up among your top three qualities. These are copied easily and can't differentiate you as you advance in your career. If you have doubts, pick up a copy of a business publication and read a profile of any top manager. You rarely will find those qualities among their strengths. The list may include "visionary," "bold," "good communicator" and other descriptors, but probably not "hard worker."
3. Finally, ask yourself how much harder you could be working if you really wanted to. If the answer is, "Not much harder," you're in trouble. Should your boss present you with an excellent opportunity and ask you to try harder in return, you'll likely fail to rise to the challenge. You are already trying as hard as possible and can't do any better.
If, on the other hand, you have room to crank up the hours when needed, you can dig into your reserves when the race heats up. This will enable you to perform at your best when it matters the most -- a key quality that differentiates the stars from the rest.
-- Mr. Ozyasar is a former high-yield bond strategist for an investment bank in New York. This article is excerpted from the book he is writing: "When Time Management Fails."
http://www.careerjournal.com/columnists/perspective/20050623-fmp.html
Approximately 2,500 years ago, Confucius told his students: "To go too far is as bad as to fall short." Excessive work, he said, is as undesirable as laziness. As simple as this advice may sound, most of us still fail to grasp it, thinking that the only downsides of overwork are fatigue and burnout. In reality, the side effects can be much more serious. Especially for managers, hard work can become toxic at extreme doses and "poison" a career.
First, working excessively long hours can mask weaknesses. These may surface too late, when problems are no longer easily fixed. Consider the manager who routinely does the work of her assistant because she failed to recruit the right person and train him properly. Her superiors may not notice the problem if she's willing to work hard enough. The individual may not even grasp the extent of her problem, as she will probably be busy praising herself for working harder than anyone else.
Consequently, this executive who needs urgent training in human management, instead, can be put in charge of a five-person team. This is when all hell breaks loose. Hard work can't make up for the inefficiencies she creates for five employees. After all, there are only so many hours in a day.
If this manager weren't willing to work insane hours, the problem would have been exposed earlier and addressed before her promotion. In the end, she would go much further in her career. If, however, the problem surfaces as a result of a failure, the manager will have not only a long-term weakness to address but also a fiasco to explain.
Another problem with working long hours is that such a lifestyle is extremely difficult to sustain. An analogy is a company that relies exclusively on price cuts to gain market share. Charging $1 for a product that costs 98 cents to manufacture is not a sensible strategy, because it leaves no room for error. The first labor strike or product recall can easily drive the corporation into bankruptcy.
Similarly, a manager who is working as much as humanly possible has little time to handle common life challenges -- a sick parent, a new baby or a new home purchase. Any additional time required for these things usually must come from working less, as there is often nothing else in such a person's life to cut back on. The ability to outwork others declines as the years go by. As you age, your body, too, will start to protest those all-nighters and refuse to run properly on pizza and Diet Coke.
A third reason why working long hours isn't a sound career strategy is the ease with which it can be copied. It is difficult for a competitor to come out of nowhere and know your customers as well as you do or match the rapport you have developed with top management. But someone can, and often does, appear out of the blue and send more e-mails, prepare more presentations and return more phone calls. To put it in consulting jargon, hard work isn't a "sustainable competitive advantage."
You might ask: "How do I know if I am working too hard?" Here are three ways to tell:
1. Compare your hours to your peers'. Keep an eye on how much time they're spending in the office and try to achieve similar or better results with fewer than average hours. If your hours are above average and your performance isn't, you're probably compensating for some kind of shortcoming.
2. Listen to how people define your strengths. Adjectives such as "hardworking," "dedicated," or "committed" shouldn't show up among your top three qualities. These are copied easily and can't differentiate you as you advance in your career. If you have doubts, pick up a copy of a business publication and read a profile of any top manager. You rarely will find those qualities among their strengths. The list may include "visionary," "bold," "good communicator" and other descriptors, but probably not "hard worker."
3. Finally, ask yourself how much harder you could be working if you really wanted to. If the answer is, "Not much harder," you're in trouble. Should your boss present you with an excellent opportunity and ask you to try harder in return, you'll likely fail to rise to the challenge. You are already trying as hard as possible and can't do any better.
If, on the other hand, you have room to crank up the hours when needed, you can dig into your reserves when the race heats up. This will enable you to perform at your best when it matters the most -- a key quality that differentiates the stars from the rest.
-- Mr. Ozyasar is a former high-yield bond strategist for an investment bank in New York. This article is excerpted from the book he is writing: "When Time Management Fails."
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