9 ms·

Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

362 points by pmoriarty 5y ago

saltmeister 5y ago
you don't say!
andyjsong 5y ago
So do people who don't work at all, have a lower risk of stroke, heart attack than people who do work?
- Bancakes 5y ago
  No, being sedentary also raises your chances.
  - tester34 5y ago
    well, not working != not doing anything :P
- dheera 5y ago
  No. Citation?
- tester34 5y ago
  I think not working at all could affect your mental health if you didnt have decent substitute
- Atlantium 5y ago
  There are two extremes here. One extreme is excessive work while the other is no work. In between the two lies a range of working hours which is tolerable to humans.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  My heuristic is that most health issues are non-linear with a "healthy middle ground". Not everything has a healthy middle ground though - work could be like radiation exposure (linear no threshold model). That's probably more for "work-related toxicity", both mental and physical, rather than work itself.
DoingIsLearning 5y ago
The actual study: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2021.106595 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2021.106595
jbpnoy6fifty 5y ago
Definitely believable since sustained stress is highly related to sustained blood pressure issues. Sustained stress onto your heart damages your heart and other organs such as kidney and your liver. Ask any doctor who has even remote specialization or expertise with heart disease. Stress is directly correlational to heart disease. If you do experience palpitation or risk of high blood, I recommend you regularly check your blood pressure 3 times a day (morning, mid-afternoon, and evening) Please note that I am not a doctor, but have been consulted by them after expressing concerns after prolonged periods of stress and lack of sleep due to overwork in both work and school/side-projects. Note that your health and life is more important than work or that side project you are hustling on; and you should be able to ask for sick time off, if you need a health reset. I myself feared from taking time off because of fear of getting behind on projects; and it worsened my situation. Be sure to work out regularly and maintain a relatively healthy life style. Too much of anything is bad for you; work, success, and stress included. If you are less than 30; which a lot of FAANG and startups prey on, then your tolerance to working long hours is pretty high.
- another-dave 5y ago
  As well as stress of work itself, overworking makes you time poor, so you're less likely to eat healthily, get a full night's sleep regularly, exercise, get fresh air etc. & then may be prone to letting off steam with unhealthy habits — e.g. rich meals / takeaways too often, too many beers after work. Feels like the impacts really compound. I worked a high stress/hours job for awhile & really glad I could get out of it. Certainly wasn't worth the money/quality of life trade-off.
- coldcode 5y ago
  At age 30 I worked 90 hr/s week for almost 5 months in my startup, then wound up in the hospital with the Flu. At my last job before retiring this year I worked 50 hrs/week minimum (sometimes 7 days a week for months in the past 5+ years) and I was still able to be successful, but I could see that at 63 I could no longer sustain that kind of pace without increasing my risk of dying. So I retired although I certainly could have worked for many years still (my employer was upset that I retired), but what's the point of killing yourself for someone else's benefit? I am in good shape, don't smoke or drink or do stupid things, but too much work can still get you—I am now older that every male in my dads side of the family got to be (they all died early or suffered massive strokes).
lnsru 5y ago
I would differentiate between “working” and “sitting in the office”. My grandfather was a passionate carpenter. His workweek was always at least 60 hours. Sourcing wood, visiting clients, organizing everything, etc. He was in good shape and died at 92 years age. Being forced to sit in the office 45 hours a week I don’t think that I reach age above 60 years. This sitting whole day in the noisy environment was destroying my health. Luckily pandemic came and I was able to work from home.
- fwsgonzo 5y ago
  A close person suffered a stroke before 60 because of just that. It's the fastest way to die: Work in an office your whole life. Of course, now he's depressed and feels like he lost out on life by working too much, which is true. He started training really hard and got very fit. But the source of the depression will never go away.
  - thewarrior 5y ago
    Did the training start after the stroke or before ?
    - fwsgonzo 5y ago
      It was after the stroke. He really started enjoying mountain hiking and he still does. He keeps telling me that I need to take care of my body. That we aren't made for office life.
  - palimpsests 5y ago
    It sounds like you are describing the source of his depression as being his relationship to the memory and impact of what was, for him, relatively too much time working throughout his life. While the history here cannot be changed, the way he is relating to it can be changed. This is not necessarily very easy to do, but for most humans, a distinct possibility, with the right tools and resources. The source may be able to be de-potentiated, the emotional charge these memories carry in his system may be unwound, which can have a great effect on his quality of life.
jonplackett 5y ago
Elon Musk needs to chill out a bit if he’s gonna (personally) make it to Mars.
- otalp 5y ago
  He probably counts 10 hours a day on twitter and reddit as working
  - trulyrandom 5y ago
    So would I if I were able to make the cryptocurrency market move like he does with a single tweet.
leipert 5y ago
The Japanese even have a word for it: Karoshi. > which can be translated literally as "overwork death", […] The most common medical causes of karoshi deaths are heart attacks or strokes due to stress and a starvation diet. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi
- 535188B17C93743 5y ago
  The Japanese and the Germans are something else with their brilliant words for random things.
  - Frost1x 5y ago
    I've always thought that the existence or lack of concise words that describe such things (or don't) says a lot about a culture. The word exists in Japanese because it's such a common problem in their work culture, and it's so frequently talked about they needed a word for it instead of a string of words everytime they wanted to convey the meaning of working someone quite literally to death (stress levels so high they impact your health to the point of even causing death). It doesn't take a shovel to do these, you can abuse and stress your body in many ways to cause death, we just think of literal more clear physical damage from the past because it's easy to understand "back breaking" labor. We dont have "heart breaking" labor (physically and emotionally speaking), even though we really do: conditions that can lead to heart attacks and all sorts of other problems. In the US, it seems like we're getting to a point we need such words because people are starting to talk about ridiculous conditions more--it's becoming less a stigma of being 'lazy' and more awareness of labor abuse is on the rise. I'm convinced "burnt out" is a more modern trend and is often misused from the original meaning of the phrase because of a lack of appropriate terms to describe the overwork trends we're seeing more and more in the US. Such terms may also be lagging due to a lack of acknowledgement of these problems by some from factors like stigma or self-doubt.
  - tk75x 5y ago
    Seems like a common function in languages that utilize compound words for many things.
- 5y ago
ayushchat 5y ago
I've realized that it's difficult to differentiate between work and life after a point. And there's nothing wrong in that. Instead of trying to balance work and life, we should be trying to balance stress and relaxation. It can be physical or intellectual stress vs physical or intellectual relaxation. Too much of either is bad.
philmcp 5y ago
In years to come we will look down on current working conditions in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. As a step in the right direction, I believe that most jobs should be offered on either 4 days (80% salary) or 5 day (100% salary) contracts. On this topic, I recently built https://4dayweek.io https://4dayweek.io - Software Jobs with a better work / life balance
- m_eiman 5y ago
  I kinda do this, but with a slightly different schedule: 7 hour days Monday to Thursday, on Fridays I alternate between 8 hour day and no work. This sums up to 80%.
  - tekknik 5y ago
    I’ve done something like this before, 9 hours M-F but every other Friday off. It gets difficult if the schedule varies (as in the entire company doesn’t shut down on off fridays) or if you have to deal with another company not on this same schedule. It’s very nice having every other friday off though.
- akersten 5y ago
  > In years to come we will look down on current working conditions in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. Absolutely agreed. Working for someone else for 8 of the best hours of the day (if you're lucky, and not pressured into 9 or 10 hours), plus the surrounding 1 hour on either side to get ready/commute, for 5/7 of the days of the week, is no way to live. > most jobs should be offered on either 4 days (80% salary) Woah, hang on. Are we currently working at 50% pay compared to those 15-hour factory days? No. So how does it follow that a further reduction to 4 days should merit a pay cut? Our target should be 4 or even 3 days at 100% pay. Productivity has skyrocketed and wages have stagnated[0]. We deserve fair compensation for our labor, don't be so eager to discount it. [0]: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
  - 5y ago
cies 5y ago
I see a lot of people doing over time also eating a lot of delivery food. Usually working a lot is a great excuse for eating rubbish.
- Theodores 5y ago
  Not just that but watching TV. TV is the worst thing you can do, worse than anything for your obesity situation. The BBC can't tell you that though.
  - cies 5y ago
    Cannot imagine how much TV someone with a 70h+ work week can cram into their life and still find it worth living.
    - ta988 5y ago
      I know people working next to a TV. So they do both, dilute their brain and they won't believe me when I tell them that they are less efficient so have to spend more time...
    - Theodores 5y ago
      I have worked 70+ hour weeks in factory shifts, not having days off in order to build them up for a 4 day mini holiday. I had to cook as soon as I got home or else I would fall asleep to wake up at 4 am fully clothed with a cup of tea in my hand unspilled!
admissionsguy 5y ago
> The research found that working 55 hours or more a week was associated with a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared with a working week of 35 to 40 hours. That is a risk I'm willing to take, I'm afraid. To put it in context, according to Google search infobox, "The global lifetime risk of stroke is approximately 25% starting at the age of 25", so the risk jumps from 25% to 34%. Is that a lot? Depends on your priorities. I wonder if and how they managed to properly control for things like obesity or stress. Most middle-aged working professionals are in a terrible shape from my observations.
- ryanbrunner 5y ago
  What's the benefit though? When combined with the many, many studies that show that consistently working long hours significantly impacts productivity (to the point where it's a net negative), why would you ever do it if it additionally is bad for your health?
- bachmeier 5y ago
  > I wonder if and how they managed to properly control for things like obesity or stress. You wouldn't want to control for those things if the mechanism by which working long hours affects your health is that it causes you to be obese and increases your stress levels.
  - zadokshi 5y ago
    Of course you need to control for other factors. I’d you don’t all you’d prove is that overweight and unhealthy people have more health problems. Which would not be a useful study.
- mrpopo 5y ago
  > I wonder if and how they managed to properly control for things like obesity or stress. Most middle-aged working professionals are in a terrible shape from my observations. Obesity and stress were considered both as a mediator and a confounder. Long working hours cause lack of sleep and bad eating habits. https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0160412021002208-gr1.jpg https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S01604120210022...
nottorp 5y ago
Somewhere, a CEO is reading this and preparing to demand permanent 54 hour work weeks off his employees :)
- onion2k 5y ago
  What a fool. He's letting people slack off for a full hour. That's a solid week of additional work over the year he's not optimizing for.
trhway 5y ago
>Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack on correlation vs. causation - may it be that the anxious, self-insecure, etc. people, ie. the people who manage stress badly, are more prone to those health issues as well as to those long stressful work hours? For example anxiety - one of the source for it is bad oxygenation which in turn may result from the bad sitting posture (which makes harder for lungs and heart to perform their natural movements). As result your mental performance drops with corresponding work results. As a parallel result your heart works harder trying to push the blood, and the blood pressure rises, and your brain blood vessels are trying to expand and become more penetrable (i.e. the walls expand and get thinner) in order to get the enough oxygen to the brain tissue. This happening regularly naturally makes the foundation for the stroke and heart issues.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
"Laughs in 90 hour weeks"
myrmidon 5y ago
I'm curious what the approximate cost in life expectancy is from overwork and how it compares to heavy smoking (~10 years), but I was unable to estimate this from both the article and a quick glance at the study on its own. Guesstimating from [Stroke risk DOI](https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(19)30030-4 https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(19)30030-4), which quotes a global lifetime risk of almost 20% for ischaemic stroke, that 35% risk increase is A LOT. So the total damage to life expectancy from overwork is probably less than heavy smoking, but not by much-- which is both very surprising and alarming to me. Note: This is a very rough and unscientific estimate, but Fermi would be proud. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem)
anthony_r 5y ago
Shocking. (sorry for a dumb comment but I tried to match the surprise value and the significance of this finding; you will not believe what comes next!)
away314159265 5y ago
We are living in a culture of overwork because work (esp. desk work) has lost all boundaries. I'm in academia and had been idealizing overwork for quite a while ("the noble goal of devoting your life to science!"), but now have to fend off becoming cynical about the culture (increasingly after a parent with a blue collar-company died shortly before their well-earned retirement, stress played a role here). I have met various of these types, obviously not all scientists are like this, but they seem to become more frequent the more one raises up the ladder: * spending years in an excitingly different foreign country.. on a desk, experiencing little of what the country has to offer (think spending 10 years in California but never visiting Yosemite or the Grand Ganyon), sometimes condescending when told about travel experiences in the same country * working up to the point where they appear to be in psychological pain and lost authentic interest * complete tunnel vision about work * abusive behaviour because of stress * talking suicide in project meetings * continuous smart drug usage * lunch with them is usually cynical, edgy and negative * regret that they've lost their 20s to academic work Academically, these are often quite successful people whose ideas and scientific results are admired. I'd like to stay in academia but fear I will be erased from the system if I don't pay the same price. Is this view too negative? Can someone offer a different perspective here? Could some older users share their (anecdotal) experiences and perspective on this topic? How did continuous heavy overwork pay off for people you have observed (or yourself)? Is this just temporary and can be overcome by smarter decisions about where to allocate energy?
- presentation 5y ago
  Not really related to your point, but the best parts of living in a foreign country are not the famous landmarks but rather going deep into the normal life. Anyone can see Yosemite if they visit, but few can develop the close relationships and fond memories where you’ve become a regular.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - lmarcos 5y ago
    Agree. A bit off topic: living in a foreign country allows you to progressively discover those little differences in comparison to your own country: the way people say good morning, the way people wait (or not) for the light to turn green, paper bags or plastic ones for grocery shopping?... I find those popular places (e.g., Yosemite, Eiffel tower, etc.) to be the less interesting parts of foreign countries. But sure, we all cannot afford living N years in every foreign country you may want to discover.
HazalKaya 5y ago
I don't thin k so it's true
HazalKaya 5y ago
I don't think k so it's true
Iv 5y ago
My well-being, expectedly, increased when I stopped caring more about my projects than my clients did. What I was not expecting is that my quality of work remained constant or even improved while I was working fewer hours a day.
- matwood 5y ago
  I was going to say something similar. I like working, probably work too much, and I care about my work. But, my natural disposition is not to stress too much over things that don't matter. There are obviously times and certain items that do matter and require some stress to handle at that time, but day in and day out those should be rare events. I see people go on long arguments over the color of a button, or (as we see on HN a lot) argue over the minutia of a particular programming language. For the most part those things don't matter. Does the button have enough contrast to its accessible? Cool, let's move on. Go, Java, <insert pl here> - I can sing the praises or yell the problems of many languages, but I've solved problems and delivered great value in everything from VB5 to php to c++. Does the language fit the problem space? Cool, let's move on. This is a long way of saying that people blame hours working instead of how they approach work. Someone might work 4 hours/day, but if those 4 hours are super stressful every single day, that can't be a good thing.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  Thank you for saying this. I've often suspected that my work would improve if I cared less. Caring too much leads to overwork (sapping your ability to do good work in the long term) and/or analysis paralysis.
u678u 5y ago
What about tasks you do that aren't paid "work". Ie sitting at my desk writing code in the office is relatively easy. Looking after small children, chores around the house, arguing with family, helping with homework is much more stressful.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  Domestic labor. There’s lots of feminist theory on that one.
dfxm12 5y ago
In the UK, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that people working from home during the pandemic were putting in an average of six hours of unpaid overtime a week. This is disgusting.
ta988 5y ago
Overwork has not only an impact on the worker, but society has a whole. You could have two people doing that job with decent hours, and the health and stress-relief associated costs would probably compensate for much of the salary impact. We need to rethink the way work is distributed.
bby 5y ago
Some of the happiest people I've met are working girls. Usually they do one shift every few days and they are happy as hell.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
BruiseLee 5y ago
Does posting shit on Hacker News during business hours count as work? I guess it does (from health/well-being perspective) because that is also a sedentary activity in front of a computer.
codyswann 5y ago
Nearly every one I know says they work more than 60 hours a week and I would say that about 1/3 of them actually do. People think it’s cool to tell other people how many hours they work.

362 points by pmoriarty 5y ago

saltmeister 5y ago

you don't say!

andyjsong 5y ago

So do people who don't work at all, have a lower risk of stroke, heart attack than people who do work?

Bancakes 5y ago
No, being sedentary also raises your chances.
- tester34 5y ago
  well, not working != not doing anything :P
dheera 5y ago
No. Citation?
tester34 5y ago
I think not working at all could affect your mental health if you didnt have decent substitute
Atlantium 5y ago
There are two extremes here. One extreme is excessive work while the other is no work. In between the two lies a range of working hours which is tolerable to humans.
HPsquared 5y ago
My heuristic is that most health issues are non-linear with a "healthy middle ground". Not everything has a healthy middle ground though - work could be like radiation exposure (linear no threshold model). That's probably more for "work-related toxicity", both mental and physical, rather than work itself.

DoingIsLearning 5y ago

The actual study: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2021.106595 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2021.106595

jbpnoy6fifty 5y ago

Definitely believable since sustained stress is highly related to sustained blood pressure issues. Sustained stress onto your heart damages your heart and other organs such as kidney and your liver. Ask any doctor who has even remote specialization or expertise with heart disease. Stress is directly correlational to heart disease. If you do experience palpitation or risk of high blood, I recommend you regularly check your blood pressure 3 times a day (morning, mid-afternoon, and evening) Please note that I am not a doctor, but have been consulted by them after expressing concerns after prolonged periods of stress and lack of sleep due to overwork in both work and school/side-projects. Note that your health and life is more important than work or that side project you are hustling on; and you should be able to ask for sick time off, if you need a health reset. I myself feared from taking time off because of fear of getting behind on projects; and it worsened my situation. Be sure to work out regularly and maintain a relatively healthy life style. Too much of anything is bad for you; work, success, and stress included. If you are less than 30; which a lot of FAANG and startups prey on, then your tolerance to working long hours is pretty high.

another-dave 5y ago
As well as stress of work itself, overworking makes you time poor, so you're less likely to eat healthily, get a full night's sleep regularly, exercise, get fresh air etc. & then may be prone to letting off steam with unhealthy habits — e.g. rich meals / takeaways too often, too many beers after work. Feels like the impacts really compound. I worked a high stress/hours job for awhile & really glad I could get out of it. Certainly wasn't worth the money/quality of life trade-off.
coldcode 5y ago
At age 30 I worked 90 hr/s week for almost 5 months in my startup, then wound up in the hospital with the Flu. At my last job before retiring this year I worked 50 hrs/week minimum (sometimes 7 days a week for months in the past 5+ years) and I was still able to be successful, but I could see that at 63 I could no longer sustain that kind of pace without increasing my risk of dying. So I retired although I certainly could have worked for many years still (my employer was upset that I retired), but what's the point of killing yourself for someone else's benefit? I am in good shape, don't smoke or drink or do stupid things, but too much work can still get you—I am now older that every male in my dads side of the family got to be (they all died early or suffered massive strokes).

lnsru 5y ago

I would differentiate between “working” and “sitting in the office”. My grandfather was a passionate carpenter. His workweek was always at least 60 hours. Sourcing wood, visiting clients, organizing everything, etc. He was in good shape and died at 92 years age. Being forced to sit in the office 45 hours a week I don’t think that I reach age above 60 years. This sitting whole day in the noisy environment was destroying my health. Luckily pandemic came and I was able to work from home.

fwsgonzo 5y ago
A close person suffered a stroke before 60 because of just that. It's the fastest way to die: Work in an office your whole life. Of course, now he's depressed and feels like he lost out on life by working too much, which is true. He started training really hard and got very fit. But the source of the depression will never go away.
- thewarrior 5y ago
  Did the training start after the stroke or before ?
  - fwsgonzo 5y ago
    It was after the stroke. He really started enjoying mountain hiking and he still does. He keeps telling me that I need to take care of my body. That we aren't made for office life.
- palimpsests 5y ago
  It sounds like you are describing the source of his depression as being his relationship to the memory and impact of what was, for him, relatively too much time working throughout his life. While the history here cannot be changed, the way he is relating to it can be changed. This is not necessarily very easy to do, but for most humans, a distinct possibility, with the right tools and resources. The source may be able to be de-potentiated, the emotional charge these memories carry in his system may be unwound, which can have a great effect on his quality of life.

jonplackett 5y ago

Elon Musk needs to chill out a bit if he’s gonna (personally) make it to Mars.

otalp 5y ago
He probably counts 10 hours a day on twitter and reddit as working
- trulyrandom 5y ago
  So would I if I were able to make the cryptocurrency market move like he does with a single tweet.

leipert 5y ago

The Japanese even have a word for it: Karoshi. > which can be translated literally as "overwork death", […] The most common medical causes of karoshi deaths are heart attacks or strokes due to stress and a starvation diet. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi

535188B17C93743 5y ago
The Japanese and the Germans are something else with their brilliant words for random things.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  I've always thought that the existence or lack of concise words that describe such things (or don't) says a lot about a culture. The word exists in Japanese because it's such a common problem in their work culture, and it's so frequently talked about they needed a word for it instead of a string of words everytime they wanted to convey the meaning of working someone quite literally to death (stress levels so high they impact your health to the point of even causing death). It doesn't take a shovel to do these, you can abuse and stress your body in many ways to cause death, we just think of literal more clear physical damage from the past because it's easy to understand "back breaking" labor. We dont have "heart breaking" labor (physically and emotionally speaking), even though we really do: conditions that can lead to heart attacks and all sorts of other problems. In the US, it seems like we're getting to a point we need such words because people are starting to talk about ridiculous conditions more--it's becoming less a stigma of being 'lazy' and more awareness of labor abuse is on the rise. I'm convinced "burnt out" is a more modern trend and is often misused from the original meaning of the phrase because of a lack of appropriate terms to describe the overwork trends we're seeing more and more in the US. Such terms may also be lagging due to a lack of acknowledgement of these problems by some from factors like stigma or self-doubt.
- tk75x 5y ago
  Seems like a common function in languages that utilize compound words for many things.
5y ago

ayushchat 5y ago

I've realized that it's difficult to differentiate between work and life after a point. And there's nothing wrong in that. Instead of trying to balance work and life, we should be trying to balance stress and relaxation. It can be physical or intellectual stress vs physical or intellectual relaxation. Too much of either is bad.

philmcp 5y ago

In years to come we will look down on current working conditions in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. As a step in the right direction, I believe that most jobs should be offered on either 4 days (80% salary) or 5 day (100% salary) contracts. On this topic, I recently built https://4dayweek.io https://4dayweek.io - Software Jobs with a better work / life balance

m_eiman 5y ago
I kinda do this, but with a slightly different schedule: 7 hour days Monday to Thursday, on Fridays I alternate between 8 hour day and no work. This sums up to 80%.
- tekknik 5y ago
  I’ve done something like this before, 9 hours M-F but every other Friday off. It gets difficult if the schedule varies (as in the entire company doesn’t shut down on off fridays) or if you have to deal with another company not on this same schedule. It’s very nice having every other friday off though.
akersten 5y ago
> In years to come we will look down on current working conditions in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. Absolutely agreed. Working for someone else for 8 of the best hours of the day (if you're lucky, and not pressured into 9 or 10 hours), plus the surrounding 1 hour on either side to get ready/commute, for 5/7 of the days of the week, is no way to live. > most jobs should be offered on either 4 days (80% salary) Woah, hang on. Are we currently working at 50% pay compared to those 15-hour factory days? No. So how does it follow that a further reduction to 4 days should merit a pay cut? Our target should be 4 or even 3 days at 100% pay. Productivity has skyrocketed and wages have stagnated[0]. We deserve fair compensation for our labor, don't be so eager to discount it. [0]: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
- 5y ago

cies 5y ago

I see a lot of people doing over time also eating a lot of delivery food. Usually working a lot is a great excuse for eating rubbish.

Theodores 5y ago
Not just that but watching TV. TV is the worst thing you can do, worse than anything for your obesity situation. The BBC can't tell you that though.
- cies 5y ago
  Cannot imagine how much TV someone with a 70h+ work week can cram into their life and still find it worth living.
  - ta988 5y ago
    I know people working next to a TV. So they do both, dilute their brain and they won't believe me when I tell them that they are less efficient so have to spend more time...
  - Theodores 5y ago
    I have worked 70+ hour weeks in factory shifts, not having days off in order to build them up for a 4 day mini holiday. I had to cook as soon as I got home or else I would fall asleep to wake up at 4 am fully clothed with a cup of tea in my hand unspilled!

admissionsguy 5y ago

> The research found that working 55 hours or more a week was associated with a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared with a working week of 35 to 40 hours. That is a risk I'm willing to take, I'm afraid. To put it in context, according to Google search infobox, "The global lifetime risk of stroke is approximately 25% starting at the age of 25", so the risk jumps from 25% to 34%. Is that a lot? Depends on your priorities. I wonder if and how they managed to properly control for things like obesity or stress. Most middle-aged working professionals are in a terrible shape from my observations.

ryanbrunner 5y ago
What's the benefit though? When combined with the many, many studies that show that consistently working long hours significantly impacts productivity (to the point where it's a net negative), why would you ever do it if it additionally is bad for your health?
bachmeier 5y ago
> I wonder if and how they managed to properly control for things like obesity or stress. You wouldn't want to control for those things if the mechanism by which working long hours affects your health is that it causes you to be obese and increases your stress levels.
- zadokshi 5y ago
  Of course you need to control for other factors. I’d you don’t all you’d prove is that overweight and unhealthy people have more health problems. Which would not be a useful study.
mrpopo 5y ago
> I wonder if and how they managed to properly control for things like obesity or stress. Most middle-aged working professionals are in a terrible shape from my observations. Obesity and stress were considered both as a mediator and a confounder. Long working hours cause lack of sleep and bad eating habits. https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0160412021002208-gr1.jpg https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S01604120210022...

nottorp 5y ago

Somewhere, a CEO is reading this and preparing to demand permanent 54 hour work weeks off his employees :)

onion2k 5y ago
What a fool. He's letting people slack off for a full hour. That's a solid week of additional work over the year he's not optimizing for.

trhway 5y ago

>Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack on correlation vs. causation - may it be that the anxious, self-insecure, etc. people, ie. the people who manage stress badly, are more prone to those health issues as well as to those long stressful work hours? For example anxiety - one of the source for it is bad oxygenation which in turn may result from the bad sitting posture (which makes harder for lungs and heart to perform their natural movements). As result your mental performance drops with corresponding work results. As a parallel result your heart works harder trying to push the blood, and the blood pressure rises, and your brain blood vessels are trying to expand and become more penetrable (i.e. the walls expand and get thinner) in order to get the enough oxygen to the brain tissue. This happening regularly naturally makes the foundation for the stroke and heart issues.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

"Laughs in 90 hour weeks"

myrmidon 5y ago

I'm curious what the approximate cost in life expectancy is from overwork and how it compares to heavy smoking (~10 years), but I was unable to estimate this from both the article and a quick glance at the study on its own. Guesstimating from [Stroke risk DOI](https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(19)30030-4 https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(19)30030-4), which quotes a global lifetime risk of almost 20% for ischaemic stroke, that 35% risk increase is A LOT. So the total damage to life expectancy from overwork is probably less than heavy smoking, but not by much-- which is both very surprising and alarming to me. Note: This is a very rough and unscientific estimate, but Fermi would be proud. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem)

anthony_r 5y ago

Shocking. (sorry for a dumb comment but I tried to match the surprise value and the significance of this finding; you will not believe what comes next!)

away314159265 5y ago

We are living in a culture of overwork because work (esp. desk work) has lost all boundaries. I'm in academia and had been idealizing overwork for quite a while ("the noble goal of devoting your life to science!"), but now have to fend off becoming cynical about the culture (increasingly after a parent with a blue collar-company died shortly before their well-earned retirement, stress played a role here). I have met various of these types, obviously not all scientists are like this, but they seem to become more frequent the more one raises up the ladder: * spending years in an excitingly different foreign country.. on a desk, experiencing little of what the country has to offer (think spending 10 years in California but never visiting Yosemite or the Grand Ganyon), sometimes condescending when told about travel experiences in the same country * working up to the point where they appear to be in psychological pain and lost authentic interest * complete tunnel vision about work * abusive behaviour because of stress * talking suicide in project meetings * continuous smart drug usage * lunch with them is usually cynical, edgy and negative * regret that they've lost their 20s to academic work Academically, these are often quite successful people whose ideas and scientific results are admired. I'd like to stay in academia but fear I will be erased from the system if I don't pay the same price. Is this view too negative? Can someone offer a different perspective here? Could some older users share their (anecdotal) experiences and perspective on this topic? How did continuous heavy overwork pay off for people you have observed (or yourself)? Is this just temporary and can be overcome by smarter decisions about where to allocate energy?

presentation 5y ago
Not really related to your point, but the best parts of living in a foreign country are not the famous landmarks but rather going deep into the normal life. Anyone can see Yosemite if they visit, but few can develop the close relationships and fond memories where you’ve become a regular.
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- lmarcos 5y ago
  Agree. A bit off topic: living in a foreign country allows you to progressively discover those little differences in comparison to your own country: the way people say good morning, the way people wait (or not) for the light to turn green, paper bags or plastic ones for grocery shopping?... I find those popular places (e.g., Yosemite, Eiffel tower, etc.) to be the less interesting parts of foreign countries. But sure, we all cannot afford living N years in every foreign country you may want to discover.

HazalKaya 5y ago

I don't thin k so it's true

HazalKaya 5y ago

I don't think k so it's true

Iv 5y ago

My well-being, expectedly, increased when I stopped caring more about my projects than my clients did. What I was not expecting is that my quality of work remained constant or even improved while I was working fewer hours a day.

matwood 5y ago
I was going to say something similar. I like working, probably work too much, and I care about my work. But, my natural disposition is not to stress too much over things that don't matter. There are obviously times and certain items that do matter and require some stress to handle at that time, but day in and day out those should be rare events. I see people go on long arguments over the color of a button, or (as we see on HN a lot) argue over the minutia of a particular programming language. For the most part those things don't matter. Does the button have enough contrast to its accessible? Cool, let's move on. Go, Java, <insert pl here> - I can sing the praises or yell the problems of many languages, but I've solved problems and delivered great value in everything from VB5 to php to c++. Does the language fit the problem space? Cool, let's move on. This is a long way of saying that people blame hours working instead of how they approach work. Someone might work 4 hours/day, but if those 4 hours are super stressful every single day, that can't be a good thing.
JohnBooty 5y ago
Thank you for saying this. I've often suspected that my work would improve if I cared less. Caring too much leads to overwork (sapping your ability to do good work in the long term) and/or analysis paralysis.

u678u 5y ago

What about tasks you do that aren't paid "work". Ie sitting at my desk writing code in the office is relatively easy. Looking after small children, chores around the house, arguing with family, helping with homework is much more stressful.

germinalphrase 5y ago
Domestic labor. There’s lots of feminist theory on that one.

dfxm12 5y ago

In the UK, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that people working from home during the pandemic were putting in an average of six hours of unpaid overtime a week. This is disgusting.

ta988 5y ago

Overwork has not only an impact on the worker, but society has a whole. You could have two people doing that job with decent hours, and the health and stress-relief associated costs would probably compensate for much of the salary impact. We need to rethink the way work is distributed.

bby 5y ago

Some of the happiest people I've met are working girls. Usually they do one shift every few days and they are happy as hell.

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BruiseLee 5y ago

Does posting shit on Hacker News during business hours count as work? I guess it does (from health/well-being perspective) because that is also a sedentary activity in front of a computer.

codyswann 5y ago

Nearly every one I know says they work more than 60 hours a week and I would say that about 1/3 of them actually do. People think it’s cool to tell other people how many hours they work.