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Overwork contributes to 745k premature deaths per year
- pmoriarty 5y agoIt's sad, but while this is far from the first article on the damage that comes from overwork, the people who have the power to stop it don't seem to care enough to do so.
- ketanmaheshwari 5y agoIn addition, there is cultural conditioning towards overworking. The problem will likely continue until this changes. There are progressive movements like UBI and 4-days work week but the inertia will take its toll for some time to come I reckon.
- handrous 5y ago3-day or bust. Enough to still get stuff done, but means that even on a non-vacation week, work no longer dominates most of your life.
- datameta 5y agoI don't think an ambitious all-or-nothing approach will pass in the voting chambers. It needs to start with moving to 4 days. In fact in some places 6 days is the normal work week so for them a change to a legal and cultural expectation of 5 work days would be a big step.
- munk-a 5y agoI've always been heavy but while working in the gaming industry I put on enough extra pounds to develop full blown OSA (obstructive sleep apnea) from pounding down sugary coffees in the mornings I felt exhausted (eventually every morning, because OSA). Working 9AM-8PM regularly has real health side effects and, honestly, it can get a lot worse than 11 hour days in the gaming industry.
- ergocoder 5y agoNow do a research about commute, so the jobs that don't need to go to the office can just work from home
- akomtu 5y agoDid they count only office workers? I bet way more people die in cobalt mines in Africa to make our electric car revolution affordable.
- inter_netuser 5y agoyou must be exaggerating? it's really that bad that literal millions die in mines in Africa?
- actually_a_dog 5y agoI don't know about in the mines, but there is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_diamond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_diamond I imagine a similar phenomenon exists for other mineral resources.
- akomtu 5y ago"Paid less than $1 a day children are primarily coerced into cobalt mining work due to injury or death suffered by parents in cobalt mining, the inability to pay school fees, ..."
- InitialLastName 5y agoDid you mean to enclose an actual source with that comment? Without that, it's difficult to verify the scale and validity of the issue you're raising (not that I necessarily doubt it; I just like to have more coherent sources than a pull quote from an anonymous commenter on an internet forum).
- ficklepickle 5y agohttps://www.forbes.com/sites/tobyshapshak/2019/12/18/cobalt-lawsuit-against-tech-giants-over-child-labour-a-global-flashpoint-of-corporate-social-responsibility/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/tobyshapshak/2019/12/18/cobalt-...
- klyrs 5y ago
- paxys 5y agoIf anything this number is too conservative, since the study looks at just stroke and heart disease. When you start getting into mental health and other less obvious health conditions resulting from overwork, the results are sure to be devastating.
- laurent92 5y agoMen tend to be ok with dying at work. I’m exaggerating a bit but historically, we were doing nothing about safety in 1800s until women started working in factories too. I’m focussing on men because they die 11-18x more than women in all Western countries, but most of those deaths were in worker jobs, and if we focus on the office workers (and WFH candidates), I’m sure the difference is tighter. But still a multiple. So let’s start somewhere: We love to overwork ourselves to death, sometimes by sexist prejudice (“men are workers!”), sometime by honour (“He died in a battle”), sometimes by ideals (“This startup is the work of my life”), sometimes for money (“Ok we risk high with this robbery, but we might have money in the end”) and often because we have no friends and no other way to be recognized in society. It’s not a fatality, but I’m a bit lost at where to start.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago> Men tend to be ok with dying at work. This isn't quite what you are referring to, but, back in the days when I had delusions of becoming a college professor, I had always thought I would die in front of a blackboard, with a piece of chalk in my hand.
- WalterBright 5y agoI've often said that I intend to work until they carry me out in a box.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoI know a guy who said he wouldn't retire because he wanted to die at work and make them clean up his mess for once.
- TaylorSwift 5y agoI work so much that I do not know what to do with my freetime, and become really bored. So I just go back to work. It's a vicious cycle. It's brutal.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoI have noticed this too during crunchtime projects. At some point you lose your ability to do other things besides working. For me this is a clear signal to take a vacation or work less. I don't really want to sacrifice my life to my corporate overlords.
- dougmwne 5y agoI know that feeling. For me the only way to get out of it was to take a sabbatical. My interests and passions flowed back quickly.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- blocked_again 5y agoDoes browsing twitter, youtube, HN etc all day after work also counts as overwork?
- WalterSear 5y agoThis is often presenteeism, and it can be a result of overwork.
- blocked_again 5y agoNo. After work, at home all I do is sit in front of computer. Does that count as overwork?
- cle 5y agoHow do they determine this number, or that someone died of overwork? Can someone summarize the methodology in layman's terms? I tried reading the paper but it is (understandably) technical.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- raziel2701 5y ago"Hard work never killed anyone but why take a chance?" Guess it's time to remove that one.
- austincheney 5y agoIt’s only work if you don’t like it. I worked far less last year on my military deployment but it was really stressful work that raised my blood pressure 40 points and resulted in serious weight gain. Now that I am currently working from home where I can pet my cat, tend my garden, watch Netflix, and still work as much as I want I am happy as a clam.
- giantg2 5y agoI have a sedentary high stress job (not as much as a deployment). I figure I won't live to see 50.
- freddealmeida 5y agoProbably another reason for a lockdown.
- 5tefan 5y agoWork was among the Pandora's box contents. I solve others' problems all day long and I am left with my personal problems after a day at the office.
- dougmwne 5y agoI've seen this funny effect too. I can deal with enormous projects and complexity at work, but sometimes my personal life feels like it's in shambles and nothing on my to-do list is getting done. The reality is that work has taken up everything I have and there's nothing left over at the end of the day.
- lummm 5y agoI don't understand the lamentation over a culture of overwork. What other method is there to get ahead as an individual other than out-competing your peers? My understanding of life as a young professional in China or Korea is that the competition is almost unbelievable to someone from North America.
- paganel 5y ago> What other method is there to get ahead as an individual other than out-competing your peers? Some of us have started to have issues with the "get ahead" mentality. Otherwise you are totally correct, wanting to get ahead implicitly means getting ahead of others i.e. out-competing them, but, like I said, some of us have started to see/understand that this battle is mostly futile.
- sokoloff 5y agoIt’s unclear the extent to which it’s futile. Does getting educated, working hard, doing side work, DIY work to save money, spending money wisely, saving and investing for retirement, buying one house, marrying one spouse, help your family “get ahead”? Pretty reliably. Nothing’s guaranteed in life, but doing that list gives you pretty good odds to enjoy life and get your kids started on their own enjoyable lives.
- courtf 5y agoThis is true, but when so much of our culture and the starting conditions many people find themselves in are decided before our birth, often as a matter of public policy, the whole exercise starts to feel a bit, contrived? The rules of the game are really up to us, we're not talking about axioms of the universe here and yet, we're so often expected not to question anything, and simply focus on our personal success while ignoring externalities and plights of others. What if succeeding personally while watching many others suffer unfairly, in a rich country where it needn't be that way, isn't enough to enjoy life? Do we have a duty to expand our sympathies beyond the self and the family? Most ancient wisdom says yes, and yet the modern status quo has failed to conserve this crucial pillar of humanity. Instead we have prosperity gospel, and its more secular version, the mythical meritocracy. Failed ideas that the human race has fought off more than once, only to find itself in the same boat again.
- BeetleB 5y agoObvious (hard) question: How many deaths were prevented because of this overwork?
- ornornor 5y agoI’d suspect not very many. Filing the TPS report by some made up arbitrary deadline, forcing the victims to work overtime so that a middle manager somewhere can feel important is very unlikely to save a life. When you think about it, most of the work most people do is utterly inconsequential and doesn’t matter much if at all. And even when it does, it’s really not so critical that the world will end if it’s a week or two late, making most overwork useless.
- nradov 5y agoThat makes no sense. If most work was truly inconsequential then a smart CEO would fire all the inconsequential workers to improve profit margins. Companies lay off redundant workers all the time.
- Noumenon72 5y agoAre you never grateful to your coworkers for all the things they do that make your life easier? And you aren't even there to see the things you do for your customer that make their life easier. If you got hired and it wasn't because someone made a law you had to be hired, you're probably doing something pretty consequential.
- ornornor 5y agoI should have qualified that I meant it in the context of overwork. Almost nothing we do is so crucial that sacrificing people’s lives to overwork so the deadline can be met is morally justifiable. There are very few mission critical, literally life saving exceptions. 99% of it all is not: if the TPS reports are done a week or two late, no one dies and nothing explodes.
- bserge 5y agoGee, I dunno, those extra 200 smartphones and 40 app features that will end up as trash and forgotten a year later sure saved a lot of people. Most of this overwork is for bullshit, mundane reasons that aren't even worth a rat's life.
- lurquer 5y agoI wonder how many were overworked doctors treating overworked patients. I could imagine a chain reaction occurring where you could wipe out several thousand doctors and nurses merely by showing up at the ER. (Not to mention all the overworked health insurance adjusters who’d necessarily be involved.)
- WalterBright 5y agoOn the other hand, there's a spike in deaths shortly after retirement as people lose their purpose in life.
- codetrotter 5y agoSo let people work less per week and more years and they might live longer and more enjoyable lives
- SketchySeaBeast 5y agoSome physical jobs have a point at which you're no longer able to work them and I'm not sure if reducing the hours and adding years will help that. Knowledge workers have much less of a concern in that regard.
- giantg2 5y agoMaybe less but still a concern. My mental capacity has greatly declined over the decade of my career.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y agoI'm reminded of the old man (Brooksy) who kills himself after getting out of Shawshank.
- anigbrowl 5y agoThat rather suggests one should oneself outside of work so as to have other reasons to wake up in the morning.
- nradov 5y agoCould that be confusing cause and effect? Maybe some workers choose to retire when they're diagnosed with a serious medical condition and know they don't have long to live. If my doctor told me I had an incurable disease with only months to live then the first thing I would do is quit my job.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoNot sure how to interpret this. In the 1800's, a 12-hour shift 6 days a week was normal. Life expectancy wasn't much different (except child mortality of course). Have to think its our attitude toward work that is part of the problem? Now, I don't endorse 12-hour days. But it seems that 60-hour weeks aren't the whole story, if 72-hour weeks used to be the norm.
- throwawayay02 5y agoNo it wasn't. People would work about half to 2/3rds of the year, and about 10 hours a day.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoNot in an industrial job? Here in my town there was a paper plant. 12 hour shifts alternated six days a week. Off Saturday midnight until Sunday midnight, giving both shifts 12 hours off.
- Yoric 5y ago> Not sure how to interpret this. In the 1800's, a 12-hour shift 6 days a week was normal. Life expectancy wasn't much different (except child mortality of course). Are you sure? I seem to remember otherwise.
- anigbrowl 5y agoQuite a few people decried the industrial revolution as objectionable precisely because they were subjected to excessive toil.
- douglaswlance 5y agoThis study is very flawed. They claim there is a direct link, but they didn't control for alcohol and tobacco consumption. If you look at a map of tobacco consumption vs. their map of deaths by overwork, they're very similar. Lower income folks work more hours and are more likely to self-medicate. It isn't the additional hours that kill them, necessarily.
- lostmsu 5y agoSo it is possible there's an indirect link instead of a direct link. Still for practical purposes it might be that the intermediate step (e.g. self-destructive behavior) is extremely hard to get rid of.
- anigbrowl 5y agoArguably true, but given that people consume cigarettes as a mild(ish) fast-acting stimulant, it's certainly reasonable to treat overwork as a proximate cause.
- manquer 5y agoOverwork only directly kills you if there is workplace accident because you worked long hours and your attention slipped and you drove off the road/ machinery fell on you etc. Almost always overwork does not kill "directly", if your premise is alcohol and tobacco is not controlled, my question is then how much of alcohol or tobacco consumption is driven by overwork.
- ExcavateGrandMa 5y agome I have no job... & you wouldn't believe the actually lost value :D
- gigatexal 5y agoThis is what killed my dad though it was not the sole cause: divorce (his fault, but still) which led to depression which caused him to devote all free time into his work. Being a QA manager all the stress of timelines fell on him and it worked him to death.
- anm89 5y agoWhen I hear people with anti-science attitudes I think back to things like this where an attempt to get a catchy headline published, misleadingly states something that obviously isn't true. So is it a wonder that people are dismissive of the results of other scientific research like climate change research? Overwork *CONTRIBUTES* to the death of more than 745k per year. It did not solely and directly cause those deaths. How would you even know if it did? But the claim of the title is that overwork killed them as if overwork popped out behind them with a gun and shot them. It's just obviously a nonsense claim. And once you put it this way, tons of things CONTRIBUTE to excessive deaths. Poor diet, exposure to many everyday chemicals, living in a city(air pollution). In fact, what are the odds that overwork doesn't correlate with living in a higher air pollution environment? Anyway, the claim in the title is nonsense.
- jodrellblank 5y agoCan you find anyone who reads that headline and thinks overwork popped out behind them with a gun and shot them, or anything remotely like it? > "It's just obviously a nonsense claim" Yes, obviously, and even more obviously after reading the article and the linked WHO press release which says "The study concludes that working 55 or more hours per week is associated with an estimated 35% higher risk of a stroke". Attacking straw people based on a title of a newpaper headline isn't pro-science.
- anm89 5y agoI am clearly not proposing that they are claiming an abstract concept held a physical weapon to kill anyone. Actually that's the point though. You would have to believe something nonsensical like this for it to be possible for the headline to be true as it is written. The headline is "Overwork Killed x" and that implies in no uncertain terms that overwork directly and solely killed people which is again, obviously nonsense.
- d0gbread 5y agoThe attribution effect is implied, is the point the parent was making, and while it's good to be aware of your point, I personally feel like the title is the least important part to critique given the obvious implication. If your point carries into the analysis or synthesis, that is a problem.
- egao1980 5y agoSo basically Capitalism silently kills 745k in a year. If this figure raises up to 1910s levels we'll see Socialist revolutionary wave once more.
- vsroy 5y agoCan someone explain why overwork kills people? I'm curious, maybe there's a way to work 70 hour weeks without harming your health? (I.e possibly overwork is correlated with lack of sleep / exercise, which are the real dangers, not the work itself).
- rhacker 5y agoThe thing about this is that people who stop working also die earlier. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/02/early-earlier-retirement-retire-death-risk-data-research-jobs https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/02/early-e... Also, has anyone else felt the narrative pushing articles lately?
- haram_masala 5y agoNot me, which narrative do you mean? Perhaps one that is anti-work and pro-UBI?
- aetherspawn 5y agoI used to work at a startup, but I left 3 months ago. I just heard that yesterday my old boss had to be taken away in an ambulance, collapsing from complications caused by stress.
- sgregnt 5y agoI wonder how much did overworke contribute towards saving lives?
- 55555 5y agoI love my job and it's not really stressful. I just have goals and am ambitious. Is working this much bad for me? I go to the gym three times weekly and still manage to socialize quite enough for me.
- qixv 5y agoI work with pricing life insurance in a european country. This study of course piqued interest, because I also see a negative correlation between socio-economic class (e.g. wage) and death probability. I don’t think working a lot is enough for a higher probability of death, you somehow might need to be a lower socio-economic class, as well. I’m not sure if the study controls for this.
- tluyben2 5y ago> Conclusions — WHO and ILO estimate exposure to long working hours (≥55 hours/week) is common and causes large attributable burdens of ischemic heart disease and stroke. Surely this is the stress these people feel rather than the number of hours? If you work 80 hours per week with 0 stress or pressure, does it still apply? If so, what mechanism causes it?
- merricksb 5y agoAnother discussion of this study (different article) 12 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27180545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27180545 (362 points/174 comments)