thegrindstone.com: According to new data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in a study highlighted by Harvard Business Review, people are either big liars when it comes to saying how much they worked or simply can’t count. When asked how much work they do each week, Americans tend to report longer hours than when they keep a more accurate account of their work. On average, a person who works about 40 hours a week will actually say they work 43. And those workaholics that say they work 75, made up about 25 of those hours in their head. Are you surprised by this? I’m not.
16 comments:
I agree with the author in that it does not surprise me in the least to hear that people lie about how much they work. Whether it is to appear less lazy or because they feel guilty, many people do it. However, the part that irritates me is when people do say “I look so tired because I worked a lot this week,” or “I didn’t cook this week because I worked so much,” or “I am wearing slippers in my office because I literally rolled out bed and came straight to work.”
That irritates me because people also say, 'I never have time for myself' , 'I don't have time for this or that'. The reason why this bothers me so much is because it just isn't true. There are so many times in a day when people (even if they are working) are not being efficient with it. Or are taking a 20 minute break for tv or an hour break. Which can be important, but those are the same people always stressing about the fact they do not have enough time to do anything. All I am saying is that better time management can get you everything (almost) that you need. I think that people will continue to lie about the amount of things that they have done for whatever reason, but they are going to lie to themselves just as much.
Its a hard thing to balance all facets of your life. And people who are workaholics know it best of all. People get going and either do the same boring thing everyday or don't know what they are doing at their job and just get stressed out. It is almost like Marx's theory that the worker and the work have to be connected in order to have a happy cohesive society. I think we are so disconnected from our jobs that we get overwhelmed and just think we have a lot to do, when really there is less but we are just stressed about it.
Another added factor into the estimation of "how much you work" that could easily cause overestimation is distraction. Many workers today, in the Gen Y, have a shorter attention span. I find often that people spend a lot of time doing work, but they aren't always doing work during all that time. This confusion of time comprised of work and additive distractions, feels like more time than you spend actually working. Besides, wouldn't you want to round up than admit you spent all that time getting distracted?
I am not at all surprised to hear that most people actually work much less than they say they do. The most interesting part about this article is not the disconnect itself, but the source of the disconnect between perceived work and actual work. The article points out that many people justify their lives with busyness. Many of us occasionally adopt a seriously sick perception that keeping busy somehow justifies shitty meals, deteriorating relationships, a subpar appearance, and poor health. Unfortunately, when work really piles up it is easy to slip into this mindset and settle for letting our busyness rule our lives. After reading this article, it is clear to me that I (and I’m sure many other people in SoD) need to stop taking so much pride in how busy I am and find a more rewarding standard to hold myself to.
People who are claiming to work more than 75 hours a week lie about at least 20 hours because they are overworked. There is a productivity curve and many people in many industries get beyond the productivity curve. There is a limit to how many hours straight that someone can do and getting beyond the old fashioned standard of a 40 hour week may get more done but it is a point of diminishing return. I would love to see a study comparing a 40 hour week against a 60 hour week in a theatrical setting in terms of productivity. I truly believe that not only will people be happier with a 40 hour week but they would be able to be pushed to be as productive as a 50 hour maybe even a 60 hour. We need to have a return to a reasonable schedule because it will allow us to expect a full 40 hours of actual work out of the workers instead of budgeting people at 60 hours while they work only 45. There is no need to work stupid crazy hours and people need to have a life outside of work. Go home your loved ones miss you!!
Reading this article took me, at least, like, twelve hours.
This doesnt really surprise me. Why else would be talk about anything but work when we work so hard all we have to talk about is work? We all work so hard we have to one up each other or we will be the slacker. Its all too true. It is sad that we have to one up another and that if you dont work long hours you dont do enough. It is hard to balance facets of our lives as Zoe pointed out. Judging what we do plays into our stress, our motivation, and our happiness. Judging how long we work isnt the issue I would say, but the fact that we have to justify the length and one up each other is.
I am also not surprised by this. This is very much like what we talked about in meta skills a few weeks ago. How people tend to drastically overestimate how long they work. A lot of it has to do with people sitting down "working" till they finish a project and they are sitting there for 5 hours but most likely at least one or two of those hours (non consecutive of coarse) was spent doing something other than the task you sat down to do, wether it was staring off "thinking" or goofing off on the internet. I wonder if it would just be best to not keep track of how many hours you work if you dont have to because every time people do it seems to have a negative effect on them and then they are focusing too much on the number and not how much they are actually working or how well they are working.
This is in no way surprising. Going to CMU, this happens all the time. Everyone always wants to legitimize their major by talking about how much work is required, and everyone puts down other majors that they believe have insignificant amounts of workload. It is almost a misery competition: the more miserable you are, the more legitimate you are. It was not until this year that I realized that this was a terribly unhealthy way to live life and tried to change it. "...metrics such as insight, creativity, and productivity are nebulous and subjective. Time is quantifiable." We need to stop trying to compare work loads and instead focus on the work itself. We are all busy, we are all stressed. We should support each other in this instead of one-upping each other.
I have been guilty of this in the past. Like the article says, I felt guilty for saying I worked 40hrs a week, so I would exaggerate. I was an even younger manager then and thought that if I wanted to make it in the world I needed others to see me conquer my busy schedule. I didn’t mind the sympathy.
Grad school has taught me that this is no way to be a manager. In fact I feel that people respond better to me if they think that I am relaxed and have an appropriate work load. Sometimes I get that twinge of fear, my inner voice screaming "They think you are a slacker!" Finding the perfect balance is my goal -- it's proving difficult.
I've always noticed this phenomenon of one-upping one another when it comes to our long days and our tiredness. Of course people overestimate the hours they work; it's just hard to tell if they do it because they honestly think thats how long they spend based on their exhaustion or if they blatantly lie so they can complain more. I find it interesting that people are so competitive that whose-life-sucks-more and my-job-makes-me-more-stressed-than-yours-does have become common conversation. Don't people ever get tired of complaining? If people can find the time to complain then they can find the time to take a few minutes for themselves or to make that phone call that they've been meaning to make but just don't have the time for.
Overestimating work seems human. Not everyone can track exactly how long they spend at work. However how many hours you work and how many hours you are productive are two different things. I could spend 40 hours at work but never do anything productive. By saying we spent that many hours at work people believe that we worked everyday non-stop but this is not true, because everyone takes breaks at some point in the day. We should stop counting the numbers of hours we are at work and instead compare the number of things we did.
I think the problem with this is people tend to round up with any work. For example, I went to a 30 minute meeting and then they round to an hour. I think this is where the majority of the extra hours are added on. Small things like this add up or people try to one up each other with how hard they worked. The other thing is people say they were there from this hour to another and really they weren't truly working. So when people report their hours they round up and don't consider how much work is really being done.
This is a super interesting article! Something I know I've done before, and have recognized other people doing as well, and it's interesting to read an analytical discussion of what's going on. The idea of "social desirability" and one- upping each other in order that we don't appear lazy puts it all into perfect sense! The article is based on a simple study (one Joe Pino has suggested in Basic PTM that we students do throughout the weekM), but comes up with great results.
As most people have said in this article... we all find at times exaggerating our work load in order to seem like we have our lives together. Like Taylor said.. its true.. being balanced with your time is actually more valuable in character. When I am working with someone I do not want them to expect me to be working all night on a project - I would rather have the reputation of getting in, done, and out when I am working. Also - if you have time in life for things other than work - you are a more interesting person. I enjoy talking to people who have time pursue other interests opposed to just work.
It seems pretty obvious that people lie about how much they work. It happens all the time. It happened in high school, it happens in college, and it happens professionally all the time. It does seem, though, that there are a plethora of reasons why people lie. I agree with many above comments that people report more hours to seem as if they work more and because they are counting time that they spent indulging in distractions. I do think, though, that it is often the case that people genuinely believe they have worked more than they actually have because of how they feel. If someone is worn out, they may think they worked more than they did. I think there is a mix of conscious and unconscious lying going on which is probably mixed in with a lot of denial.
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