I always like to see research that backs up my personal experience. Over my career, I have gone through periods of working excessive hours for prolonged periods of time, on one such occasion I ended up burnt out and needing to take months off work to recover from the health impact.
Since then, I have implemented several techniques to help me manage overworking.
- Seperate workspace - I work from home, so my first change was to have a dedicated workspace that I could close the door on.
- Reduce out of hours communication - Leave my work phone and all access to email, teams etc in the office space. Removing the temptation to see if that email I expected had come in.
- Block Calendar - Block book out of hours and lunches in the calendar to protect them from routine meetings. Use Microsoft Viva to set up Focus Time in my calendar to automatically block time in my calendar, reducing the chance of days with only meetings and no time to work.
Do I still overwork? Yes, I do find myself doing it. However, I am now aware of it and have the space to pull back the balance.
Read the full article
Work too hard and you also lose sight of the bigger picture. Research has suggested that as we burn out, we have a greater tendency to get lost in the weeds. In sum, the story of overwork is literally a story of diminishing returns: keep overworking, and you’ll progressively work more stupidly on tasks that are increasingly meaningless.
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