Do you lie about how many hours a week you work?
How many hours a week do you work? Eight hours a day, five days a week would be 40. What about those work-related tweets you sent on the train? That weekend email session? They need to be added too.
The problem is, it's really difficult to work out exactly how many minutes a week we dedicate to our work, but quite a lot of people seem to like to brag about their numbers.
Many academics in the US, I found out this week, claim it is impossible to get a permanent university post without clocking up 80 hours each week. And it's not just the US.
I've written extensively about the working conditions of UK university staff, and have heard repeated claims of poor work-life balance and long working days.
“There is no work-life balance here,” one social scientist at an elite institution in the North of England told me. “I work seven days a week at an average of 60 to 70 hours. I have not taken annual leave in the eight years that I have been here.”
To me, this seems excessive. And is it true?
Someone in this blog post has done the maths on an 80-hour week and worked out that it would leave about three hours free for leisure time once other responsibilities (the pesky matter of sleeping, for example) are taken into account.
So why do people claim to work such long hours? And if it is true that you've put in 80 hours, surely your productivity started to decline after about 60?
Such claims probably come about because of a mixture of bravado, lies, and genuine error. I've no doubt that it isn't just academia where people - perhaps mistakenly - equate length of time working to overall contribution made, and if there is pressure on people to appear like they are at the top of their game, then boasting about the amount of time spent working might seem an easy option.
So I ask the question again: have you ever lied about how many hours you work a week, and if so, was it a deliberate ply to make yourself look good, or just an error in your estimate?
Plenty of people do bill for work by the hour and probably have a more accurate idea of the hours they work each week. I'd be surprised if gets up to 80 very often.
Retired from SPM Oil and Gas
9 年Of course unfortunately. Having been "salaried" for many years the time put in is the time put in unless you are in consulting where the project budget dictates hours "reported." The hours required always seem to be more, so the maximum hours allowed are charged and you eat the rest. I am admittedly a workaholic and currently hit the office at 6:00 am and depending on activities out at 5-6:00 pm M-F. Having left the consulting industry when I realized I was feeling guilty when not working on my projects irrespective of schedule, weekends and evenings now are seldom used for work. The reality it is not about the number hours but the volume/quality of work accomplished in those hours. Work hours is simply an easy measure.
Well said Dave!
Innovation & Digital Transformation Advisor
9 年What about if you ad travelling hours? From Home to Office . And from Office to customers offices?
Executive Architect | Application Modernization, Enterprise Architecture, Financial Transformation
9 年Who cares if people are not telling the whole truth about hours worked. As a society, we are most certainly working more hours than days past. When I started my career, a full-time role was LESS THAN forty hours and I wasn't eating my lunch at my desk. Quantifying is less important than acknowledging the trends and more importantly coming up with strategies to REVERSE this direction.
Insurance / Wealth Management Strategic Consulting ?? Enterprise Transformation Architect ?? Co-Author of globally acclaimed Panorama 360 Business Capability Framework/Process Models for Insurance and Wealth Management
9 年So true Dave.