Getting More Done At Work Won’t Make You As Happy As Just Working Less

It’s a hard question to answer; whether employment for employment’s sake really makes us happier. People who have jobs tend to make more money and have more security than people who don’t, and disentangling the act of working with the act of making money isn’t an easy proposition. And some people may find a higher purpose in their work; others may not.

The unhealthy side effects of working long hours are well established. In extreme cases, however, symptoms can extend beyond the usual stress and fatigue.

For example, the American Heart Association found that people under the age of 50 had a?higher risk?of stroke when working over 10 hours a day for a decade or more. Another study, conducted across 14 countries, concluded that people who worked long hours were 12% more likely to become?excessive drinkers.

A number of previous studies have suggested a link between working long hours and a depressed mood. So investigators at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki?studied over 2,000 white collar workers?over a 5 year period. Subjects' average age was 47, and they were free of any mental health issues upon entering the study. Other variables that were controlled for included gender, substance abuse, social support and socioeconomic status.

The results: Both men and women who consistently worked?11?hours per day or longer had more than two times the risk of developing depression when compared with those people who worked?8?hours or less per day.?

A group of researchers?examined this question?using life satisfaction survey data from typical German workers taken between 1984 and 2010. Going beyond previous research, they were able to distinguish between changes in self-reported well-being due to temporary changes in income, such as getting a performance bonus or working overtime, and “persistent” changes in income, like getting a salary raise or finding a better paid job.

The results imply that we undervalue the satisfaction we get from money and we overvalue the satisfaction we get from working. “It seems that the data does not support the claim that working makes you happier per se,” says Christian Bayer, a mathematical economist at the University of Bonn.

Their study, published in?American Economic Journal, found that people report being happier when they get a permanent raise in income, whether it’s a large or very small increase (a 1% raise is even worth a 2.5% increase in hours, they estimate). A temporary bump, on the other hand, doesn’t do much to increase life satisfaction, regardless of its size. Therefore, working extra hard for overtime is a recipe for misery. The best “formula” for happiness is getting long-term raises over a career while working the same number of hours. In that sense, being productive at work helps–but only if you think it’ll lead to a raise.

Understanding this effect also allowed the researchers to tease out the difference in being employed versus being unemployed. They found the employed are indeed more satisfied with their lives, but not because they are working–simply because they are getting an long-term increase in income. Hypothetically, a person on permanent unemployment benefits would need to find a job that pays 20% more than their unemployment check for them to personally benefit from going back to work.

Social scientists have previously found that money is not so important for a happy life, but that mere act of having a job does buy some. This study tells us the opposite.

“Generous welfare payments make the recipient better off even if they increase his/her unemployment duration. The previous literature would have argued otherwise. They would have supported the claim that it is best to get people in employment no matter how meager their incomes,” Bayer explains.

More broadly, Bayer says the results show that “material circumstances matter” more than researchers had realized.?Growing income inequality?and?stagnant wages, both in the U.S. and Europe, are making us less satisfied with our lives. People are working more for less–and they aren’t happy about it. How long can it last?

According to the World Happiness Report 2019 data, the weekly working hours of the happiest and unhappiest ten countries were examined, and the correlation between the length of people's working hours and happiness was intended to be examined. According to the results, the weekly working hours of the top ten happiest countries in the world vary between 32-40 hours, while those of the ten unhappiest countries vary between 34-43 hours.

According to a study by Aysel Arsian and ?etin Bekta? published in the International Social Mentality and Researcher Thinkers Journal, "When the literature is analyzed, studies reveal that there is no positive correlation between working hard and productivity, whereas there is a positive correlation between a happy employee and productivity. Therefore, what is important for organizations is employee happiness."