Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
So many people I know love to tell me how many hours they put in each week at the office. It is like a badge of honor. Some tell me they work 10 hours a day, others insist they work 12 hours a day, while others work 14 hours a day. One guy in the office, who is not even a Manager, claims he works well over 100 hours a week. I have no way to verify that.
To me, unless a person has incredible mental and physical endurance, it is hard to really work much over 10 hours a day. The average person would get tired and start making mistakes. I would rather work really hard 6 hours a day and then go home and relax than put in long hours and do alot of posturing and face time.
Tell me, do you really work as hard as you tell everyone. How many hours do you work in a typical week?
I used to work about 65 - 70 hours a week. I now work closer to 40. Yes, I really did work that hard - we own our business and pride ourselves in really excellent customer service - so yes I did work the long hours as did my husband. We both got badly burned out and decided it wasn't worth it. That still doesn't stop the cell phone from ringing after hours and we do answer.
It fluctuates for me. I usually work an 8 hour day and then maybe 1-3 times a week I'll work an extra 4-6 hours bartending. On average I'd say I work 55-60 hours/ week. But this doesn't take into account the time I put in at home. One week, two of the regular bartenders were sick and I worked 6 hours each night PLUS my regular 8 hour day job. Probably a total of around 90-100 hours but that was rare (thank God).
I get to school early when it's quiet. After the students are gone for the day, I try to be out soon after dismissal. Often I bring work home and sometimes spend 1 to 1 1/2 hours in the evening. I guess that adds up to about 10+ a day. The weekend can sometimes run to 2-3 hours on Saturday and Sunday. So, 50-55 hours a week.
Though recently retired, I averaged about 50 hours per week my last few years at work, and an addition 4-5 hours at home in the evenings and weekends (mostly blackberry messages and phone calls).
In my opinion the hours you are at the office regardless of clocking in or out do not constitute work. I ran a mortgage company for a time, and I had plenty of people who claimed to "work" a ton of hours. I'd wander around and wonder to myself how looking at browsing the internet, or playing games on the net would be considered work.
There were a select few who worked about 6 hours a day. While I did have some people who put in 9 hours in the office, those 6 hour people did about 5 times as much work overall. They also made about 3 times more income.
Most people are incapable of not lying to themselves. They need to believe they work hard. An intelligent person will review their personal work ethic about once a month. Some could even go so far as to keep a work journal of everything you do, and the time invested in each task for 2-3 days. Most people would be amazed that they really only work about 50% of the time at work. Granted a strong work ethic is much more important to people who's income is based on overall production and/or quality of work.
I personally find it hard to work the entire time I'm at work, unless there's an abundance of obvious work. It's not easy to dedicate yourself to a strong focus. The people who can do this though, tend to destroy everyone else in their office when it comes to income.
Use Jeff makes a good point...And, I am one of those guilty of putting in many hours, but letting myself get distracted...Just like now, where I am writing this response, whereas I should be working....
But, I do work for myself, and I am the one paying for this...
I tend to start very early in the morning, so by about 8 AM I tend to take "mental breaks", and look around the Internet, read news, post my 2 cents to some forums...And, it sometimes helps me improve my communications process...For instance, writing responses or opinions is practice in communications...And, when I am criticized for something that I write, it reminds me that I am far from perfect, and that I need to watch what and how I say things...
Everyone can improve their time management...I cannot say that long hours are not always necessary - For instance, when you work for yourself, you want to be in your place of business as much as possible...
Like the saying goes, "Americans live to work, while Europeans (or the rest of the world for that matter) work to live." I think it's a shame that we work so hard. The U.S. is the only developed nation that does not have a law to mandate vacation time. On average, Americans get about 2 weeks/year. That is insane. Even Japan gets more days, and correct me if i'm wrong, China may also get more days. That is not healthy and certainly not anywhere near to work-life balance. And then on top of that, 40 hrs/week is a blessing if that's all you work. And with wages going down, many people find themselves working a 2nd job just to get by. I remember my first job out of college, I worked for an insurance company, and they frowned upon us if we left at 5pm. Ridiculous! Sometimes I wish I could move to Europe just to get 6 weeks vacation. I feel like an indentured servant in America. I know things are not perfect over there, but you can't work your whole life away either.
But the nature of work is rapidly changing, away from process oriented type of work towards product oriented work. In process work, the job is more clearly defined, while product work involves more problem solving and creativity skills.
As a result, much time is spent doing tasks which may not traditionally be defined as labor, but it is still work. I spent many off duty hours monitoring large servers for nighttime batch processing of data, and determining if run times appeared to truncate. I did it from home using a remote terminal I set up. I only had to look at it a few times per evening, but it was constantly on my mind and my evening plans had to take this into account.
This is a lot different than popping lug nuts onto a wheel as part of assembly. And I believe my experience is in line with much of the evolution in the nature of work.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
).
Good point made
