Last updated: November 29, 2015



The truth about how much workaholics actually work

 Colleagues competing to work more hours. Picture: Thinkstock

Colleagues competing to work more hours. Picture: Thinkstock Source: News Limited

I FIRST came to the topic of time because I was fascinated by the academic study of time use.

Hunting through data from the American Time Use Survey and other time-diary projects, I came to the inescapable conclusion that how we think we spend our time has little to do with reality.

We wildly over-estimate time devoted to housework. We underestimate time devoted to sleep.

These curious blind spots continue into the realm of work. People who get paid by the hour know how many hours they work. People who inhabit the world of exempt jobs have a much more tenuous grasp on this concept but, as a general rule, the higher the number of work hours reported, the more likely the person is to be over-estimating.

A study published in the June 2011 Monthly Labor Review that compared estimated work-weeks with time diaries reported that people who claimed their "usual" work-weeks were longer than 75 hours were off, on average, by about 25 hours. You can guess in which direction.

Those who claimed that a "usual" work-week was 65-74 hours were off by close to 20 hours. Those claiming a 55 to 64-hour work-week were still about 10 hours north of the truth.

Subtracting these errors, you can see that most people top out at fewer than 60 work hours per week.

Many professionals in so-called extreme jobs work about 45-55 hours a week. Those are numbers I can attest to from time logs I've seen over the years.

Starting work before you get to the office. Picture: Thinkstock.

Starting work before you get to the office. Picture: Thinkstock. Source: Supplied

I've given speeches at companies known for their sweatshop hours and had up-and-comers keep time logs for me. Their recorded weeks tend to hover around 60 hours and that's for focused, busy weeks with no half-days, leave taken or dentist appointments.

We live in a competitive world, and boasting about the number of hours we work has become a way to demonstrate how devoted we are to our jobs. That would be funny except that numbers have consequences.

If you think you're working 80 hours a week, you'll make different choices in your attempts to optimise those hours than if you know you usually work 55.

People who want to use their time more effectively should work out how they're spending their hours now.

If you've ever tried to lose weight, you know that nutritionists will tell you to keep a food journal because evidence shows it works. Likewise, writing down how you spend your time keeps you accountable for the hours that pass, whether or not you're conscious of them.

Not all hours at work are productive. Picture: Thinkstock.

Not all hours at work are productive. Picture: Thinkstock. Source: Supplied

If you've never kept track of your time before, I encourage you to try logging a whole week and think of yourself as a lawyer billing time to different projects. How much time do you spend checking emails? Thinking? Planning? Travelling? In meetings? Doing the substance of whatever work you were hired to do?

Tally up the totals and study them. Do those totals seem reasonable? What do you over or underinvest in?

Perhaps the most important insight to come out of this experiment is an understanding of exactly how long activities take. If I've got a blog post written, it takes me half an hour to format it with links and photos - a good thing to know before attempting to post between the end of a phone call at 11.45am and lunch at noon.

People who do a lot of something often develop a good sense for this and consequently have a more accurate understanding of how much they can produce in the 2000-3000 annual work hours that a 40-60 hour work-week entails.

You don't have to log your minutes forever, but even doing it for a few days gives you a mindfulness about time. That mindfulness can lead to more productive choices by itself.

Time is a non-renewable resource - when it's gone, it's gone. There is no point lamenting how many hours you have wasted in the past. But there is much to be gained by committing to doing things differently from here.

Continue the conversation via Twitter @lvanderkam | @newscomauHQ

This article was originally published on Fast Company and is an edited except from What The Most Successful People Do At Work and was republished here with the author's permission.


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