Sunday Roast: long hours causes Burnout

Welcome to the second edition of Sunday Roast. If you haven’t seen the first one, you can catch up here. This week’s roasting is for: long hours causes Burnout. I’m going to carve this up to show you that long hours is a mask for Burnout, not a cause.

Starter: diminishing returns

We’ve all been there: a supposedly simple task has taken much longer than it should and now we’re having to work even more to catch up with the stuff we should have been doing in the time we were wasting carrying on with a never-ending task. And so it is with Burnout.

Main course: quality over quantity

I believe Burnout isn’t caused by long hours in itself, but by not being invested in the value of the work you’re doing. I’m sure you can relate to this: you’re working on a project about something you really care about; there’s something that’s important but not urgent but you carry on anyway because you’re enjoying it. You look up, it’s 10pm and you hadn’t even noticed. You never feel empty in that situation.

This is because you feel invested in what you’re doing and the value it’s creating. When you lose this, you’re on the path to Burnout not by working long hours alone.

Don’t take my word for it. Payspective released research which showed some interesting things: