The title of this post is a paraphrase of a quote I heard attributed to Jay Papasan, one of the co-authors of The ONE Thing. I think it’s spot on. Papasan says anyone can work long hours to achieve something. It takes focus to achieve while still balancing your life.

In fact, the evidence is that working long hours not only steals you away from other important areas of life, it’s a waste of time.

Research shows that working any more than 50 hours per week is bad for you and bad for your employer (or your business):

• The difference in output between 50 hours per week worked and 55 hours is almost negligible. So, you can add five hours per week to the rest of your life without suffering any loss of achievement.
• There is NO difference in output between someone working 55 hours per week and someone working 70 hours per week.

If you are spending more time working, but not getting anything more for it, you will suffer.

There are two areas of life that you cheat when you work more than 50 hours per week.

Relationships

Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, said that no one on their deathbed wishes they had spent more time at the office. Working too much is a recipe for regret. The time you miss with those close to you can’t be recovered. Unless you are an exceptional person, your relationship with God is also likely to suffer because you will be too tired to engage in any daily spiritual practices.

Health

Working long hours will exhaust your willpower and make it harder to make the choices that keep you healthy. Number one on the list will be sleep. If you’re like me, when you have a long day you sleep less because you feel the need to wind down, as well as take care of personal tasks before going to bed. Less sleep and longer hours also make it less likely that you will exercise and more likely that you will binge eat on junk food. Just sayin’…

You might be able to work long hours without cheating yourself in one of the two areas above. You might be able to keep healthy, but not have time for relationships. Or vice versa. But is it worth it?

The way out is to be able to set boundaries and the way to do this is through self-differentiation.

Self-differentiation is the ability to stay focused on one’s own goals and values in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressures. Work pressures are definitely surrounding togetherness pressure, whether in the corporate world, non-profits or the church. And yes, there can be real demands to produce and perform. But if those demands require more than 55 hours per week of work, they are unsustainable.

And the big question is: How much of the pressure is coming from you because you’re worried about what people will think?

When you are self-differentiated, you are willing to set boundaries because you know what’s really important.

I recall as a pastor, I decided to coach my children in sports. I coached baseball, softball, football and basketball. This meant that I would often miss evening meetings at the church. Yes, I initially felt pressure because I felt like I should be at all the meetings. But, then I realized that if I needed to be at all the meetings, the church was too dependent on me. The interesting thing was that nobody complained to me. I think they respected the fact that I would choose family over church because they would do the same.

I realize this might be harder in some situations, especially at work. But you can’t do it all. And life is about choices.

I can recall a person who worked in a corporate setting where “face time” was everything. It didn’t matter whether you were actually productive. It was more about being in the office for long hours. As this Harvard Business Review article shows, this is foolish because managers in one study couldn’t tell the difference between those who actually worked for 80 hours per week and those who were faking it. Anyway, I remember this person telling me that he didn’t buy into the face time thing. He left the office every day at 5pm. Did his career suffer for it? Probably. Was he better off for it? Definitely. At least that was his opinion.

So yes, if you work long hours, you are cheating yourself, those you care about and you aren’t any more effective. You have more choice than you think to change the situation.