Working long hours

Sometimes entrepreneurs and employees have to put in the long hours for an extended period of time but they have to sacrifice family time, social time, self time, self care etc. Although it is important to follow your dream and to be gainfully employed it makes for an unbalanced and unfulfilled life. And it is questionable as to whether working that many hours every day for weeks, months, years is efficient use of time, energy and brain power. The answer is big 'NO'.

• Studies show that maximum productivity per week is attained at about 40 hours per week, more than that is counter-productive.
• If you love what you are doing, would rather be doing that than anything else, and you don't have other responsibilities, then it might be worth it for you.
• There is a multitude of evidence demonstrating that night shift workers suffer health effects much greater than the general population as a result of higher incidence of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other ailments.
• Over sustained periods of time, night shift workers and long-hour workers live shorter lives.
• Often people outspend their income and end up regretting 'selling their soul to the corporation' later when they don’t have much to show for it.
• Rarely in life you are presented with a scalable career.  
• The world is changing fast.  Employees need to be nimble and adjust to not only what’s hot, but what’s going to be hot.
• You can’t control your luck, but what you can control is your work ethic. To get in first, and leave last shows initiative, and a hunger to learn. There’s always something new to grasp.
• Talking about how many hours you work is not impressive. It will be seen as a professionally embarrassing sign that you have nothing else to boast about.
• Working too much overtime is a bad idea because of diminishing returns, impaired judgment, not enough time to recharge, you look bad when it really matters and others will think you’re slacking if you slow down.
• In the 1800s, it was common for people to work nearly 100 hours per week over six-day workweeks. By the early 1900s, many industries had adopted the eight-hour workday, six days a week. In 1926, Henry Ford removed one day of work from his employees’ schedules that resulted in eight-hour shifts for five days a week—what we now know as the 40-hour workweek. Ford found that his workers were actually more productive working 40 hours a week than they had been working 48 hours a week. His success with the change inspired manufacturing companies all over the country to adopt the 40-hour workweek.

Eight hours labor, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest - Robert Owen