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Last week the BBC published a health news article based on some French research which found that people working long hours had a 29% greater risk of stroke, and those doing so for 10 years or more had a 45% greater risk. Long hours were defined as more than 10 hours on at least 50 days per year. I suspect we all know that long hours working isn’t good for us but somehow reading these percentage figures with a specific health risk attached that can result in death in the worst case or impaired speech, paralysis and possibly vascular dementia in lesser cases really brings this home.
If you are reading this thinking ‘I work long hours .. but do I have a choice?’ then I’d like to suggest you do have a choice. Choices have consequences – read on to find out more about the choices and consequences open to you. You may decide it is time for some change.
Some years ago I was not as resilient as I am now. I worked long hours, travelled a great deal, and would get anxious and feel stressed by my workload. I felt, at the time, that this was my lot. I had chosen a role with lots of responsibility and worked in a company where many others were working similar hours so that was the way it needed to be. It took what Jack Mezirow termed a ‘disorientating dilemma’ to enable me to reflect and rethink my ‘modus operandi’ and approach to work. According to Mezirow, disorienting dilemmas are experiences that don’t fit into a person’s current beliefs about the world. When faced with a disorienting dilemma, people are forced to reconsider their beliefs in a way that will fit this new experience into the rest of their worldview.
The dilemma triggers a self-examination and a review of assumptions, a recognition that we are not alone and that others have faced into this and come through the other side, and then a decision to change something meaningfully whether it be roles, relationships or behaviours based on new assumptions.
Image: www_slon_pics at Pixabay
Ideally, you don’t need to wait for a disorientating dilemma to face into a nagging fear that you might be working too hard. How can you broach this issue? I would start by considering choices and consequences and using this as a platform for change:
1. Mind-map your context:
Grab yourself a large piece of paper and create a mind-map of everything that you think is leading you to your long hours approach to working. This might include your personal ethos (e.g. if a thing is worth doing it is worth doing well), your upbringing (if you were always pushed to do better then nothing may feel good enough), your values (e.g. family – providing for them, or quality), others’ expectations (your manager, your team), your job design (e.g. span of control), issues in your personal life (using work to escape) what motivates you (e.g. paying off your mortgage early) or unhelpful beliefs/assumptions (e.g. ‘it’s only for a short time and then I’ll change’).
2. Explore choices and consequences:
When you feel you’ve exhausted getting the context down on paper, take some time to imagine scenarios where you make a choice relating to your approach to work and potential consequences (positive and negative) of these choices. Really take time to imagine what each would feel like for you and for others – both those at work and those that you care about outside of work (if relevant). You can use a piece of paper with a table with the following column headings to help you: Choice, Possible Positive Consequences, Possible Negative Consequences.
So, for example, your choice might be to continue working as you are (let’s say that’s 60 hours a week where you don’t get home until 9pm some nights). Positive consequences could be that you excel on your current project and this helps you to secure a promotion. Negative consequences could be that you can’t switch off, don’t sleep well, feel unfocused, are less emotionally balanced, and cause frustration for others in your personal life because you are not available to them.
Consider some different options for working whether these are a reduced target for weekly hours, a conversation with your manager to change your role scope, looking for a different role, working differently in terms of when and where you work or something else.
3. Assumptions in support of change:
Once you’ve considered a few choices and consequences, for those choices different from what you do today, consider what you would need to assume that would support you in following through on these changes. For example, if you are going to talk to your manager about adjusting the scope of your role and choose to say no more rather than always trying to please others, you could assume that (a) your manager will think well of you for recognising what you need to do to be effective and (b) others will prefer to know where they stand rather than having a promise for something that is late to be delivered.
4. Quieten that inner critic:
As you consider your positive assumptions that will support your new way of working, quiet the critical voice that tells you all the reasons why the changes are not going to work.
5. Test and learn.
Use your positive assumption to help you trial something new. Then take time to reflect on the actual consequences before making any needed adjustments.
This five step approach is something anyone can try. It often works but not always. Sometimes, without a disorientating dilemma, your embedded frame of reference that causes you to work as you do needs the help of someone else to enable you to uncover problematic ‘anchors’ that hold you to these behaviours. An honest conversation with a loved one can sometimes work or, for some objectivity without emotional risks, a coach can help you explore and change. I’ve worked with people who wanted to understand and address their working patterns and who have achieved some great results. Do contact me if you’d like an exploratory conversation.
Finally, whatever choice you make, here’s to a series of positive consequences that support your health, your career, and your life.
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