Slow down and improve your health and job

I spent a lot of my career fighting for a good work/life balance for myself and encouraging it in others. I’m not sure if it had much of an impact but it was a fight worth fighting. And there’s research to back up the fact that working too many hours is detrimental to productivity and health.

The reason we have eight-hour work days at all was because companies found that cutting employees’ hours had the reverse effect they expected: it upped their productivity.

The Compelling Case for Working a Lot Less—BBC

One meta-analysis found that long working hours increased the risk of coronary heart disease by 40% – almost as much as smoking (50%). Another found that people who worked long hours had a significantly higher risk of stroke, while people who worked more than 11 hours a day were almost 2.5 times more likely to have a major depressive episode than those who worked seven to eight.

The Compelling Case for Working a Lot Less—BBC

I recommend this video of Carl Honoré, who wrote an excellent…