Earn Work-Life Balance

3 Ways To Tell If You’re Overworked – And What To Do About It

Haley Paskalides  |  October 9, 2024

America is grossly overworked. Thankfully, we don’t have to be. Here’s how to become more productive in less time.

Admit it: You’re overworked. We spend more time working in America than any other developed country. In fact, we’re working 400 more hours per year than Germany, 300 more hours per year than the UK, and 185 more hours per year than Japan, according to data from The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. 

One might think that we’re working all of these extra hours because we’re doing work that feels necessary, engaging, and fulfilling — but no. We just don’t care about our jobs as much as we used to. Instead, we’re putting more meaning (and time) into our families, friends, and hobbies, because we’ve realized that when we’re overworked, we’re under-fulfilled. 

So, is there a way we can ensure we’re doing productive work that we actually enjoy? Brigid Schulte, author of Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life, spent 10 years researching our discontent with work. She eventually found countries, companies, and people who are all doing it better. She shared her top 3 ways to tell if you’re overworked — and how to change it. 

YOU’RE MAKING MORE MISTAKES

Did you send in that important presentation to a client with a glaring typo? Or forget to prepare for a meeting you were leading? Research shows that being overworked is associated with fuzzy thinking, increased mistakes, and serious health issues like depression and hypertension.

And here’s the thing: Working more isn’t making you more productive. “When you look at GDP per hours worked on large scales, the evidence is so clear that the longer the work hours, the lower the productivity,” Schulte says. 

So, the next time you catch yourself making a big (or small) mistake at work, step away from the computer for 10 minutes. Take a lap around the office (or your neighborhood if you work from home) have a snack, meditate for a minute — whatever helps you disconnect. 

YOU’RE RUNNING OUT OF CREATIVE IDEAS

Have you found that you’re just not coming up with the amazing, out-of-the-box ideas you used to have at work? If so, that may be a sign you’re simply spending too much time at your desk.

“If you are going to have an innovation or a creative idea, you need to be well rested, relaxed, and in a daydreamy state,” Schulte says, “There’s a reason we’re physiologically wired to get our best ideas in the shower where you’re relaxed and your mind is wandering.”

Schulte is referring to what’s known as “the shower effect,” which is a real thing. Research from Sage found that up to 20% of our best ideas happen when we’re doing something completely unrelated to the idea we come up with. So, let this be your motivation to close your laptop for a while rather than staring at the same blank Google doc for another hour. 

YOU’RE FOCUSING ON WORK THAT JUST ISN’T VALUABLE

While you may think AI isn’t going to replace your job anytime soon, it’s coming for many occupations faster than you might think. Internal documents leaked from Google found that ChatGPT could hypothetically get hired as an entry-level coder (of course, we could argue that a robot would have trouble getting through a Google interview in the first place). Business Insider put together a list of the jobs that are at the highest risk of being replaced. Many jobs in tech, media, finance, and the legal industry could be in jeopardy soon. 

So, what does this mean for the humans in the room? Now more than ever, we need to be focused on work that is considered highly valuable to our employers. “AI is gonna do a lot of stuff that we used to do, so our value is going to be in that new idea,” Schulte says. “Ask yourself: ‘​​How do I create the most value for my organization?’ And, ‘How can I make that case clear if anybody asks me?’”

IT’S TIME TO FEEL LESS OVERWORKED

If you’re feeling overworked and burned out, you’re not alone. But there are ways to make your day more manageable while working fewer hours, and getting more done. 

Schulte says the first thing to do is simple: Stop. 

Stop what you’re doing and take some time to ask yourself the following questions:

  • What do I want? 
  • Where do I get meaning and purpose? 
  • What is most important in the work that I do? And what do I want more of? 
  • What do I really hate that I have to do?
  • What can I get rid of? 

Once you’ve clearly answered all of these questions, Schulte says the final step is to write out your ‘work redesign excellence mission,’” which will help you do your job in a way that can create more time and space for what means the most to you.

As we like to say at HerMoney, you got this. 

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