Working Yourself to Death

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Photo Credit: Victoria Gnatiuk Getty Images/iStockphoto

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We can work ourselves to death. Literally. A study by the World Health Organization found that, in 2016, over 745,000 people perished from overwork, defined as a paid job requiring more than 55 hours of toil per week. Most of these folks succumbed to heart disease or stroke. Long work hours increased the risk of these potentially lethal events by 17 percent and 35 percent respectively. Currently, researchers believe the increased use of technology and tele-work during the pandemic further blurs the boundary between personal time and work, potentially amplifying these trends. Also, the study neglected non-paid overwork, that which some homemakers and family caregivers experience.

So, while it is sometimes true that stress kills, overwork may be the actual culprit. And, the study shows, over 500 million employees are at risk. A number of years ago, I was one of them. Having pushed myself at work in a self-abusive manner, I decided to decompress by traveling to visit some friends, including Steve, a colleague who found out about this same danger the hard way. When we met, I explained to him that my job and travel schedule were crazymaking. It was my white-collar version of working on a chain gang—long hours, relentless demands, mind-numbing travel and high expectations.

When I finished my sad soliloquy, he gave it to me straight. Steve had been in the Airborne and harbored little patience for beating around the bush. He told me I had my priorities haywire and that my corrosive stress resulted from putting my job tasks and timelines ahead of what truly matters. He should know. Over a decade ago and in a lifestyle much like my own, Steve tumbled to the floor of his living room, felled by a massive coronary. Only the smarts of his young daughter, who called 911, and the heroics of his caregivers pulled him back from death’s door. He was, as the physicians later told him, clinically dead.

Since that day, which Steve describes as the most stunning spiritual episode of his life, he’s fully embraced one existential truth; that your loved ones, your passionate interests and the simple joy of being alive are more deserving of your caring, energy and time than all those oh-so-important job demands.

“I used to scoff at people who sai,d ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’,” Steve told me, sipping his brew with a twinkle in his eye. “But that day on the floor when I was leaving this world, I realized they were right.”

What Really Matters

Steve’s words splashed on my psyche like a cold bucket of water. I had lost sight of what really matters. I had allowed myself to become consumed by minutia, by events and worries and entanglements that, on my deathbed, will be to hell and gone from my consciousness.

“You need to have some fun, Phil, and feel okay about it,” he told me. 

It’s the “feel OK about it” part that trips up many a hard-charging worker bee or entrepreneur. When a person’s strong work ethic coincides with ambition or economic necessity, it’s all too easy to ignore the signs that excessive toil is jamming one’s psychological nose into the grindstone. We know we are in this conundrum when we constantly defer taking time off, work remotely while on vacation or become restless and agitated when we have free time away from the job.

Now, many folks are forced to overwork out of economic necessity, and that’s a sad statement about our society. It’s one thing if someone chooses to toil excessively, but quite another when a person has no viable choice. A higher minimum wage would put a significant dent into the epidemic of overwork, which is, in part, a consequence of the lopsided concentration of wealth in a very few at the expense of the many.

A prior subscriber to overwork himself, Steve almost had to die to learn to put his loved ones, interests and play time ahead of being a hyper-productive employee.

He wanted me to figure out that truth by a gentler means.

For more, visit philipchard.com.