In today’s day and age, people are often working much more and often much harder than people in the past. For a very long time, a 40 hour work week was considered the standard and while this is still somewhat the case now, there is an increasing number of people who are working double that and while their bank account is probably thanking them, their health may not be.
It can be extremely easy to burn yourself out by working too much and this can have severely negative effects on one’s body. While this isn’t always the case (and certain people can handle long work days all week without going crazy), 80 hours of work a week is normally far too much for people.
(source: alliedtelecom.com)
This is because not only does it take away from your personal life, it can also negatively affect your health. In terms of how it can affect your personal life, it is fairly self-explanatory. If you are working 12+ hours every day you simply don’t have enough time to do things you want to do. Think about it, about 20ish hours of your day are spent sleeping and working, barely leaving you enough time for anything else. While you may be making a lot of cash, you’re missing out on a ton of other important aspects of life.
(source: businessinsider.com)
And in terms of how it is affecting your health, it can vary depending on which job you do. If you have a physically demanding job, working those long hours can really fatigue your body and can lead to a high potential for injuries, while a sedentary job for that long can drain your body of any muscle and sitting for too long is one of the worst things you can do for your body. Also, you will likely have a lack of sleep if you work that much, so you will likely be tired all of most of the time.
The point is, we should all be evaluating out work/life balance and truly seeing if we are sacrificing too much of our “self” for our job. Of course, different people will make different choices based on what they want in life and their priorities and values, but it can be worth it to do some introspection from time to time and seeing if you really want to continue doing what you’ve been doing.