Nowadays, people work too much. They are feeling the effects of a global pandemic wrecking havoc on their mental, physical, and emotional health. Some of these effects are possibly permanent. There were many days where my heart was pounding out of my chest after I woke up. It wasn’t good.
In general, if you are working more than 50 hours per week. you are working too much. Unless you are working in investment banking, Big Law, and in any other industries where compensation clears well above $150,000, there’s no need to work too much. These days, there are numerous signs of being overworked.
In other industries, it should be a common thing to work ~50 hours per week and occasionally have the 60 – 70 hour workweeks. However, that should be the exception and not the rule. There are many jobs that pay you six figures even while not forcing you to work 70 hour workweeks.
I ended my job in December 2021. It was a brutal job not because of the hours but the boss was so horrible that I couldn’t take it anymore. He doesn’t have the title of being the worst boss I’ve ever had, but boy does he come close. My new job that I started in 2022 has more manageable hours.
It’s not a good feeling when you work too much. Your life was meant for much more things than to put in the hours in order to help others get richer. Your life has more meaning than that, it’s meant to have more purpose. Don’t let life pass you by before you realize this lesson.
You will experience these health effects if you ignore it for too long. Just as I felt them.
6 Health Effects When You Work Too Much
One health effect when you work too much is that you’re too tired to SMASH that social share button and post to your favorite social media! Your friends could use an article such as this so that they can scale back their working hours as well.
So with that said, let’s get into the health effects of overworking.
1) Exhaustion from Working Too Much
This is more than mental exhaustion where it can be fixed with just sleep. This is physical exhaustion, which takes longer to manifest into you. Usually, our body is sturdy. They are built to withstand conditions that we never expected to be able to endure. However, when we physically feel the effects is when things are bad.
One of my prior bosses had droopy eyes, without even meaning to. Sure, it could be because of age and his body posture didn’t show it. However, when I looked at his face slowly, I could tell that he was putting in a lot of effort in order to be energetic. It wasn’t a part of who he is, he had to do it to put in effort.
There are physical signs that you are working too much. It could be droopy eyes, inability to walk straight, droopy shoulders, and the like. The stress physically manifests into your body. For me, my heartbeat goes out of control if I’m too exhausted. it makes me afraid throughout the day.
However it is, your exhaustion has a way of showing itself.
2) Mental Fogginess
This is when you can’t think straight. You started with a thought and you had to cut off the thought in the middle of it because you suddenly forgot. That’s not because you’re suddenly getting Alzheimer’s disease. It’s because you’re exhausted. No amount of mental exercise is going to fix it.
It’s not because you’re getting older, it’s not because you’re losing your mind, it’s because you are working too much. Our brain can only take in so much information per day. And even then, our brain can only take in information if it’s in tip top shape to begin with. If it’s not because of overwork, it can’t process information.
There were many times when I was talking to someone only to cut my sentence midway and forget where I was headed to. That’s normal if there’s been too much stress going on in your life. It could be because you haven’t eaten for the day. But more than likely, it’s because you work too much.
3) Muscle Cramps
When you sit for so long because you work too much, your back starts hurting. Aside from your back, your other muscle groups can continue to hurt. For me, my shoulders and my neck require the most work. My muscles around that area have been affected since decades+ ago and doctors can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.
If it’s not your shoulder, neck, or back pain, your calves might cramp as well. Muscle has a funny way of being affected by not only physical exercise. But our stress hormones as well. It affects your mobility and ability to control your motions. It doesn’t just happen to athletes, it happens to employees as well.
Sitting is the new smoking. When you sit for such a long time, it affects your health inch by inch, day by day. There’s a reason why standing desks are becoming much more popular. People are realizing that sitting in front of a computer all day long, all week long has detrimental effects on their health and muscles.
4) Overeating from Working Too Much
When you work too much, you need to save time as much as possible. Where’s the time that you are most keen on saving? When you are eating. When you have a tight deadline you have to meet, then you have to eat as quickly as possible. The quicker you eat, the more you are likely to overeat.
Take the time to enjoy your food. We don’t realize just how much we’re overeating by until we weigh ourselves at the end of the week. My weight always goes up during the busy season and it always goes down in the relaxed seasons. There’s a reason for that. I overeat when I’m stressed and vice versa when I’m not.
Be very careful. It takes a very long time to lose weight because burning calories take a very long time. You don’t want your BMI to be outside of the healthy level. Control your eating and intentionally eat foods you want to eat. Not because you want to get full and you just want to get along with your workday.
5) You Feel Lonely
It’s when you work too much and have no one else to talk with on a regular basis. this isn’t just about being alone. This is about feeling lonely. You want to talk and have someone be by your side. But you don’t. You’re slowly realizing that you’re giving up your life for your job.
I personally love and enjoy being alone. It’s not only when I can be alone with my thoughts but when I can work on achieving my goals. However, I don’t feel lonely when I’m alone. In fact, I prefer it. From talking with so many people and meeting so many people during the weekday, I look forward to being by myself.
If it comes down to it, I call my parents and see what they’re up to. It keeps the human and social interaction going. However, when you’re overworking and don’t have anyone to share your life with in the meantime, you may start to feel lonely. That’s not a good thing and it’s time to take steps to fix that going forward.
6) Heartburns
This happens to me, specifically. When I’m stressed, I get heartburns. This doesn’t happen, normally. In the 3 years I’ve had my last job, it only happened once. It’s when I passed the point of no return. It’s when I snapped because I worked too much. My body just gives up.
When I get heartburns, I know it’s time to either quit or take a long vacation. This is pretty dangerous. What’s even worse is that when I brought it up to my boss, he said it might not be because of work but because of something else. Whew, am I glad that I am not working there anymore!
If your chest starts to feel a sort of burning sensation, even in the slightest, then there’s something wrong. Make no mistake about it, this is your body telling you that something’s wrong. The way that I fixed it is by taking a week or two of absolute no work of any kind. How you fix it will be up to you.
Why Do We Work Too Much?
Now that you know the health effects of working too much, let’s go into why you’re doing it in the first place.
1) Artificial Deadlines
There are times when the client demands the deadlines and you have to meet it with no exceptions. However, the majority of the time, it’s your paranoid boss who sets deadlines whenever he wants to. And when do you think he wants to set the deadlines? The earliest as possible.
My prior boss would artificially set deadlines to the point where it was unreasonable. Not even he could’ve finished the task earlier but he set the deadline as such anyway. Don’t work too much because of artificial deadlines. It’s a tactic many bosses use so that it makes them feel better about their paranoia.
You have more time to complete tasks than you think you do. Take your time and don’t let anyone pressure you. Know your boss very well so you can pretty much know when he’s lying against you or not. Then adjust accordingly. It matters whether you want to put out a quality product, it doesn’t matter how quickly you can finish it.
2) Paranoia for Our Future
We work too much because we want our future to be intact. We have a dying need to set a better life for our children than the life we had ourselves. Therefore, we compensate by taking on as many hours as possible and acquiring wealth. Fear is a great motivator to go towards our goals.
However, there comes a point where fear becomes paranoia. I’m certainly guilty of this as well. Growing up in a middle class family, I didn’t grow up with abundance. I grew up with limits that were usually constrained by money. I didn’t want to feel like this, especially not for my life and not for my future children.
The thought of working all my life without having anything to show up for it terrified me. It made me want to work as hard as I could so that I can avoid that. That’s why and how I’ve been able to put in the work for such a long time. It’s almost been six years since I started full time work and I’m ready to get out of the door.
3) Taking Care of Our Family
The last reason you work too much is for your family. My dad retired from his company of 36 years in December 2021. It was my last day of work as well. He explained that the only reason he was able to work so much for so long is because he wasn’t just taking care of himself.
He had a family to take care of. If it weren’t for that, he doesn’t know if he would’ve kept going to try and make it. We want our family to have a good life and we don’t want to be the reason why they don’t have a good life. I’m currently not married and can’t imagine what it feels like to have that burden on your shoulders.
One day I will feel it. It’s one reason why I don’t feel that much pressure to provide because I don’t have a family to take care of. Once I do, I know that unless I’m financially independent, my life will be spend slaving away in the office. Not a good picture. It’s one of the reasons why I’m turbocharging my FIRE path.
You Miss Out on Life When You Work Too Much
The number one regret of people on their deathbed is that they worked too much. They regret putting in so many hours in the office. That’s when they realize… Why did I do all of that for? Who did I do all of that for? So that my boss could get a bigger bonus than me come bonus time?
There are some things in life that are more important than money. There are MANY things in life that are more important than money. Family, health, peace of mind, and freedom are the first things that come to mind. Don’t forget to look out the window and see how the weather is today.
Spreadsheets can be cool but don’t work too much for the sake of working too much. Do it because you have an end goal and purpose in mind. Figure out what your biggest goal in life is. Your life is meant to be more than to sit around doing excel spreadsheets all day long. There’s more meaning than that.
There are many things in life that give you joy. There are many things in life that suck the living soul out of you. Spend more time on passions and spend less time on things that suck your soul away from you. Before I moved into my new job, I had the opportunity to be unemployed for a month to see what FIRE looked like.
Let me tell you, it felt amazing. There was no stress, no deadlines, and nothing keeping me back from doing what I wanted the way I wanted it done. Don’t work too much because it’s not a healthy thing to do. People look down on unemployed people but I suspect that they’re secretly jealous of them.
6 Health Effects When You Work Too Much Shortlist:
- Exhaustion from working too much
- Mental fogginess
- Muscle cramps
- Overeating from working too much
- You feel lonely
- Heartburns
