It’s a beautiful Saturday morning, and you’re all prepped for your hot weekend date. Suddenly, your phone beeps, signaling that you’ve just received a message. When you see who it’s from, however, your heart sinks. You discover you’re working over weekends, again.
“Hey, are you free today? There’s something I need you to check up on…” the message begins. You can almost hear your boss’ crisp, commanding voice through the screen. You don’t really have a choice, though. Either you show up as the responsible employee, or you flake out and kiss that promotion goodbye.
Is it really worth it? Is working non-stop a natural byproduct of an increasingly digital lifestyle? Or is it costly in ways you can only begin to imagine? Take a look through the facts and see for yourself.
Looking at the numbers, you’d think weekend work was the norm. Around half of U.S. workers put in at least 50 hours a week. Often, those extra hours aren’t compensated.
Money isn’t the only issue here. When Stanford University’s John Pencavel studied the relationship between working hours and productivity, he found that employee output peaks at 50 hours and crashes hard after 55 hours. In other words, if you try to push it to 60 or 70 hours, you won’t see any difference from your productivity at 50. Worse, your work quality can even deteriorate.
Aside from your output, there’s one other thing weekend work costs you. When work trumps everything else in your life, it ramps up your risk of heart disease, stress and even premature death. Also, if the numerous divorces between CEOs and their spouses are any indication, workaholism can take away your relationships too.
Not everyone buys into these grim numbers, though. In a piece for Fast Company, Laura Vanderkam argues that there’s nothing wrong with working on weekends per se. She cites several individuals, like GoldieBlox founder Debbie Sterling and ex-EmergencyLink CEO Michael Soenen, who work weekends and still manage to keep their life together. After all, when you’re on break, awesome ideas might still come to you, and you can’t let those go.
However, Vanderkam also clarifies the main reason behind those people’s success, despite their punishing schedules: passion. They’re so in love with their jobs that they can’t imagine doing anything else. If that sounds like you, maybe working on weekends isn’t such a bad thing.
If you’re 100 percent sure you love your job, but still want to flip a table at the mere idea of weekend work, try these suggestions.
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer for “Should you commit to working over weekends?” As long as your work rhythm works for you — whether it’s the traditional five eight-hour days, or seven four-hour days — there’s no need to feel guilty about the fact.
