Long Working Hours Lead To a Rise In Premature Deaths, WHO Says (seattletimes.com) 117
Long working hours are leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths per year, according to a new study by the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization. The Seattle Times reports: Working more than 55 hours a week in a paid job resulted in 745,000 deaths in 2016, the study estimated, up from 590,000 in 2000. About 398,000 of the deaths in 2016 were because of stroke and 347,000 because of heart disease. Both physiological stress responses and changes in behavior (such as an unhealthy diet, poor sleep and reduced physical activity) are "conceivable" reasons that long hours have a negative impact on health, the authors suggest.
Other takeaways from the study:
- Working more than 55 hours per week is dangerous. It is associated with an estimated 35% higher risk of stroke and 17% higher risk of heart disease compared with working 35-40 hours per week.
- About 9% of the global population works long hours. In 2016, an estimated 488 million people worked more than 55 hours per week.
- Long hours are more dangerous than other occupational hazards. In all three years that the study examined (2000, 2010 and 2016), working long hours led to more disease than any other occupational risk factor, including exposure to carcinogens and the nonuse of seat belts at work. And the health toll of overwork worsened over time: From 2000 to 2016, the number of deaths from heart disease because of working long hours increased 42%, and from stroke 19%.
Other takeaways from the study:
- Working more than 55 hours per week is dangerous. It is associated with an estimated 35% higher risk of stroke and 17% higher risk of heart disease compared with working 35-40 hours per week.
- About 9% of the global population works long hours. In 2016, an estimated 488 million people worked more than 55 hours per week.
- Long hours are more dangerous than other occupational hazards. In all three years that the study examined (2000, 2010 and 2016), working long hours led to more disease than any other occupational risk factor, including exposure to carcinogens and the nonuse of seat belts at work. And the health toll of overwork worsened over time: From 2000 to 2016, the number of deaths from heart disease because of working long hours increased 42%, and from stroke 19%.
Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Guess they need to stop having doctors work 80 hours a week in school and residency, eh? Physician, heal thyself.
Which Doctors? The WHO doctors who published the study? You asked the authors if they work 80 hours a week? My local doctors (non American) certainly don't.
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Thanks. Now I've got a butchered version of that Chipmunks song going round in my head.
"I called the witch doctor he told me to ask WHO."
"oo ee oo aa aa, ting, tang, walla walla bing bang""
Death would be a relief? (Score:3)
At least that would apply to some of the worst jobs I've had. Fortunately, the only jobs that had long working hours were the ones that were worth working at, but I was probably just lucky. And in some cases, I might have been lucky to be fired quickly.
Well there was a joke in there that fizzled somewhere, but I did object to the null subject.
Re:Great Surgeons literally work themselves to dea (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of medical specialties which are almost a joke to practice [to the extent that the lazy sons of b!tches even practice anything whatosever, other than pure rank witchdoctory], but the great surgeons - the guys who are on call 24x7xFOREVER - they never sleep.
*cough* Dermatology *cough* Ophthalmology. *cough*
Furthermore, the lack of sleep is now known to cause the neurological plaques associated with dementia, and pretty much every Great Surgeon is an Alzheimer's patient by about the age of 65 or 70.
I think what the OP implied was the training where even if you're going to be a dermatologist you still get stuck with internship and student years running 80 hours a week, and that's only because they had to set limits on it. They were running people for much longer. If you want to work 24/7 when you're out I think you're insane, but go into cardiothoracic surgery or something.
Personally I'd prefer the doctor roving around in my chest not have been up for the last 30 hours when he does it.
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I know a few MDs and they said that dermatology is a favorite specialty for women doctors since it allows them to focus their families. Typically they are employed at a small clinic close to home with regular 8-5 hours and the ability to cancel appointments at the last minute should one of the kids get sick.
Oh, absolutely. Pediatrics is another one, though they don't make anywhere near as much as dermatologists. (Pediatricians that do hospitalist work on the other hand can make >$200,000/yr. The average office pediatrician is scoring maybe $120,000. When you figure in opportunity cost and student loans, it really isn't that great.)
Re: Great Surgeons literally work themselves to de (Score:2)
Wrong! Doctors on the whole are less likely to have dementia..
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
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"Physician" is a pretty broad category in that study and enough people to hide the surgeons who never sleep among the noise. It doesn't really prove the specific case, just the general case.
Re: Great Surgeons literally work themselves to d (Score:2)
Abs really does not prove prove your anecdotal comment either, at least I linked to proper journal article that supports the fact that doctors on the whole take better care of themselves and are quicker to notice any deviations from their usual memory function.
If you have proof of anything different please feel free to post
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This is literally indecipherable:
Abs really does not prove prove your anecdotal comment either
You linked to a proper journal article and drew a specific conclusion where there was only a broad one. I don't need proof to tell you that you're saying something that wasn't proven by the research. They included all physicians and did not break it down by the type of job they held or what type of facility they worked in, so there's no way to get any meaningful idea about overworked surgeons.
You specifically said "Wrong" about surgeons but still said "on the whole" for do
Re: Great Surgeons literally work themselves to d (Score:2)
And your data is what? Imperial evidence only you have seen?
Thatâ(TM)s twice now you have a chance to prove your point with facts and failed.
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What evidence are you talking about? I'm talking about the incorrect conclusion you drew from the study. No data or evidence factors into this at all. Just bad logic.
Re: Great Surgeons literally work themselves to d (Score:2)
The bad logic is yours, you stuck your mech way out there claiming dementia is extremely prevalent in surgeons, citing nothing but your own imperial views with absolutely nothing to back it up, end of.
You continue to try and defend your point by moving goal posts and still not offering ANY evidence to back up your claim, and while mine may be broadly encompassing to all doctors and not surgeons specifically it still applies for the most part. I could probably find some study backing my claims that surgeons
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you stuck your mech way out there claiming dementia is extremely prevalent in surgeons
That wasn't me. There's actually more than two of us here on Slashdot. All I said was that an article with evidence that "Doctors on the whole are less likely to have dementia" was not a valid way to disprove higher prevalence of dementia specifically in surgeons. There is no way to gather that from the study you cited.
citing nothing but your own imperial views
Please just learn the word empirical. You keep saying the wrong word and it hurts. Although if we're granting me royalty, give me a little deference that I may know exactly what I'm sayi
Re: Great Surgeons literally work themselves to d (Score:2)
Oh really, you are a surgeon then?! :/
Come back with real evidence to support your theory or stop wasting time.
I will stand by what is written, you stand by nothing.
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You're going to stand by imperial?
Re: Great Surgeons literally work themselves to d (Score:2)
https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
My fast fat fingered mis-types aside, I shall continue to stand with the evidence I presented, you sir, stand with nothing.
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You keep saying I have a theory but I don't. I really don't know what you think my theory is.
The only thing I said was that you drew too strong of a specific conclusion from a general study. Yet you're claiming that I have a theory without evidence.
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Also, you typed imperial every single time. Stop acting like it was the same mistype over and over and over. There would probably be other random words typed by now or an accidental correct word choice at least once out of them.
Healthier at home. (Score:4, Interesting)
Good thing we have work at home so people can have healthier hours and a bed close by.
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Trust me, I take full advantage of my work-from-home situation.
And when I say "full", I mean a max of 30 hours a week, period. I'm nearing the end of my career- I have no one to impress, there's no corporate ladder I want to climb, and I don't give a flyin' fuck about advancement. I don't want recognition (in fact, the less they know I exist, the better lol).
Don't waste a minute of your time trying to "motivate" me to "ramp up" or "exceed in my performance goals". Bitch, I'm as motivated as I'm ever going t
Missed opportunity (Score:2)
"..., says WHO"
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"..., says WHO"
Missed opportunity? Why? According to the right wing the WHO is an evil cabal run by China that is trying to destroy Western Judeo-Christian conservative culture as we know it. Obviously the Trumpistanis are going to read this story and work twice as many hours just to prove China and the Libtartds wrong. Assuming for a moment that the Trumpistanis are right about the WHO being an evil cabal then it stands to reason that the WHO obviously caught an opportunity here mid flight. "4D chess baby, this is the C
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The person writing "Trumpistanis" just might not be a dispassionate observer or commenter on the situation. Perhaps you would like to discuss the reliability of the WHO rather than just hurl invective.
The WHO saw fit to echo China's denial of person-to-person transmission in January 2020. (Chinese report: "The possibility of limited human-to-human transmission cannot be excluded, but the risk of sustained transmission is low." WHO summary: "We have not found proof for human-to-human transmission.") They
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You are the one lying: https://twitter.com/WHO/status... [twitter.com]
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That too. My quotes were from https://www.theatlantic.com/po... [theatlantic.com] .
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Guess some people are just incapable of learning.
I can't be the first person to try and set you straight can I?
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China was lying even about that. Remember Dr Li, who was forced to apologize for "spreading rumors" about human-to-human transmission, before he caught it and died of it? Front-line doctors in Wuhan knew what was going on, even as public officials said the other opposite to save face and to enable super-spreader New Years celebrations.
WHO doesn't get to use "we were only repeating China's message, we had no way to know they were lying" excuse.
Re:Missed opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
China was likely lying. The WHO was not. They distanced themselves by calling it both a "preliminary investigation" and "by the Chinese authorities." The scientific community does have a bit of a problem assuming the integrity of scientists everywhere - and forgetting that there can be literal threats to not saying what you're told to say. Generally, scientists are not censored in that way even in countries like China.
Re:Missed opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure you understand what "no clear evidence" means (especially as a preliminary finding). Do you think they just grab people off the street and expose them to sick people as some sort of twisted experiment? You only have statistics and and guesses about who even counts as a case since there were no widely available diagnostic testing at that point.
The media was definitely irresponsible in misinterpreting how to react to a preliminary finding. It was an ongoing investigation and you expect changes to what's known as time goes on. It's important to report on, but everyone should be expecting the story to be constantly evolving as more is known. That's how science works.
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The FLSA requires overtime for any hours over 40 in a week. That's in the range the study considers healthy and normal. I don't see the political issue here.
Re: Missed opportunity (Score:2)
evil Communist atheists to push for reason
I guess you missed that class in social studies. Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot need you to report to the nearest agricultural collective ASAP.
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Maybe if he hadn't slacked off on the last day he would have had time to finish the world.
Thou shalt do overtime (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thou shalt do overtime (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I agree with this to some degree. You get the job done.
The job is never done. Scope expands to fill the time available.
Are all jobs done after specifically 55 hours but not 40? Why not 100?
Finding the right balance between profitability and sustainability is non-trivial, but expected performance is not a given universal constant. It is a matter of experience with a certain level of effort. If expected input was 40h, 'the job' would need to be shaped to fit, just as it has for 55 or whatever.
But that is ignoring all the reasearch showing that for many office-type jobs, the added value of overtime is often marginal or even negative.
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Personally I agree with this to some degree. You get the job done.
The job is never done. Scope expands to fill the time available. Are all jobs done after specifically 55 hours but not 40? Why not 100?
Finding the right balance between profitability and sustainability is non-trivial, but expected performance is not a given universal constant. It is a matter of experience with a certain level of effort. If expected input was 40h, 'the job' would need to be shaped to fit, just as it has for 55 or whatever.
But that is ignoring all the reasearch showing that for many office-type jobs, the added value of overtime is often marginal or even negative.
You just need to listen to your inner Wally [dilbert.com].
Re:Thou shalt do overtime (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the safety issue. Of course, the 55 hour limit may already be past the point of negative sustained productivity and is almost certainly at least well into diminishing returns.
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Where I live overtime can be considered "part of the job" and not be paid only for executives in very high positions. A normal office worker's overtime needs to be compensated at a higher rate than standard working hours. Furthermore, the amount of overtime cannot exceed specific parameters.
There are culture aspects at play, but very strict regulation is also very important. Basically once it becomes a problem for the company if you do too much overtime, then the company will naturally prevent you from doin
Re:Thou shalt do overtime (Score:4, Insightful)
> It also is a sort of measure of how important you are. The more overtime, the higher you are regarded. It goes pretty far. If you only do the hours written down in the contract (typically 40h/week) you are considered as a bad employee with no commitment.
Are you highly paid? Is there high loyalty from the company such that you'll never be laid off if times are tough?
Sometimes these are true but far more often these are just abusive cultures using people without compensation. It's like when prisoners enforce the rules for the warden.
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In the U.S., any employee categorized as Professional, Administrative, Executive, or Computer related is exempt from labor laws (that covers basically everything except for flipping burgers or mowing lawns). Since you're "professional", you're paid for getting the job done, not for how long it took to do it.
But this is a one sided game. So....
Work 80 hours in a week? You only get paid for 40.
Got all your work done in 4 days and want to take Friday off? Nope. You have to burn one of your 10 vacation day
Long ago and far away (Score:5, Interesting)
Easy solution (Score:2)
"Working more than 55 hours a week in a paid job..."
That one is easy.. just get rid of the pay. /s
Does it count? (Score:3)
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How about slavery?
that is just what the government wants (Score:3, Interesting)
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Quite the opposite actually. Governments want to reduce working hours so that the work gets spread around to more people, thereby reducing the unemployment rate. For example if you have 7 people working 50 hour weeks, they could be replaced by 10 people working 35 hour weeks. That's a huge increase in employment. This is exactly the strategy behind France's push to reduce working hours to 35 hours per week [wikipedia.org] to combat France's (then) double digit unemployment rate. Many other Western European countries do so
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Governments want to reduce working hours so that the work gets spread around to more people, thereby reducing the unemployment rate.
But not spread too thin. Being employed and still costing the government money is the worst of both worlds. Walmart is the biggest welfare queen there is. About half are full time and they count 34 hours as full time. It's only this year that they are finally making a push to convert hourly to full time.
Re:that is just what the government wants (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite the opposite actually. Governments want to reduce working hours so that the work gets spread around to more people, thereby reducing the unemployment rate.
Your problem, is lumping America in with "governments".
For example if you have 7 people working 50 hour weeks, they could be replaced by 10 people working 35 hour weeks. That's a huge increase in employment.
No, that's viewed as a massive increase in costs. Overtime hardly matters when the bean counters are counting heads, not hours. Why? Because the fully loaded overhead is considerable per employee. (tends to happen when the business costs for health insurance are insane, along with other benefits like 401k, disability, etc.).
This is exactly the strategy behind France's push to reduce working hours to 35 hours per week [wikipedia.org] to combat France's (then) double digit unemployment rate. Many other Western European countries do something similar with generous holiday hours and strict overtime regulations. Which is why Western Europe has the lowest annual working hours in the world.
There's some sound logic to that, so naturally America created a "gig" economy instead, and will reject any notion that 55+ hours/week is really all that bad.
Our future human employment utopia is doing a job you love, for maybe 20 - 30 hours a week. Just long enough to feel that satisfaction and self pride, but short enough to afford a life and not prematurely kill yourself. Unfortunately, Greed will look to replace the human workers instead, and leave you to hang in the financial winds of UBI, which will be lobbied down by Greed to be nothing more than Welfare 2.0 for the masses.
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No, that's viewed as a massive increase in costs. Overtime hardly matters when the bean counters are counting heads, not hours. Why? Because the fully loaded overhead is considerable per employee. (tends to happen when the business costs for health insurance are insane, along with other benefits like 401k, disability, etc.).
I agree 100%, it's very bad for businesses. Which is why in we now know this plan doesn't work. Much of Western Europe still has the stubbornly high unemployment it was struggling with before. But it also has lower growth, lower productivity, and lower incomes relative to the US at least in part to these reduced work hour schemes.
There's some sound logic to that, so naturally America created a "gig" economy instead, and will reject any notion that 55+ hours/week is really all that bad.
Our future human employment utopia is doing a job you love, for maybe 20 - 30 hours a week. Just long enough to feel that satisfaction and self pride, but short enough to afford a life and not prematurely kill yourself. Unfortunately, Greed will look to replace the human workers instead, and leave you to hang in the financial winds of UBI, which will be lobbied down by Greed to be nothing more than Welfare 2.0 for the masses.
I strong disagree on this point. We all have a choice between more time off or more income, and each person will have their own preferences. But if we look across the developed wor
Re:that is just what the government wants (Score:4, Interesting)
Our future human employment utopia is doing a job you love, for maybe 20 - 30 hours a week. Just long enough to feel that satisfaction and self pride, but short enough to afford a life and not prematurely kill yourself. Unfortunately, Greed will look to replace the human workers instead, and leave you to hang in the financial winds of UBI, which will be lobbied down by Greed to be nothing more than Welfare 2.0 for the masses.
I strong disagree on this point. We all have a choice between more time off or more income, and each person will have their own preferences. But if we look across the developed world the average person seems satisfied with 40 hours a week. Were there a strong demand for more time off then we would see this in countries and industries with large unions. But we don't. The big unions aren't fighting for less working hours and neither are individuals. Given the choice workers and unions are fighting for more money, not more time off.
You can disagree with this all you want, but at the end of the day Relentless Greed will decide. Your 40-hour a week job will be replaced by a robot if it can do it, and automation has already displaced human work.
McDonalds faced a forced minimum wage hike in America, and what is Greeds response? Deploy thousands of kiosk bots to replace cashiers instead.
Amazon will automate warehouses, eliminating the need for piss-in-the-bottle workers. They will fly drones to deliver packages, eliminating the need for a large percentage of deliveries by human driver. This kind of automation that will decimate human employment, will continue throughout many industries over the next decade or two.
I said 20 - 30 hours a week recognizing that we will need to find a reasonable middle ground because the demand for human labor will likely drop well below 40 hours a week. Not to mention humans like to reproduce, so that many more I-need-a-job humans are being put into the demand pool every day. If a person could work 30 hours a week today and get paid the same as their current 40-hour week, I highly doubt you would find more than 5% of people that wouldn't take advantage of that. You get one ride in life. Do we really want to continue to justify a 40-hour workweek when it becomes harder and harder to do so? Yes, humans still need to do something to fulfill basic desires of wanting and needing to participate in a useful way in society. That's why we can't just all go the route of UBI, even if the machines already see that future. But I don't see a need for a 40-hour workweek going forward. Perhaps sooner than later.
It's going to be weird when the entire purpose of a union, is to fight for human jobs, not merely hours or pay.
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Your 40-hour a week job will be replaced by a robot if it can do it, and automation has already displaced human work.
The problem is that people have been saying this since the luddites were smashing textile mills over 200 years ago and it's never been true. We have seen a huge amount of automation take places, especially in the last 50 years with the proliferation of computers and robots. Despite this, the employment rate [cloudfront.net] (the percentage of the working age population employed) has a long-term upward trend. Indeed, the employment rate in 2018 before the pandemic (~61%) was higher than at any point in the 60s or 70s. If aut
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Your 40-hour a week job will be replaced by a robot if it can do it, and automation has already displaced human work.
The problem is that people have been saying this since the luddites were smashing textile mills over 200 years ago and it's never been true. We have seen a huge amount of automation take places, especially in the last 50 years with the proliferation of computers and robots. Despite this, the employment rate [cloudfront.net] (the percentage of the working age population employed) has a long-term upward trend. Indeed, the employment rate in 2018 before the pandemic (~61%) was higher than at any point in the 60s or 70s. If automation is wiping out jobs then the data should show a smaller fraction of the population, but what it actually shows is the opposite.
What you fail to understand, is that this form of automation is targeting something no other has before; your mind.
For the last 200 years of automation, the answer was always "go get an education" when you found your job obsolete. That will not be the answer tomorrow. And we certainly won't need perfect AI to replace most human workers, who are far from perfect themselves, and still require all those pain-in-the-ass things from the employer's standpoint. Like time off, vacation, health and life insuranc
Cause or Effect? (Score:2)
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More like Type A is more easily distracted by the trappings of work, so if left to their own devices will work longer hours by their own nature. This is because, at some level, the work is fun/entertaining.
The component that adds the undo stress are artificial deadlines and lack of work-life balance sentiment within leadership - ie "You've been at this for an hour straight. Go talk a walk and enjoy the nice day a bit. Work will still be here tomorrow"
Telling people to work less hours but still meet the same
Industry Norms (Score:2)
My relatives and acquaintances in the legal profession have observed that in law, particularly the big firms, a forty hour week is considered barely part-time and insufficient to sustain a career. And when I worked in IT management for a brokerage, the average work week for my peers was 72 hours -- between day shift, takehome work and random overnight interruption. And know of a few agencies where late night texts and emails were considered mandatory to show ones dedication. This tiny sample suggests that t
Women (Score:2)
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So I see at least two considerations:
The world isn't static, and this isn't necessarily an either/or situation. Things will very likeely continue to change and shift.
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Obligatory Dilbert (Score:2)
Tuesday November 02, 1993 [dilbert.com]
Funny (Score:2)
The Japanese have a word... (Score:2)
On the humorous side, she hosted some of us at a private party at her apartment. When my fellow studen
Premature deaths of Silicon Valley Billionaires (Score:1)
Not sure this is true? (Score:1)
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Different genetic ethnicity, different diet, climate and exercise encouraged in school and work. What would would Japanese lifespan be without their stress? How do we know they're not losing years?
Less long working hours .. . . (Score:2)
In my case, and that of many others, would also lead to premature death, not only for me, but for my family also. Unemployment is quite damaging as well.
It's simply expected in the current economic and political climate where I am, and in the type of work I do, that a person will work at least up to the point when more work hours would cause a decrease, rather than an increase, in his or her work output.
From the Department of... (Score:2)
"Long Working Hours Lead To a Rise In Premature Deaths"
From the Department of NO FUCKING SHIT, SHERLOCK.
Who, I ask, ever thought that working long hours resulted in better health outcomes?
Anyone? Seriously, has anyone ever actually thought that?
This is why I maintain a rigorous 25 to 30 hour-a-week schedule at work...they pay me for more but this lil' doggie ain't gonna work himself to death for anyone.
Possibly related (Score:2)
I work for a company where one of our VPs has this credo:
"If your employees are routinely working overtime, your company is broken."
They put very sensible limits on how much we're expected to work, and no one has a problem with it.
As a salaried employee, overtime work is generally frowned upon.
It meant the department was either understaffed or that you (for whatever reason) were taking on too much work. There are exceptions, but they're just that: exceptions.
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Less people with jobs, less people dying from overworking!
You want more people with jobs?
RAISE THE PAY.
you know, Capitalism 101?
The supply is out there, if you want some, pay more for it.
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you know, Capitalism 101?
That was old Capitalism.
We [slashdot.org] fixed [slashdot.org] it [slashdot.org]
Re:Wow! Who knew? (Score:5, Insightful)
Next these geniuses will be telling us that if you cross the road without looking it could be bad for your health too!
Hasn't this been common knowledge for the last 30 years at least (and probably long before that)?
How bad for your health is it? What is the relative risk of crossing the road? How does it relate to the amount of traffic in a given area or the intersection layout? When is it required to put a pedestrian crossing, vs a traffic light, vs an overpass?
It has not been common knowledge that 55hours = 35% increase chance of stroke. These "geniuses" who you dismiss put actual numbers to something which you presumed so that intelligent policy decisions can be made related to a studied risk.
Slashdot would be a better place if people stopped posting anti-intellectual nonsense such as "this is just common knowledge" and if you think it is, then you likely didn't read anything more than the headline.
Re:Wow! Who knew? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's important to have studies like this for legal cases. Now there is solid scientific backing and clear numbers people can use that to get better conditions or sue if they are forced to damage their health.
It's also useful for lawmakers looking at maximum working times. The UK is likely to get a post-brexit review of the current limit (48 hours/week on average) and it will probably be removed, but at least now we have some ammunition to use in the fight to lower it.
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So negative. Not everyone lives in America and relies only on court cases to get improvements in their lives.
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It's important to have studies like this for legal cases. Now there is solid scientific backing and clear numbers people can use that to get better conditions or sue if they are forced to damage their health.
I'm not inclined to say that the science is that solid though.
I've always put in a lot of hours while working. It's the way I'm wired. I also do not sleep much - around 5 hours a night. Seems like I've been dead for a long time. At least according to what many here think is solid science.
Now here is a differential analysis. Other than a lot of old sports injuries coming back to haunt me, I'm doing great. And I have a lot of colleagues who might also be considered superannuated, and we're all doing pret
Re: Wow! Who knew? (Score:2)
Scientific studies often result in curves rather than simple numbers. The simple numbers are good as a first approximation, but they don't tell all the story, and this is pretty clear to those who know the basics of scientific statistical methods. Alas, the vast, vast majority of people don't even know this exists, much less the basics.
So, what this study is actually saying is that, for a certain range of people around the average, the increased risk is of x%. Beyond that middle range there are the tails, t
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You're likely one of the lucky minority on the "better than the average" tail of the distribution. That's pretty good for you. But your case cannot be used for determining policies targeting improved health conditions for the majority who aren't so lucky.
Now for the big question - should I be forced to work less than I am happy to do? This is not a trivial question, nor even a smartass one.
Because my ability to work long hours enjoying what I am doing, puts me at considerable advantage to people who hate their work, and cannot do what I do without risk of death by overwork.
Who would you hire in a professional setting - A person who is a happy employee, who performs top notch work, willing to put in what it takes to do to get the job done well and on t
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Of course some people will be happy working more hours, but most won't. The limits have to be enforced because while you personally may be fine with it, if employers can use you as the benchmark it puts pressure on everyone else to literally work themselves to death.
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Of course some people will be happy working more hours, but most won't. The limits have to be enforced because while you personally may be fine with it, if employers can use you as the benchmark it puts pressure on everyone else to literally work themselves to death.
It always put that pressure on anyhow. I don't want to re-hash a point I made in another post, but there were a number of people I worked with who were really pissed off at my productivity because "You make us look bad!, You're getting paid a lot more than we are!" Not coincidentally, they were the ones who wanted to do as little as possible for as much money as possible. Which is dumb anyhow. I made 3X them, but didn't work 3X their hours every week.
What do we do with the really productive employee? It
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Even good statistics have outliers. It doesn't disprove the general trends. Also, not everyone has the privilege to have the jobs that they would enjoy. I don't think janitorial work is anyone's dream, but they exist.
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Even good statistics have outliers. It doesn't disprove the general trends. Also, not everyone has the privilege to have the jobs that they would enjoy. I don't think janitorial work is anyone's dream, but they exist.
Even good statistics have outliers. It doesn't disprove the general trends. Also, not everyone has the privilege to have the jobs that they would enjoy. I don't think janitorial work is anyone's dream, but they exist.
While I'm doing work in my field that I really love at the moment, in my early years, I'd worked at a pizza joint, as a flower delivery guy, as a lifeguard, and as a traveling auto parts salesman. Even at those, I managed to do my job well, and get enjoyment out of it.
I'm beginning to think there is something wrong with me. 8^) Perhaps we need a Harrison Bergeron https://docs.google.com/viewer... [google.com] sort of solution, because if someone is going to drop dead because they work X+1 hours a week, is that not
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So your goal is to prove this wrong by somehow making everyone enjoy their work rather than admitting to be a statistical outlier?
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So your goal is to prove this wrong by somehow making everyone enjoy their work rather than admitting to be a statistical outlier?
Goal? We so often point out problems. Is it a bad idea to think that just maybe, people have been taught that the intelligent response to work is to hate it?
One of the reasons I am not stressed by work is that I do not hate it. I enjoy it. I get a lot of pushback here because not hating your work and being stressed out that you believe your health is affected by doing it plus an hour is going to kill you is rampant.
Okay - so tell me the reason that not hating your work is wrong .
Now if your career w
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That's easy to say until we are the ones who are old and the younger generation learns something for the first time that we knew for years. It's all a matter of perspective.
As for the article content, it's not groundbreaking, it's the same knowledge that HAS BEEN known for decades, that working longer hours has a detrimental effect on your health! You don't even need a study to know this: any pre-adult who has a father that regularly works overtime or someone who has a spouse that works much overtime ca
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As for the article content, it's not groundbreaking, it's the same knowledge that HAS BEEN known for decades, that working longer hours has a detrimental effect on your health!
Good work on not reading my post. Now if you feel the need to actually counter what I said I'm sure you can share studies which have correlated working hours to the exact health benefits studied here with and with the same conditions.
Then and only then would you have a point. But I'm not going to hold my breath that you actually know of such a study.
If these blast-from-the-past repeat submissions occurred rarely
I don't know about that. It would appear that a report on a study with this data set looking at these health correlations has only been posted once in the histo
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How bad for your health is it? What is the relative risk of crossing the road?
Gee whiz, I don't know, why don't you try it a bunch of times and get back to us?
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Oh look. The next Slashdot anti-intellectual moron. What, you didn't like that Viol8 got called out on his bullshit so you came in and wanted in on the action? Well I'm more than happy to apply: Why don't I try a bunch of times? Because I'm smart enough to know I don't need to and that we can analyse past data and correlate it to get a good result, and above all we can produce meaningful data without having the ethics board cancel the study.
Fucken science amirite? Now don't you have some kids on some lawn t
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Fucken science amirite?
Oh please, I've been involved with more science for the last 40 years than you could shake your ignorance at. And you're pretty ignorant.
You are after all, just another old guy.
Yes, an old guy who's worked in and supported science his whole life, both in the field and in the lab. I've forgotten more science than you'll ever learn, sonny.
So again, please go do the "cross the street without looking" experiment thing and let us know how it works out. It's so stupid that even you probably won't do it.
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I really wish I had mod points right now.
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The time to stop blaming China was the moment they actually did something to slow the spread and the US didn't. Everything after that point rests solely on different shoulders. That's like someone giving you a paper cut that later gets infected. You don't treat it and slowly die of the infection. And then on your death bead blame the person who gave you the paper cut.
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So I'm guessing you ALSO believe China's reports of their casualties too, right?
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Nice to see our Chinese posters are up early this morning. Ni hao!