Are you regularly working more than your scheduled hours? Do you find yourself spending lunch breaks gobbling a sandwich in between keystrokes on your computer, or having your breaks slip by without you even noticing? Are you working on weekends, when your job’s supposed to be Monday to Friday? Do you cancel after-work plans again and again, to the point where you’ve stopped making them?
If the answer is yes to any of these questions, you’re working for longer than you should be. From time to time working extra hours can be necessary in many jobs, but that should only be accepted if it’s tied to a particular project or busy period, and even then only if your employer acknowledges that it’s exceptional and there will be either financial compensation or time off in lieu in a quieter period. If you’re regularly working longer hours than stated in your contract you need to do something about it.
The first step is finding out why. It could well be that you’ve got more work than one person can handle in the set hours, or that your workplace is badly organised, preventing you from finishing your work in time. If so, your employer is at fault, and you need to take steps firstly to alert your employer to the problem and secondly to see that they solve it. But if it’s not down to overwork or bad business organisation, your long-hours problem could be caused by bad management of your own time.
It’s a common condition. Setting out conscious plans for making the best use of your time doesn’t come naturally to most people, and most of us develop working patterns that include all kinds of bad habits, inefficiencies, wrong priorities and simple time-wasting. The result is that work takes longer than it should and makes a mess of your work-life balance.
