Working Long Hours Can Be Depressing, Truly

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/01/26/145912523/working-long-hours-can-be-depressing-truly

by danso • 14 years ago

34 9 14 years ago

quanticle• 14 years ago

I do wonder, though, as to the direction of the causation arrow. I know perfectionism is well correlated with depression. Perfectionism is also well correlated with working long hours. Maybe it's the depression, or rather, the perfectionism caused by depression that causes the long hours?

mitchie_luna• 14 years ago

I think that working long hours is the fruit of depression not the opposite. And I think there are other factor that leads to depression like the civil and professional status.

TheCowboy• 14 years ago

Depression usually involves a highly demotivated less-productive state of being.

Perfectionism, at least in this case, is an affliction where one desires perfection, but as way all know is not truly achievable given realistic constraints and scarce resources.

Scarce resources such as the number of hours per day. Those who attempt unrealistic levels of perfection will inevitably spend excess hours working. This can burn someone out due to not reaching such perfection, or just from over-stretching oneself. One can also experience depression due to being overwhelming at the prospect of what they desire, due to perfectionism, not being achievable.

It is extremely difficult to bring oneself to work long hours producing high of quality when depressed.

Maybe the arrows seem to reverse when if depressed, the result being of lower quality or decreased output per hour, workers are forced to work longer hours to compensate and stay afloat, but that isn't exactly perfectionism unless their work was already adequate.

In this case, it is civil servants in Britain. That perfectionism even plays a role in this specific sample is pure speculation. They're not exactly the same as the HN demographic that we associate with perfectionism.

robinhouston• 14 years ago

The paper is published in the open access journal PLoS One, and linked from this piece: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...

Those speculating that the causation might lie in the other direction should at least bear in mind that this is a prospective cohort study (following a particular group of people over a long period of time). It found that – after controlling for income – people who worked longer hours were more likely to experience a subsequent major depressive episode.

Of course you might like to speculate that there is a hidden variable: perhaps some psychological factor that both predisposes people to work long hours and also increases their risk of depression. This research doesn’t rule out that possibility, as far as I can tell. To do that you would need to randomly assign people to the long-hours or short-hours condition and follow them for a period of time. I imagine it would be rather difficult to carry out a study of that sort.

dhruval• 14 years ago

Our brains are working quite hard while playing video games or browsing random things on the internet.

Yet these are things we do to 'relax' after a hard day's work.

The problem isn't long hours per se. The problem is that the long hours are being spent doing work that is 'boring'.

So we must consider what makes something 'boring' as opposed to 'interesting'. This is probably tied to our unconscious brain sensing if the work is valuable in terms of having survival or reproduction value on the African savanna where humans evolved. The reward mechanism in humans sucks at figuring out if white collar work is useful.

The problem is solvable through technology, if we can figure out a way to trigger the reward mechanism in a way that relates to the output of white collar work. The main challenge is that it is difficult to tie rewards to work in a meaningful way that doesn't leave it open to exploitation by clever humans. But then again if we get to the point where AI strong enough to monitor a job then maybe we don't really need humans to do that job.

On a more practical level, I find one can make anything interesting by simply paying attention to the senses fully as you perform the task. Admittedly it does take some practice to do this effortlessly and stop getting distracted by thoughts.

haraball• 14 years ago

Sometimes when I'm tired of coding and thinking about the same problems for a while, I still catch myself in managing to focus on a game of Sudoku on the phone while having a break. Maybe I'm just using a different part of the brain to do this, so the other part used for programming really gets a break? Just like you can't manage to do any more squats when training, but still can do lots of bench presses?

michaelochurch• 14 years ago

My observation of this matter: working ineffectively leads to burnout and (if it's let to go too far) depression. That occurs whether it's 20 hours per week or 70. I don't think "long hours" are dangerous if the hours are effective, engaged hours that produce meaningful results. It's actually possible to work 45-60 hours per week effectively and sustainably, but only (a) from a position of complete autonomy over what one does and how and when one does it, (b) with a mix of labor (some social, some hard-core cognitive like coding), (c) with strict attention to diet and exercise, (d) with enough reward (and I'm talking about achievement and recognition far more than remuneration) coming from that work, and (e) with the resources to outsource all housework and most errands, because at 60 hpw you don't even want to fucking think about washing dishes.

That said, the longer the hours are, the higher the probability that one is no longer working effectively. A 13-hour coding day can be fun, but it's rare that a person can string 7 of those together in a row. And a 13-hour day spent mostly in tense meatings ("typo" intentional) will kill you.

This can be reinforced by the fact that the first stage of ineffectiveness is mid-level (non-paralytic) anxiety, not panic attacks (a harsh warning sign that usually slows people down) or major depression (outright showstopper).

Actually, I think the reason why there are a lot of micromanagers in the world is that they tend to be people who linger in that twilight stage of declining effectiveness, and that it's possible (in a managerial role) for this state to be stable. Managers at level-1 burnout (non-paralytic anxiety) get the "I'm the only one who can do this shit competently" complex and become micromanagers. In a subordinate, this state quickly (~3 months at most) progresses to level 2 (paralytic anxiety, panic attacks) or even 3 (crippling mental illness, "nervous breakdown")... either of which is likely to end that job one way or another, but a lot of people enjoy power and that means that a person in authority can stay at a level-1 low-burn for a long time.

pasbesoin• 14 years ago

I'm going to glom on to your comment to make a personal observation about the ineffectiveness, inefficiency, and frustration of needlessly noisy, distracting work environments.

A full day or even long day of being really productive can be energizing. You can't do that non-stop, all day, every day (meaning from waking to sleeping), but it can be a powerful feeling to really "get stuff done".

Waiting for your neighbors to shut up so that you can actually think things through, for the umpteenth status meeting to grind its way through more or less "reading the memo", and working on far less than optimal equipment? Not so much.

It's all been said before. But if management wants to fix the problem (hint: often they don't, really), best to actually identify the problem, not a symptom.

heresyforme• 14 years ago

"Still, it's worth noting that the population groups most at risk for major depression are women, members of minority groups and people unable to work or unemployed, and those without health insurance, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

A strange thing to add as an addendum. Why are these particular groups singled out? And in particular they noted that "people unable to work or unemployed" are predisposed to depressive episodes after working long hours of overtime. How can they work overtime, if they are unemployed?

The study appears to have targeted men and women of middle-age, not particular sub-groups within those two groups. I'm not saying that it didn't need the addendum, but it certainly seems out of place here.

Working Long Hours Can Be Depressing, Truly

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