PHOTOGRAPHS: ALEXANDER CRISPIN/GETTY IMAGES
As you tap out a reply to yet another work email on your glowing phone, in bed, at 11.30pm, it would be very easy to imagine that being overworked is simply an unavoidable fact of modern life. And we certainly do work hard: British employees contributed a staggering £32 billion to the economy in unpaid overtime in 2014, according to the Trades Union Congress. What’s even worse is that the problem is self-perpetuating. Whenever we feel starved of time, researchers have shown, we tend to make foolish, hurried decisions – such as taking on even more projects – so we end up busier still.
But busyness isn’t solely a matter of our ever-lengthening to-do lists. It also results from various unhelpful messages we’ve internalised about the meaning of work. That’s excellent news, as it means that by questioning those messages, there’s hope of reducing the sense of being overwhelmed. Here are five ways we make overwork worse by the things we tell ourselves – and how to think about work more calmly and realistically instead: