Do you believe that 55 hour work weeks leads to increased chance of an early death?

For most people, yes. Anything which increases mental stress will point in the direction of earlier death, but you may have to look at a study of thousands of people (??) to see such a corelation; that is, it might not bother any number of people, but if you look at a large number of people, yes, an increase will no doubt show.

Is 55 hour weeks with no days off

You might find some people who can handle that and not pay a price, but most would, IMO.

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It depends on the person and the "work" .

I agree with RazorBoy, it is probably the stress that affects early death rather than the actual hours spent at the working premises.

There is the old saying "Do what you love and you'll never work another day in your life." As entrepreneurs on this forum, we are probably predisposed to working long hours because it is exciting and interesting for us to solve problems & build our businesses, rather than drudgery of "working for the man". I have worked long hours 7 days a week for extended periods and never felt stressed at all. But being an entrepreneur is not for everybody. I may not have been stressed but I missed a lot of time with my family. Some people would find that very stressful and would rather work for the man; go home and forget about work. So early death isn't the only consideration.

On the other hand I would never expect my employees to do that. We give our people long vacation allotments, strict no-work-at-home, leave promptly at end of day and plenty of random days off. Their performance (and corporate profits) actually goes up if you treat them well... no surprise there!! The entrepreneur who thinks he can be a dictator and flog his workers daily, will fail eventually.

What matters is the life you live, not how long it is. If you work 55h a week you are not living the best life.

razorboy wrote: ↑ For most people, yes. Anything which increases mental stress will point in the direction of earlier death, but you may have to look at a study of thousands of people (??) to see such a corelation; that is, it might not bother any number of people, but if you look at a large number of people, yes, an increase will no doubt show.

Is 55 hour weeks with no days off

You might find some people who can handle that and not pay a price, but most would, IMO.

Was gonna say the main reason why I want to do this is to pay down debt. I want to be debt free. I’m just under 11k in debt, that includes credit cards, LOC, etc. nothing owing on automobiles.

Quentin5 wrote: ↑ If you want to rationalize away the risk you can.
That said perhaps its worth it to you?

If it means I have more money saved for the future and become debt free, yes.

Then don’t work 55 hour work weeks? Well then just work 60?

I don’t see 55hrs as any special or big numbers, I mean it’s just 4-5 days Of work here so it’s nothing big.

What about the other 2-3 days? Sounds like a regular Monday to Friday job

DiamondDallasPage wrote: ↑ If it means I have more money saved for the future and become debt free, yes.

As someone who has worked 60 hours/week with no time off(small business owner) for the last 6 years, I would caution against this. I was able to save a fair amount of money, but it was at a big cost to my physical/mental health (insomnia, exhaustion, stress) . I'm in my late 30s but feel like I'm 50.

notenoughsleep wrote: ↑ As someone who has worked 60 hours/week with no time off(small business owner) for the last 6 years, I would caution against this. I was able to save a fair amount of money, but it was at a big cost to my physical/mental health (insomnia, exhaustion, stress) . I'm in my late 30s but feel like I'm 50.

Was it worth it?

divx wrote: ↑ Was it worth it?

Hm...that's a tough question. On one hand, I am financially secure at 39 (paid off my mortgage and have a sizeable investment account), which is a pretty big deal for me, and is something I realize that some people may not achieve even in a lifetime. As a result, I've now hired more staff and now only work about 30 hours/week, so my work-life balance is much better now.

But like I said, it did take it's toll on me. In addition to the health effects I mentioned above, my wife and I delayed having children partially due to my long work hours. As a result, we had to deal with infertility, which was also a very stressful experience. Thankfully everything worked out in the end and I now have a beautiful 2 year old daughter and another baby on the way. Also, because I was pretty much working non-stop for the last 6 years I feel like I've lost 6 years of the prime of my life.

I can't change the past, so I can't really say if I had the chance to do a do-over, would I do it again? But I just want others who are considering something similar to really weigh what's important to you. Covid reminded me that life is too short, and while I realize the importance of becoming financially secure, health/happiness/family should be one's priority. You can't enjoy the money you've earned if you're not healthy, and money really can't buy true happiness.

notenoughsleep wrote: ↑ Hm...that's a tough question. On one hand, I am financially secure at 39 (paid off my mortgage and have a sizeable investment account), which is a pretty big deal for me, and is something I realize that some people may not achieve even in a lifetime. As a result, I've now hired more staff and now only work about 30 hours/week, so my work-life balance is much better now.
But like I said, it did take it's toll on me. In addition to the health effects I mentioned above, my wife and I delayed having children partially due to my long work hours. As a result, we had to deal with infertility, which was also a very stressful experience. Thankfully everything worked out in the end and I now have a beautiful 2 year old daughter and another baby on the way. Also, because I was pretty much working non-stop for the last 6 years I feel like I've lost 6 years of the prime of my life.
I can't change the past, so I can't really say if I had the chance to do a do-over, would I do it again? But I just want others who are considering something similar to really weigh what's important to you. Covid reminded me that life is too short, and while I realize the importance of becoming financially secure, health/happiness/family should be one's priority. You can't enjoy the money you've earned if you're not healthy, and money really can't buy true happiness.

Well said.

What if we changed this question to someone who works 60-70 hours a week for 7 months of the year and is off for 5 straight months? That's what I do. I don't think I'm stressed but I am definitely tired in those 7 months.

Since this is the small business forum, I find it necessary to discuss this...55 hours doing what? From my experience in my career and through the business I ran, it is not clear that spending more time will necessarily help achieve the right results. We're no longer in the early industrial age where spending X amount of time on a machine will yield Y amount of products. Picture a sewing machine. Yeah there's some skill involved. But in general once you have at least the basic skill, your output is more or less directly related to how much time you put into it. And as you work more, your sewing skill will generally improve.

But modern work isn't like that. A lot of it boils down to social interactions...as in getting your customers to PERCEIVE you as valuable. Disruptive technologies take a lot of creative energy and often multiple stroke of geniuses. It's not true that you can stare at a problem for a long time and the proper solution will appear.

Let's talk business first. There are so many ways to spend time doing the wrong things. you could spend time analyzing the market, your prices, your costs, your supplies etc....Maybe you look at something with the wrong framework, or simply haven't had the experience yet. Maybe you spend time analyzing the market and think you can raise prices. Only to find that after increasing it, sales tank and you never recover. Or you decide that you need to do a renovation for your store when it's not that bad. What I see happen a lot in small business is...people feel like they need to do something. There are situations where the best thing to do is NOTHING. Knowing when to do something and how to do it right can be VERY challenging. There isn't a guidebook on how to do most things. What worked for one business might not work for yours. You know...the vast majority of small businesses fail within the first couple years. This means the people who started these businesses lost all their money and might even have personal debt. They would have been better off working at Tim Hortons. And when you fail a business, it's not as easy as saying "try again". If you had to take out a loan for example, many banks will ask for personal guarantee. And obviously if you lost your life savings you will need a lot of time to rebuild your finances and likely need to work a regular job to get by before you can even try again.

Similar things apply in your career. Maybe you work hard and someone else takes your credit. Or maybe you are just working hard for all the wrong reasons. As an accountant, I can't emphasize enough how important it is to be good at Excel. It's a huge time saver. I've seen "older" accountants struggle to keep up with increasingly data centric and automation driven reporting styles. I've witnessed some people wasting a lot of time manually creating reports in Excel when they can simplify the work with better worksheet setup or by using modern tools like Power BI. WORK SMART! But there's no textbook to tell you what "work smart" means. Often it's not clear until you do it and learn from failures.

I'd say...measure twice. Cut once. When it comes to challenging problems like starting a business, I suggest you spend 80% of your time THINKING through the problem first and only 20% of the time to find ways to test it. Because testing has a cost and not everyone can afford to "test" with their life savings. I once met someone who said you can't know everything in the future. You can't possibly plan everything. True. But you SHOULD plan for what you can reasonably expect. Take baby steps first.

Going back to the original question from OP...if you spend 55 hours doing things in the right way and doing what you love, it may not necessarily increase stress. If you spend 55 hours a week planning a big project, only to see it fail spectacularly and after a ton of money goes down the drain, then yes that would certainly shorten your life.

Worriedone wrote: ↑ What if we changed this question to someone who works 60-70 hours a week for 7 months of the year and is off for 5 straight months? That's what I do. I don't think I'm stressed but I am definitely tired in those 7 months.

Work more hours, then get longer vacation.

I average 90 hours a week when I do work. Sometimes more sometimes less. Love the job and look forward to doing it everyday. But only thing that beats it is the 6+ months off vacation

DiamondDallasPage wrote: ↑ Many reports online have said that it’s a fact that people have a much increased chance of a stroke or heart attack when working 55 work weeks. Do you believe this is true? Is 55 hour weeks with no days off sustainable long term all year round for even the ultimate workaholic? What if it’s someone in say their 40s compared to someone in their 20’s? Is the older person worse off long term?

depends on the kind of work. I am a self employed bookkeeper and pretty much work all the time.
Basically sit on my butt. And 55 hours is normal if you are self employed.
If you are a construction worker it is a different story
Do I enjoy my life? no. Hopefully one day