Why Hard Work Can Kill You

 

 

 

If hard work was such a wonderful thing, the rich would have kept it all to themselves.
- Lane Kirkland

The Work Ethic Is a Terrible Mistake - A Cute Term Gone Haywire

Personally, the only time I am a big fan of hard work is when someone else is doing it and I am paying for it. This is not to say that I won’t work hard at times, particularly on projects that excite me immensely, or ones that I must complete within a certain time frame. But for all intents and purposes, I find most hard work detrimental to my well-being.

Contrary to popular belief, the work ethic is a terrible mistake, a cute term gone haywire. It is promoted most vehemently either by employers who want to exploit pathetic workaholics or by pathetic workaholics themselves who are trying to justify why they work so many hours and have no real life.

Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don't happen to think it's an appropriate subject for an "ethic."
- Barbara Ehrenreich

As is to be expected, everything has a price attached to it. There is a price for not working hard enough; there can be an even larger price for working too hard. Corporations, however, would like you to believe that “hard work is good for you and it never harmed anyone.” There are reasons to believe otherwise, however.

Evidence That Hard Work Can Kill You

• According to a 2002 study in the British Medical Journal, employees with stressful jobs are twice as likely to die from heart disease as those who have jobs with little or no stress.
• Employees who work over forty-eight hours per week double their risk of heart disease, according to a 1996 UK government report.
• According to a 2003 American study, long-term job strain is worse for your heart than gaining forty pounds in weight or aging thirty years.
• Approximately two million workers die annually due to occupational injuries and illnesses, according to one United Nations report. This means that work kills more people than war (650,000 deaths per year).
• Twenty-Four France Telecom Workers Kill Themselves in 19 Months.

The core of the matter is that hard work can kill you. Another dark side of the work ethic is how many rainbow-chasers end up working hard all their lives, expecting success, but with nothing to show for it. The key to success, in fact, is to work on the few things that are truly important and make a difference in this world, and to disregard the rest.

If work is so terrific, how come they have to pay you to do it?
- George Carlin

The key is not to overdo things. Pablo Picasso was one of the most prolific and influential artists of the twentieth century. No doubt you will agree that Picasso, who excelled in painting, sculpture, etching, stage design, and ceramics, attained an impressive measure of career success without a real job. Yet Picasso, like me, did not believe in being an achiever at all costs.

“You must always work not just within but below your means,” claimed Pablo Picasso. “If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.”

Why do I work so hard? Because millions who collect welfare depend on me.
- Author Unknown

There is much more to say about why overwork can ruin you, but the topic in itself deserves another book. Come to think of it, I have already written two that cover the topic quite well. But, instead, let me recommend Richard Koch’s The 80/20 Principle (Doubleday, 1998), which will teach you the secrets to achieving much more impressive results with much less effort.

You'll never succeed in idealizing hard work. Before you can dig mother earth you've got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labour, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind.
- D. H. Lawrence

Suffice it to say that, regardless of your field of endeavor, creativity ultimately produces the biggest payoffs. Although both creative effort and hard work require action, the former is at the heart of real success without a real job. The latter has been known to lead to nervous twitching, heart attacks, and dubious results.

 
A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can't think of anything else to do.
- W. H. Auden 

More Quotes about Hard Work to Put the Protestant Work Ethic in Perspective

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.
- Bruce Lee

Know the moment when to work diligently.
Even more important, know the moment when not to work, but to relax and play instead.
This will not only benefit you immensely, but also will astonish your friends and competitors.
- from The Lazy Person's Guide to Success

Hard work is doing what you don’t want to do . . . The way to operate with integrity is to do what you want, to do what you enjoy.
- Phil Laut, Author/Financial Expert

Sometimes I get an irresistible urge to work hard like everyone else, but I just lie down until the feeling goes away, and then I'm okay.
- Cartoon caption in Career Success WITHOUT a Real Job

Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.
- Graffiti

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
- Robert Frost

He worked like hell in the country so he could live in the city, where he worked like hell so he could live in the country.
- Don Marquis

The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
- Bertrand Russell

Work is what they try to con you to do so that you will have the money to be able to buy what they try to con you to think you want.
- Unknown wise person

More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies.
- Rudyard Kipling

It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.
- William of Occam

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
- Bertrand Russell

Few people do business well who do nothing else.
- Lord Chesterfield

They intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are.
- Aldous Huxley

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy - and Jill a wealthy widow.
- Evan Esar

A considerable number of persons are able to protect themselves against the outbreak of serious neurotic phenomena only through intense work.
- Karl Abraham

Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.
- Oscar Wilde

The Protestant work ethic is so deeply engrained in everyone, of all religions and none, that we need to make a conscious effort to extirpate it . . . . Hard work leads to low returns. Insight and doing what we ourselves want lead to high returns.
- Richard Koch

You'll never succeed in idealizing hard work. Before you can dig mother earth you've got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labour, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind.
- D. H. Lawrence

COPYRIGHT © 2010 by Ernie J. Zelinski
 All Rights Reserved