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Working too much is bad for your health
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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Scientists from Australia have found out how many hours a week a person can work without harming their health.
Experts from the Australian National University conducted a long-term observation of 8,000 people with different workday and workweek schedules. They shared their findings with the periodical Social Science & Medicine.
Taking into account the results obtained, scientists recommended working no more than 39 hours a week to maintain health, which is almost equivalent to an eight-hour working day in a five-day working week.
If the work schedule is built differently and made longer, it will have a very negative impact on the human body - both physically and mentally. A busy work week exhausts a person, deprives him of the opportunity to eat well and devote time to his health.
This information should be useful not only for standard employees, but also for employers. After all, it is not in vain that in recent years a number of European countries have often practiced a flexible work schedule system.
Many employees are given the right to choose their own work schedule by management as an incentive. Scientists claim that this approach also helps improve labor productivity - several times over. All people are different - and if one finds it easier to work from morning until evening, another prefers to wake up at lunchtime, but works seven days a week. Given such differences, you can "agree" with employees and allow them to work when it is more convenient for them.
For example, in countries such as Sweden, Great Britain and Norway, flexible working hours are established by law. This is especially true for women – after all, in addition to their main job, they often have to do quite a lot of housework. And this also affects the state of the nervous system and the entire body as a whole.
A person overloaded with work can acquire various problems over time. First of all, these are diseases of the heart and blood vessels, peptic ulcer disease and chronic gastritis. In addition, such people suffer from a lack of immunity: they can get a common cold several times a year.
Physical and moral exhaustion also manifests itself in excessive irascibility, irritability, and anxiety. This situation can leave its mark on personal life: in families of workaholics, scandals, conflicts, and even divorces are not uncommon.
It's a different matter if an employee works a lot because he likes it. A person who is in love with his job initially enjoys it - and in such a situation, the recommendation voiced by scientists on the work limit is not taken into account.
Psychologists support scientists in this matter. Since the time spent by a person on performing work prevails over the period of rest, sooner or later the occurrence of nervous and physical overload, sleep disorders is inevitable, which, in turn, leads to the development of diseases.
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