Working More Hours Does Not Help

If you find yourself ever saying you need to work more than 8 hours in a day to get it all done on a continual basis, something is wrong. You are a human and only have so much capacity to get work done in a day. After 7-8 hours of sleep, you are able to effectively work 4 hours, then you need an actual break, and you have another good 2-4 hours before your effectiveness drops again.

Ensure the quality and quantity of your work by knowing your limits and respecting the work life balance.

Journal Your Efficiency

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If you feel yourself working longer hours on a consistent basis, try something for a couple of days. Take actual notes of these aspects of your day as it progresses. Document how you accomplished these tasks in the morning to at the end of the day.

Ability to remember next set of tasks and priority. When you start the day its best practice to review your current task list, planned items and backlog to remember how you got to the current set of tasks. As the day goes on are you easily able to keep these items in mind and remember to keep going back to them? Or do you get lost and confused, and just meander through the day, only remembering at the end of the day what you should have done?

Time to solve a problem brought up to you. Solving problems is usually pattern recognition. As you suffer from fatigue it may become harder to remember things throughout the day and this will slow down your ability to solve any issues coming up. With your mind fresh and rested it should become less work to solve any given issue. Take a 10 minute break, let your mind relax and come back to the issue, did this change your perspective on it?

Your ability to multitask. Depending on your job it may become interrupt driven, especially if you are in operations. Document how much time it takes to context switch between different tasks you are working on. If you feel like a morning or afternoon was wasted because of something you were pulled away on, try and remember your train of thought about why you had to remain focused on that task. It may have been because there was just not enough brain power to keep in mind the other things you were working on and their priority.

Accuracy of your work. Do you find yourself second guessing the work you have just completed. When moving onto the next task is your mind focused on the mistakes you just made with the email or report you sent out? If so you may need to complete a unit of work, not submit it, then come back and review later. With a fresh mind you may be more successful in completing the work right the first time.

Level of creativity when trying to work through an issue. Problem solving uses many areas of your brain, if you are exhausted you may not be able to effectively use all of its resources. If you often find yourself stuck on issues and running out of options and not knowing what to do next, this could be why. Work with teammate to discuss options if you are stuck. But also get a good nights sleep, then look at the same issue first thing in the morning and see what comes to mind, may be a significant difference on your perspective of the issue.

Consequences of Too Much

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After going through these items did you notice how your ability to be an effective worker decreases throughout the day? Also how contiguous blocks of work without break also impair? Its important to focus on yourself and your health. The better you take care of yourself, maintain a balance, and know your limits the more of an effective asset you are to the company.

If you are part of the operations of a company, it is paramount you are always doing your best while on the job as any kind of outages or downtime can be more quickly resolved when you are at your best. Imagine being impaired by too much work or being too tired, then needing to fix corrupt data. If you are not at your best and you do this work incorrectly it could cause quite a bit more work down the line to correct from this mistake.

Try Something New

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With these items journaled where is it that you felt as though you suffered the most throughout the day? What led up to issues with these points? Were you suffering from these in the morning or not until later in the afternoon?

Try changing your routine as you notice how these things change throughout the day. Make sure to have a restful and relaxing evening and get a full nights sleep. Also take a real lunch break where you get away from the desk, clear your mind, even take 10-20 minutes to close your eyes. How do those actions positively impact your ability to do these things?

Do not feel bad about taking time for yourself during the day. Set an example of health by letting others know you need a lunch break. Also the end of the day usually means the end, not time for extra catch up work into the evenings. Schedule notifications on your phone to stop at a certain time. Maintain that balance!