Summary of BBC article
Response to BBC article
Overwork is one of the problems that affect people’s lives these days. It is defined as working more than 54 hours per week. The research shows that the number of overwork deaths has reached three-quarters of a million. It is caused by ischaemic heart disease,which is recognized as coronary heart disease involves narrowed arteries. Most people will not notice the problem until they suffer from the diseases. I believe that work is one part of our life. People should balance their time of working and living. I believe that the overwork issue could be solved by cooperating on many levels. I will discuss the cause, effect and possible solution of overwork.Overwork causes different results and also affects different groups of people. The place and cultural working are important to understand. For instance, people in Southeast Asia have workers who work long hours. The major populations are in the low-middle income who need to work many hours and multiple jobs to cover their expenses. On the other hand, people in Europe seem to be the workers with the shortest hours. It is the impact of attitudes and the laws of lengthy holidays and rest periods. Although there is a law of working hours in Thailand, which is 48 hours per week, people still overwork. They believed that overwork could increase the work quality. It also shows that they are delicate and hardworking people.. Also the cost of living in Thailand is expensive compared to salary. People have to work long hours and several jobs to cover it.
The main effect of overwork is clearly on mental and physical wellbeing. First of all, working for long hours can cause chronic stress. People who work for long hours regularly face pressure and stress. It leads to chronic stress and a range of health problems, including diabetes and heart disease. Next, overwork also changes the behaviour. It is important to maintain a good quality of life by eating healthy food such as good protein and vegetables, exercising, and having sufficient rest. Overwork will reduce all activities because of the lack of time. People tend to sleep less and eat unhealthy food. It also leads to health issues as well. For example, overworked people have little time to sleep and exercise then they would risk heart disease. I used to work late at night and eat frozen food from convenience stores. That also affects my sleeping routine that I have insufficient time to sleep. It also leads to health issues as well. For example, overworked people have little time to sleep and exercise then they would risk heart disease.
In my opinion, overwork is a large scale problem that needs several levels for a solution. The important key is work-life balance. It is a balanced schedule between work and life. As individuals, workers need to change their attitude of working. People do not need to work long hours followed the traditional culture. People need to work smart and manage their work-life balance. There are many possible ways such as set work goal to finish each day and separate work from private life. Companies are also an important key aspect. The culture of working should consider flexible time and sharing work tasks with a team. Government should take responsibility for this issue. Some countries have limits on working hours by the laws. Government could provide infrastructure to support all people such as healthcare, education fees and pension. People would not need to work long hours and multiple jobs to cover their expenses.
Question for readers
Reference
Ro ,C. (2021, May 22). How overwork is literally killing us. BBC https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210518-how-overwork-is-literally-killing-us
Even as I read PUeng's first sentence, " Overwork is one of the problems that affect people’s lives these days," I was wondering whether I agreed with the assumption that it seems to imply, that it's something that applies only or mainly to "these days" and was not a problem in the past. I think it's common to think things were better in some mythical "good old days", often when we, or our parents, were young; but I think that's wrong.
ReplyDeleteIf we look back only a few decades, perhaps to the 1980s, there might be more overwork today than then. But if we look back a century or more, I'm pretty sure that most people worked much longer hours and much harder than they do today. I grew up on a farm, and even though my parents had a lot of equipment, it was still hard work for long hours: ploughing fields, caring for cattle, milking, harvesting sugar cane, and so on, were all very labour intensive. Today, those things are all done much more easily. One of my brothers can now single-handedly farm twice as much land as my father did could manage only by employing gangs of labourors at different seasons. ANd the work was very hard. ANd if we go back 100 or more years, the statistics show very clearly that most people lived short, hard lives. The average life expectancy was only about 40 years. And as the novels of people like Charles Dickens, record, life in places like London and other large cities of the time was horrible: garbage covered streets, people crammed together in poverty, crime and so on rampant. I'm sure that things are much, much better today than they were 40 years ago, or 100 years ago, or 1,000 years ago.
But perhaps 15,000 thousand years ago life was better for most of the humans then around — albeit a rather small number, perhaps a couple of million on the entire planet Earth.
I think that problem is the controversial topic. In the past, people may need to work hard because that jobs require labour force.It also lack of equipments.In these days, people should work shorter hours than the past. Technology and knowledge take an important part of reducing working time. I think people will more concern about work-life balance in the future. I believe that good life can create productive work. It is far more important than overworking.
DeleteI think culture also influences the way people work. Asian people have unique cultures which might not suitable for the present time. For example, some companies do not allow the young workers to go home earlier than the older workers. Some interns also have to other services such as photocopying or serving drinks. I am not offend with these activities, but I view that they are not mandatory. I completely agree with Pueng that the main point of this problem is work-life balance. We all have different scales and we just have to find the equilibrium including the right workplace, colleagues, good amount of welfare and salary. External factors like the company and the government are responsible to this problem as well as ourselves. We should know our limits and balance our lives because we know ourselves the best.
ReplyDeleteAs Aom and Pueng mention about overworking and the solution, I agree that work-life balance is very significant for all workers in this era. Hard-working will grant a reward in the end, but it should not critically affect our health and personal time. Some poor culture in workplaces must be ended.
DeleteUnfortunately, due to the current pandemic, these sick cultures seem to worsen. As workers have to work from home, it should be helpful for them to manage working time flexibly — no need to wake up early and spend a long time on the road. However, working from home may not be suitable with the work-life balance as much as expected. One of my friends said he could not separately manage between his own life and his work. His company called him frequently to assign works, leading him to spend more time on his project than when he stayed in his office. In the end, my friend's overwork will be continuing. It is sad to say that this overwork culture can not change quickly in a short period.
I am currently facing the same problem. There is no clear working hours. I often get a called at 7 p.m. to edit the presentation. I think it is ambiguous to say to the boss that we want to reject the work because due to the pandemic we all have to work from home and our ways of working are forced to change. We can get up later be do not need to spend time for transportation. We can eat during the meeting as we can mute the microphone and turn off the camera. We all have to slowly adjust to this new normal.
DeleteI agree with Yo and Aom that work from home is good for some reason such as reducing time on transportation. However, it may interrupt private time. Some people may work overtime because work time blends in our private life.
DeleteI also experience like Aom that people called me before and after working time generally. I am hesitated to reject that but sometime I did not answer that. It is challenge me to deal with this situation. Also I need to set my work schedule in the morning because I can priorities work and complete in that day.
I enjoyed the varying experiences and perspectives that the contributors have shared. Reading them, I was reminded of some of the novels of John Grisham. He writes legal thrillers, which might sound boring but are anything but. In his novels, he regularly depicts the horrific hours that are worked by legal professionals to get ahead and stay on top in their profession.
DeleteAfter I read this, I think I don’t really like overworking. I really agree with Pueng that you say about the cost of living in Thailand compared with salary. For me, it’s not suitable for our cost of living and minimum rate salary. So, that makes people overwork, stress and having health problems. I think the company should know about the problem of overwork that it’s not good for your employee’s health and can affect the quality of your work too. It will be good if the company doesn't think that the one who works overtime is good for the company. I think employees should finish their work in your normal working hour except one that’s essential and due to date now. For me, overtime doesn’t mean good for the company, it means their employee can not deal with their job or the company gives a lot of work and that makes the quality of work is low. I hope one day this problem will be less.
ReplyDeleteTo be more specific, I agree with the information that Pueng points out that "working more than 54 hours per week", from Ro (2021, May 22), is considered as overwork. This also corresponds to the article "Long working hours killing 745,000 people a year, study finds" (2021, May 17). According to the research from WHO by working 55 hours or more in a week can increase the risk of stroke and heart disease which can lead to death. These statistics are alarming. We all should take care of our health and seek for work-life balance.
ReplyDeleteI think this article is useful for everyone. Nowadays, workers work many jobs in one day because they want to earn a large salary for supporting their family or themselves. I think same as Pueng that overworking is a big problem in many countries especially many countries in Asia. For example, Japan has rules for working around 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week. Many reserchers said that work life balance is very improtant for everyone because people should spend time with their family or do something that they love.
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