Very glad I work from home to manage my own time.

For some of my coworkers, their projects seem to be like gas — the projects expand to fill the time available. So they always look busy, and probably truly feel busy, even if they only have one little project to do. Those people are far, far less productive than me and the other “sprinter” in our department, but they still get paid more than we do (mostly, I think and hope, because of their seniority).

When I took my current job several years ago, I decided at the outset to manage expectations, and hide my “sprinting” capabiltiies. I still do far more than the other people, and have gotten several raises based on that; but I don’t push myself because it’s not rewarded and it only makes me bitter that other peopel are paid more for doing less while looking “busy.”

As others said, a job is a contract. I fulfill my side of the deal completely, but by tempering what I accomplish on the job, I keep a better attitude (also essential to doing one’s job well). And, I’m not all used up when I leave work; I still have something left to give family and community.

I disagree. While my career definitely isn’t the only thing that defines me, it is a very strong part of me. I suppose this line of thought depends on your profession.

I am a professional engineer, and I feel that this ties in closely with who I am. I’ve worked very hard to be in the position I am now, and so it doesn’t make sense to me to simply shrug off something that required so much effort and time on my part as having no definition on who I am.

Soemone working as a convenience store clerk would probably be less eager to make the corallary between their self and their career. And that’s why the movie Clerks exists.

That said, there is a difference when something, like a job, becomes part of who you are. Like J.D. and his blogging, I too run a small business from home. It is an extension of the creative “me” and being so, it compels me to go above and beyond at all times. It is a direct reflection of my heart and soul, and that image that I portray is worth more than any amount of money or “pats on the back”.

I’m in a similar situation as well and trying to get out – doing extra work simply means you’ve raised the expectations of how much work you will have to do.

with my method of working, at the end of 8 hours, i have accomplished a lot more than most people around me do in 10.

i am going to school now so i can be comfortable later. i’m doing the stress now so i know what it’s like and know to avoid it in the future.

my husband was the workaholic. he worked jobs that violated labor laws, did not pay overtime, required 30+ hours of work without a break, and stuck around until they tossed him out on the street. 15 hour days, 6 days a week were very common at his last job. they fired him a few days after he came back from his medical leave, because he was apparently completely useless to them if he needed to take time off. he was such an overachiever, his former colleagues would call him from work asking him how to do things, AFTER he was cut from the payroll. he told them to ask the boss, maybe he knows. i hope when he gets back into the workforce, he doesn’t get back into a similar situation. it’s not worth it to be treated that way.

This is a job for me because there is no challenge. I worked my butt off for 6 months straight and received a hearty ‘well done’, and that was it.

If you want a steady stream of income and no real challenge to work, work for the government. I will be an accomplished magician due to the time spent practicing magic at work. Yep, most of my time is doing something else. I still get the job done, and that is all they care about.

Anyway, my ratings got lower and lower beginning around year 11 when we got a micromanaging supervisor who apparently was afraid of me for my supposed knowledge of the job. So around year 16 I stopped working miracles, I stopped working unpaid overtime and extra hours and extra hard. Now I’m at the lowest rungs, and at year 19 I’m still being assigned impossible jobs, some of which I can’t accomplish…but you know what? Now I have a life, I’m still decently paid (even if not compared to coworkers who still work less than me), and the world has not come to an end. I no longer work miracles. My ratings are no worse than when I did work miracles. Good enough *is* good enough. I still sprint from time to time, I just don’t tell anyone

BTW, my job is a gov’t job, we’re paid on a scale, we get no bonuses, and any awards are subject to approval from our immediate supervisor (who denies all awards anyone recommends me for). Yes, it’s secure. But minimum is good enough. Maybe even less than minimum, as I know people who do that, but I’m not quite there yet.

I need a new job too, but as others have said too, I’m highly specialized and it’s not as easy as it should be, with a ridiculous mortgage and responsibilities and all. And though others will probably protest, I do think there is a taboo on being a working mother like Rachel or a woman over 40 that makes it that much harder to move on.

I just recently quit a job where I was doing what I considered to be the minimum (showing up a little early, taking the OT when it was necessary- they usually just scheduled me for the hours without asking anyway, doing everything I was supposed to be doing) but in reality compared to everyone I worked with, I was doing far more than that. Most people showed up anywhere from 5-30 minutes late (if they came in at all), did less than the minimum, and generally seemed to turn off their phones when it came time for OT. After finding out that I was working harder and getting paid less than people with less seniority and less experience who worked fewer hours and did less actual work than I did, well, I couldn’t stay.

I don’t think all work places are like that, however. I’ve worked places where I was rewarded for being on time and taking on little projects to help things run more smoothly. A job is a contract between people. You agree to do something and in exchange they pay you for your time/effort/work. If one side or the other breaks that contract, well, I see no reason to stay loyal either way. There are always more jobs. It’s one of the reasons I’m happy to live well below our means. It allows some freedom to choose what I do and who I work for so that my job doesn’t become my life. I think that is the first real step to being financially independent.

I’ve found that corporate environments are generally expecting marathon workers, not sprinters. They don’t know what to do with sharp ups and downs in productivity. What usually happens is that the peak production becomes the baseline, after which anything less looks like ‘slacking.’

Over the years I’ve gotten a little better at steady production, but mostly? I’ve just learned to camouflage my sprints. I have a job now where my boss doesn’t micromanage, and no one really knows that I may work like a mad girl one day and do what it would take anyone else three days to accomplish, and then coast through the next day to regroup. I have actually finished things and not passed them off immediately so as not to appear superhuman.

But like Brandon says above, once expectations are set (however unreasonable they may be) it’s nearly impossible to change them — which means you have to moderate your performance from day one to something that’s sustainable over the long run. This is hard, because excitement and enthusiasm for a new job often leads us to overwork ourselves right out of the gate.

This is the first corporate job I’ve ever had where I did a good job of moderating expectations up front. It’s also the job I’ve held the longest. Not a coincidence!

It was certainly that way for me as I burned out of a health care profession just a few years into it. Luckily I was able to change tracks quickly and move into a different field that much better suits my LIFE, but all too often I see other friends and co-workers headed down the same path.

Has anyone had much luck getting the job vs life sentiment across to someone they see headed down the wrong road?

So what’s a girl to do?

Given the current economic environment, and my expenses, I have to be practical for once in my life. I’m just going to suck it up…

I LOVE my industry and read about it constantly. In that way I am lucky. This is just a temporary blip – one I hope passes very soon. In the interim, my plan is to do enough to fulfill my responsibilities and nothing more and engage in extracurriculars that balance out the negativity at work.

My solution was to apply to another firm in the industry that seemed to me to be “the best”. I didn’t get hired when I applied but they actually tracked me down a year later and pursued me aggressively. I demanded much more money and had clearer boundaries about my personal life. When you value your own time that way, I think it sets a precedence. I still work hard but I put forth realistic time expectations and don’t do OT (too often). I learned to say no to unreasonable demands in an impartial way and have found that it actually helps me perform my job. I let go of the little things and truly focus on priorities now. I’m well respected and compensated for it. To summarize:
*Find an employer/firm that matches your values
*Find an employer/firm with the ability (revenue) to pay fairly for your work
*Expect and give respect. You must do both.
*Earn your keep by doing your job – don’t be a “yes man”. Sometimes NO is the right answer.

I have to agree with Racer X about knowing when it’s time to find another job, and with other commenters that Rachel may have arrived at that point. It’s not so easy to find comparable work, though, or at least a job that pays what you need to support your lifestyle. It took me four years to get out of teaching, by which time I had come to loathe, hate, and despise the very thought of college-level composition courses. And the job I have came to me by serendipity rather than through the ongoing, active search I had under way at the time–a friend clued me that it was about to come open.

Despite the grutching about the pay inequity and the (for me) startling realization that you don’t have to work until you drop to perform an honorable job at the office, I actually do like the job I have now. Highly recommended for anyone who’s unhappy at work: don’t wait! Start looking for a new job now!

When I first started at my current job, I volunteered for all kinds of extra projects, etc. to be considered a “team player”. I quickly burned out, because I was usually the only one doing the volunteering. While my efforts were appreciated by management, it made me resent my co-workers, and it certainly didn’t have an impact on my pay cheque.

These days, I volunteer when I think it’s my turn. That way I feel proud that I’ve done my share, but I refuse to carry more than my own weight.

But I’ll have to hang on for a little while! Thanks to JD, my husband and I are working the debt snowball and we figure we can get our debt squashed in about 2 years.

When that happens it will be time for a little sister/brother for our daughter, and I’ll stay home (mostly to save on the $1200 a month daycare for two kids would run!) and then once they are both going to school most of the day (probably 3 years) then I will go back to work part time.

Normally I would just go look for a job now, but I make a decent salary (even though my raises suck) and I have a highly specialized job that I have been doing for the last 8 years that makes it really hard to find another position. Back when I lived in South Dakota, there were about 12 people who had the same job as me in the state. In Florida there are more – but it’s one of those jobs that people usually never leave.

Actually after working in a high demand line of work for the last 8 years, I’m looking forward to some time off with my kids and then maybe doing something like working part time at a bookstore!

Anyway, I try to do a good job at my workplace, but I am not a “company man”. I do not stay late, and I do not check e-mail or otherwise communicate with the office unless I am on-call, and if I am on-call and the work takes more than about 10 minutes, I file overtime for it.

All of the examples in the article equate “hard work” with overtime. In that sense, I agree with everything the article says. I almost never find it worthwhile to work overtime.

But I do work hard. I take pride in my work, so when I’m at my job (career?), I do my best and go above and beyond quite a bit. Just because I’m “only” at work for 8 hours doesn’t mean that I’m not working hard.

Last year after I came back from having a baby (just regular maternity leave), I pretty much decided to do the same thing. Do my work, do a good job at it, and then go home to see my family. Work was a way to get money – and not much more than that.

BUT….

I just had my annual review (my baby is 15 months now) and somehow me doing my job turned into “you’ve turned into a slacker”.

Unfortunately, even when bosses dont reward/pay/even thank you for going above and beyond in your work – if you suddenly stop, well then, you are no longer living up to their expectations of YOU.

My lack of “drive” for the same position that I have made the scale raise for all the last few years when I was working my butt off, has now dropped BELOW SCALE because all of a sudden my boss thinks that somehow all that extra work I was doing somehow snuck into my job description (it didn’t).

If you do this – try to at least let your boss know in a casual conversation that you are trying to get home on time from now on to see your kids on time, etc. or I’m sad to say they will probably be more likely to get mad about you NOT doing all that extra work you used to do for free! (Although this may not work either because I told my boss, and he just had his first baby a month ago, is away from the office for family things constantly now, and STILL managed to fault me for the same thing.)

Groan….

I could kill myself working 12-hour days every day, but there really is very little payoff for doing so. There are times that I’ll put in an extra-long day or extra-hard effort, but not every task requires that level of sweat equity.

How can there possibly be times when “good enough” isn’t, well, good enough? If “good enough” isn’t ok then it must not have been good _enough_ and you’re perverting language by describing it as such.

As far as I’m concerned there’s not enough money in the world to justify spending more than 40 hours a week at a job, and that’s probably too much but it’s what society demands. I don’t care how much I love a job, it’s far more rewarding to spend time with _people_ I love.

I understand Melanie’s burnout.

My usual rule is: go above and beyond for patients but for others, not so much. It isn’t appreciated and it is just an exercise in being used (where I work).

And frankly, not that many people around me in my industry have the get up and go people sometimes need which is frustrating. Many things I do is because no one else will in any dept, so I do the work of three. Sometimes I wonder how joyful it would be to be surrounded with hardworking honest ppl like the professional staff that work around me, but not with me.

(I’m rehashing what Karl Katzke said above, but I already typed my reply before I read his comment. I completely agree with you Karl!)

I had a similar realization about how many hours I put into my job. Right out of college, I worked crazy hours for the first 6 months or so because I thought I had to “keep up” with everyone else. I was stressed out all the time, frustrated, and unhappy until I realized, like Funny, that I didn’t really need too work so hard. I decided to cut back, stopped working weekends, and keep my hours around 40-45 per week. What I noticed is that my quality of work actually increased, and I was much happier at work and home.

I don’t think doing “well enough” to get by is all that’s required in the working world; on the contrary, you are actually getting more done in less time by not burning out. By not giving up all your time to the job, you’re more focus, refreshed, and clear minded in those working hours. You are actually doing a better job, but it doesn’t seem that way because you aren’t working as hard.

Just my 2 cents.