Workaholics take note

From Bloomberg:

People who added three or more hours to a seven-hour day had a 60 percent greater risk of heart attack, angina and death from cardiovascular disease than those with no overtime work, researchers from the U.K., Finland and France reported today in the European Heart Journal.

Note that the group studied were British civil servants. American workers put in 350 hours a year more than workers in Europe. From Tony Schwartz in the Huffington Post:

--The average American sleeps 6 ½ hours a night - and the costs include not just much higher rates of illness, but also significantly worse performance.

--A comprehensive study by Ernst & Young showed that the longer the vacation their employees took, the better they performed. Yet more than half of all Americans now fail to take all of their vacation days and 30 per cent of Americans use less than half their allotted vacation time.

--Working more than 50 hours a week has been correlated in a raft of studies with less sleep, less physical activity, higher job dissatisfaction and ultimately worse performance.

--In our own work in companies, we've consistently observed that the longer and more continuously people work, the less marginal return they get from each additional hour - and the more alienated and disengaged they become.