"It shows I'm committed"

Helen said, "You're always here. I don't know how you do it." It was meant kindly, and you took it as recognition. In your mind the hours are the proof of how much you care, and Tom's quarter past five is proof of something less.

Look at what Helen was praising. She didn't say your plans were excellent or that your team was well run, though both may be true. She remarked on your presence, because presence is what she can see from her office. If she were asked to list your achievements for the year, "was here a lot" wouldn't be one of them. When it comes to decisions that matter to you, such as promotion, pay or who leads the new project, what counts is what you delivered and how people find working with you. Long hours contribute to those only through what they produce, and chapters 3 and 4 suggest that the late ones don't produce much.

There's a striking piece of research on how well organisations can tell real hours from apparent ones. Erin Reid, then at Boston University, studied a demanding consulting firm, where the culture expected total devotion and very long weeks. She interviewed more than a hundred people there, and also looked at performance reviews. She found that some consultants had quietly arranged their work so that they put in far fewer hours than the culture demanded, while letting it be assumed that they were as devoted as everyone else. They kept local clients, avoided travel, and didn't announce it when they left early. Those people were rated as highly as the colleagues who really did work the punishing hours. Consultants who openly asked for lighter schedules were marked down. I'm giving you the result from memory of the paper and its write-ups, and the published summary confirms only the outline.

I take two things from that. The first is that the firm couldn't tell the difference between eighty hours and fifty when the work was good. The extra thirty hours weren't showing up in anything the firm could measure. The second is less comfortable. The penalty fell on people who challenged the commitment story out loud, and not on those who quietly worked less. I don't recommend deceit, and chapter 16 suggests being open with your manager. But the study does show that the commitment story is about appearances, and that good work done in fewer hours is just as good.

Then there's what the psychology of overwork has found about the people who do it. Malissa Clark and colleagues pooled the research on workaholism, by which they meant feeling driven to work excessively. If long hours came from conscientiousness, you'd expect people with this drive to score highly on it. They didn't. Workaholism was unrelated to conscientiousness. It was related to perfectionism, and to burnout, job stress, conflict between work and home, and poorer physical and mental health.

So the equation in your head, in which hours equal commitment and commitment equals merit, doesn't hold. Tom may be exactly as committed as you are. His commitment shows in work that's good and on time. He's also arranged things so that he can do this job for another twenty years, and you could count that as commitment too.

I should give the other side, because it's real. Some workplaces do reward presence, crudely and directly. In some firms, the person who leaves at half past five is passed over, whatever they deliver. If yours is one of those, you have a harder problem than a habit, and chapter 17 addresses it. But check that it's true before you assume it. Many people who believe their workplace demands long hours have never tested the belief. Look for the Toms in your organisation and see how they're doing.