Before you start

This is a short book and you can read it in two or three sittings. It's about one habit. You work a good deal longer than you're contracted to, most days, and have done for years. Nobody ordered it. There was a busy period once, and the hours went up, and they never came back down. When you think about it at all, you think of it as commitment.

I'm going to argue three things. The first is that long hours are an understandable response to work that is never finished, in workplaces that notice who's still at their desk. The second is that the hours deliver much less than they seem to. Past a certain point, extra hours produce little extra work, and the best evidence I know of puts that point lower than most people would guess. The late hours also lower the quality of the early ones, and they carry costs to your health and your family that build up slowly. The third is practical. You choose a time to stop, you stop at it, and you find that the work is still there in the morning and gets done. Chapters 15 to 17 cover how, including what to do when the pressure comes from your employer and not from you.

Nothing in this book asks you to care less about your work or to do it less well. I'll argue that a fixed finish usually improves the work. And nothing here is against the occasional long day for a real deadline. The target is the permanent long week that nobody decided on.

Four cautions.

This book is written for people whose long hours are at least partly a habit. Many people work long hours because they must. They hold two jobs, or they're paid by the hour and the hours are what feed the family, or they're caring for someone as well as working. If that's you, the chapters on what long hours do to a person still apply, and I'm sorry that the chapters on choosing to stop may not. I don't want to lecture anyone about hours they can't afford to drop.

If you're exhausted most of the time, or you dread work, or you feel numb about things you used to care about, take that seriously. The NHS advice is to see a GP if you're struggling to cope with stress or if the things you're trying yourself aren't helping. If you need help urgently and it isn't an emergency, call 111. If you've had thoughts of harming yourself, call 999 or go to A&E.

If long hours are being demanded of you, the law gives you some protection. In the UK you can't be made to work more than 48 hours a week on average unless you've chosen to opt out, and you're entitled to 11 hours' rest between working days and a full day off each week, or two each fortnight. There are exceptions for some jobs. I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice. Acas and your union, if you have one, can advise you properly.

And if your work is a refuge from something painful at home, the hours may be doing a job for you that this book doesn't address. Chapter 17 says a little about that.

The notes at the back give my sources and their limits. Where I'm giving my own reasoning and not a finding, I'll say so.