Break the Curse of Overtime Working. You Can Do It.

If you want to, then you can.

Have you ever heard of the “Anti-996” movement in China?

The post resonated with hundreds of thousands of people around the world in a few days, and became one of the hottest projects on GitHub, even though it’s not about programming or AI.

People do hate overtime working, but it has become a culture or a creed of companies that are ambitious about their future.

Can we break the curse and have a better work-life balance?

It seems very clear that people are working overtime because they can’t finish their work. But to be honest, that’s not the case all the time.

A friend of mine once worked for a startup tech company. He had good pay because the company had secured millions of dollars of investment. But he worked from 9 to 10 in most of his workdays.

I asked him whether he had so much work to do. He said:

He doesn’t have to work like this.

It’s interesting to me that it’s not productive in the morning for my friend and his colleagues. They open up documents, type a few words, and start to chat about the episodes they watched last night.

The work starts after lunch. Group meetings, presentations, interviews, many things. It seems normal.

But the creepy thing for me is that a lot of people are working overtime not because of the overwhelming workload, but because they consider it as a default. No one leaves at 5. And that’s is the coo culture of a raising tech company, which might be another Facebook or Airbnb.

The consequence of this thought is low productivity during the regular working hours, plus the procrastination.

As I understand, the startup company needs to work as hard as they can to fulfill their dream, as well as the investor’s expectation before they burn out all the money they get. So it seems reasonable to work day and night.

But it’s hardworking that makes a company successfully, not overtime working, right? You can’t pretend that you are busy to show the investors that you are a good company.

The correlation between success and overtime working seems not very solid.

It’s a misunderstood culture among lots of startup companies.

Here is another question. Does overtime working help you finish your work?

Yes and no.

If your work is something like assemble cellphones in a factory, it works. But if you are doing something more creative like writing a fiction book, it might not.

It’s said that the best creators in the world are the people that procrastinate most in the world. They need to think a lot and wait for the spark that lights their minds up.

In those tech companies, programmers, and project designers are the modern creators compare to writers, painters, and poets. It might not be helpful to sit in their chairs 12 hours a day and come up with the idea that could change the world.

Creators need breaks.

But even you are doing a less creative job like assembling cellphones, too much overtime working will put negative impacts on you, physically and psychologically.

The deep-rooted culture is unlikely to change very soon, but if you want to have a better work-life balance and try to break the curse of overtime working, you can simply start from yourself.

It’s not about fighting against the bureaucracy or even your boss; it’s only about changing yourself.

I hate overtime working much more after I became a father. I demand myself to spend more time with my family. But I still have a lot of work to do.

The only way to change is to be more efficient and work anytime you can, not work anytime you want.

Getting up early helps me a lot.

I stop messing around with my phone and the addiction to eliminate every red dot (you know what I mean.) It has saved me tons of time and made me focus on the most important thing that I have to do every day.

It’s beneficial to make a list of what you need to do the next day and prioritize them. Make the to-do list as your wallpaper or put it in a place that you can’t avoid to look at once you enter your office.

In brief, the core idea to avoid overtime working is to build up a faith that you don’t need to work overtime. Once you have that faith, you’ll find your way.

Working hard is appreciated. However, working smart is adored.

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