Reason Why I Never Work Overtime
Never say never, I’d work overtime if no one else cover the shift, and I absolutely have to do it. While I was in graduate school, I had to do a full 40 hours work with on rotation. Then come home, work on projects. And have to pull 20-30 hours so I can support myself. Now, that’s easily taken up 60-80 hours. So, I’m not lazy. When I first graduated, I was excited to get some overtime (OT), my work pay 1.5x the hourly rate but after awhile, I realized it’s not all it seems.
- Unproductive hours – you’ll work on your tasks more efficiently if you not tired. Staying extra hours will drain me out as it’s the whole day of running around, or being around technologies, and noise around, interacting people in a responsive way is very draining.
- Increase Mistakes – Working overtime makes you tired. And when you’re tired, you are much more likely to make errors that you’ll spend the next morning fixing up.
- Getting Burnt Out – It’s not just being burnt for the day, days in and days out of OT can make you go crazy, and stop enjoying work.
- Work-Life Balance get affected – Your family and friends would like to have you around every now and then as well.
- You are not the only one who can do the work – Everybody is replaceable, the job can’t just be rely on me to stay OT, there are many other that can stay too.
- Putting pressure on others – If you work overtime, you put pressure on the rest of your team to do the same.
- Working overtime doesn’t really make you a hero – although your superiors like to make it look like that.
- **Spend more when you work more – This is the economic reason why I don’t work OT. When I work OT, most of the money will go to taxes, then I’m thinking, “I’m tired, I need to pamper myself, so I eat out (unhealthy food), then go shopping because I deserve it!” So, I ended up I never get to see the money, but my spending is out of control whenever I work OT, because I felt tired and dis-satisfied, cranky mood, hard to recover from it. I also see my co-worker want to work OT because they want the extra money to spend on so and so.
- Less time for personal care – If I work a double shift, from 7am-11pm. I don’t get home until 11:30pm. I won’t have time to cook, clean and 8 hours of sleep. So, the next day, I’ll have to order out. I can opt for the healthy salad, but when you stressed, you tend to go for greasy unhealthy food.
In conclusion, if I’d just manage to live within my means, why work extra to get extravaganza when I experience 7 over negative reasons above? To me it’s not worth the trouble.
I’ve come across a guy with a slow down mojo: I thought I’d share it. It is in line with the slow life I was living at the monastery. Why work OT to get rich, when:
“Slow but steady wins the race” – Aesop
“Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast” – W. Shakespeare
Slow down.
- Slow down to think about what you’re doing.
- Slow down to figure out if you are actually working on the right problem
- Slow down to analyze your working habits
- Slow down to relax
- Slow down to be more creative
- Slow down to make sure you don’t miss the important crossroads
- Slow down to read the signs
- Slow down to keep your employees happy
- Slow down to keep your employees
- Slow down to enjoy the small things in life
- Slow down to learn new things
- Slow down to keep your curiosity alive
- Slow down to get to keep your friends
- Slow down to get to know your children
- Slow down to see the beauty in life
- Slow down to get to know yourself
- Slow down to hear the music on the radio
- Slow down to make sure you are building the right product
- Just slow down. Your customer has time to wait.
Don’t forget that the more OT you work, the harder you get hit by taxes. : (
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That is true. I’ll get taxed at higher taxes bracket. At this point, I get tax at 28-33% on my work income. No Thanks on OT. I’ll rather spend my time working on passive income where I get taxed at 15%?!! :P
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