Question: I seem to be working longer and longer hours and it's beginning to adversely affect my health and family life. What can I do about it?

Answer: There are two reasons why your work may be spilling over into your private life: first, you're not good at managing your time; and secondly, there's a culture of long hours in your workplace, which inhibits you from leaving at a reasonable time each day. If it's the first, there are a range of things you can do to achieve your work objectives and then be able to have an outside life.

Know your priorities

Prioritise your workload each day and do the most important things first and the least important next and so on. You have to understand that your in-tray will never be empty, but if you deal with what needs your attention now, you will leave with other things to do tomorrow, but with less concern and worry.

Exit on time

Create clear-cut exit times from work for at least two or three days a week: for example, on Tuesdays and Thursdays agree to leave at 5:30pm sharp and manage your work to that specific deadline. You can re-enforce this by making arrangements with a friend or your partner to meet for dinner or at the gym at say 6pm, which forces you to get everything important done by that exit time.

Manage technology

Many people are highjacked by e-mails, phone calls, texts and the panoply of new technologies that interrupt the completion of tasks. If this is happening to you, don't access your e-mails every time you hear a ping or answer your phone every time it rings. Divert the technology so that you can complete the important pieces of work you have to do to ensure that you leave at a reasonable time. You may receive important e-mails and calls during the day so, from time to time, but sparingly, access your messages, but don't deal with them there and then unless they are more important than what you are crrently doing.

Beware toxic colleagues

Avoid “problem colleagues” who stop you doing your job and having a life outside of work by whinging and complaining, diverting you from getting things done. As Mark Twain once wrote: “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambition. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can somehow become great.”

As far as the long hours culture in your organisation is concerned, the only thing you can do is try to negotiate a flexible working arrangement agreement. Given that many businesses are service or knowledge-based and given the availability of new technology, many workplaces understand and support the notion of flexible working arrangements. The evidence is that people who are permitted to work flexibly are more satisfied at work, more productive and get a better balance than those who would like to but are not given the opportunity. In the end, life is not only about making a contribution at work but also about living. Or, as Woody Allen so aptly put it: “I don't want to achieve immortality through my work - I want to achieve it by not dying.”

- Cary L. Cooper is Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health at Lancaster University Management School.

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