"How Too Many Long Hours Can Be Bad for Your Career" - on CareerJournal.com

There's a great article today in CareerJournal on-line (written by a former investment banker no less) on how too many long hours can be bad for your career. He makes three very interesting points:

1. Working excessively can mask a weakness, keeping it from being fixed before serious damage is done.
2. Such a lifestyle is extremely difficult to sustain - add a major life event and that straw may break the proverbial camel's back.
3. Working long hours is not a sound career strategy - it does not serve as a differentiator as it's a strategy that can be easily copied.

When asking yourself whether you are working too many long hours, the author suggests you do three things:

1. Compare your hours to those of your peers.
2. Listen to how people define your strengths. Being told that your strongest quality is being "hardworking" is the equivalent to being damned with faint praise.
3. Consider how much harder you could be working if you really wanted to; if the answer is "not much," you're overdoing it.

For more detail, see the entire article (it's a quick and easy read) by clicking here or on the title of this post.