Who Are You Working for You or For Your Job?

 The average person works 8 hours a day on their job. The average manager works 10 hours a day. More than 31% of college-educated male workers are regularly logging 50 or more hours a week at work, up from 22% in 1980. 40% of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep on weekdays, reports the National Sleep Foundation, up from 31% in 2001. About 60% of us are sometimes or often rushed at mealtime, and one-third wolf down lunch at our desks, according to a survey by the American Dietetic Assn. To avoid wasting time, we're talking on our cell phones while rushing to work, answering e-mails during conference calls, waking up at 4 a.m. to call Europe, and generally multitasking our brains out.

This epidemic of working long hours at the job and in the office whether it is physically or remotely defies historical precedent and common sense. Over the past 25 years, the Information Revolution has boosted productivity by almost 70%. People, you would think that since we are producing more in fewer hours, such gains would translate into a decrease in the workweek as they have in the past. Instead of technology being a time-saver, says Warren Bennis, a University of Southern California professor and author of such management classics as On Becoming a Leader, "everybody that I know is working harder and longer."

Now with all this said how many hours have you worked on your business? What is your business? You are your business; we all need to work hard for our employers, but we need to work harder on ourselves and for ourselves. The problem for most of us is that we are sometimes busy minding everyone else business far more then we are minding our own business.

The average American works more hours than the average Europeans and Japanese. Our quality of life is going down not up. I do not think that living longer to work harder is what we really want out of life.