Chained To the Desk? Get A Life

  PM Network  

Does daring to have a personal life mean committing career suicide? It's the age-old question, but its' taking on a whole new level in today's "stop-your-whining, we-need-it-done-now" project world.

These days, it’s not so much about getting ahead. It’s about avoiding the ax. The overriding philosophy seems to be that if you aren’t willing to put in the hours, the company is more than happy to find someone who will.

Between the late nights and weekend hours, it seems like the cycle never ends.

“My research shows that projectbased employees move from project to project, often without respite,” says Helen Lingard, PhD, professor of property construction and project management at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Melbourne, Australia.

Over the long haul, such a cycle “contributes to employee burnout, a chronic syndrome of emotional exhaustion, cynicism about work and a sense of diminished personal efficacy,” says Dr. Lingard, who coauthored Managing the Work-Life Balance in Construction [Taylor & Francis, 2009]. Burnout is also linked to poor physical health and substance and alcohol abuse, she adds.

It’s not healthy for project managers, their teams—or their projects.

“If you are working more than 60 hours a week, you are working for nothing,” …

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