BBC: It makes accidents more likely, boosts stress levels, and even causes physical pain. But the real problem is that many people just can’t afford not to do it.
According to latest International Labour Organization statistics, more than 400 million employed people worldwide work 49 or more hours per week, a sizeable proportion of the near 1.8 billion total employed people worldwide.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, even entrepreneur Elon Musk felt moved to describe his 47th birthday spent locked in his factory, pulling an all-nighter. “No friends, nothing,” he said. It might have been just another day in another 120-hour work week. “This has really come at the expense of seeing my kids. And seeing friends,” he added.
For some of his fans, this is just the price of being Silicon Valley’s current demi-god, the pioneer simultaneously pursuing the colonisation of Mars and creating an affordable and mass-produced electric car.It seems self-evident: an overworked person is tired; hence more likely to have an accident at work. But proving this is surprisingly difficult. It might be that riskier jobs also have more demanding hours, or simply that people who work more hours spend more time at risk, even if they don’t do overtime. But a study that analysed 13 years of job records in the US found that “working in jobs with overtime schedules was associated with a 61% higher injury hazard rate compared to jobs without overtime”.
This specific study stops short of saying that fatigue is the primary cause of this increased risk, but there is ample evidence to suggest this might be the case.For instance, if you woke at 8 a.m. and were still awake at 1 a.m. the next day (that is, if you had been up for 17 hours straight), your physical performance would likely be worse than if you had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05%.
This the level that an average 73 kg male would get if he had drunk two 355ml cans of beer. That’s right, you’re drunk on overtime.
If you remained awake until 5 a.m., the impairment would be similar to having 0.1% of blood alcohol – more than the 0.08% that is considered the legal driving limit in most countries of the world.
So, an all-nighter will make your physical performance (things like your reaction time or coordination) as impaired as if you were too drunk to drive. And if you can’t drive, will you be able to work safely and competently? Maybe typing on a computer is not very risky, but this is something definitely worth considering when doing manual or physical labour, or if your work demands attention to detail.
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