Making a Fetish of Overwork Bodes III forProductivity      (适得其反的加班文化)

Although to my knowledge no other nationthan Japan has a word for death by overwork-karoshi we prohably need one. Forwhile it is tempting to imagine the phenomenon is unique to Japan, it may simplybe that it is the first country to look deeply enough to identify it.

Coined in the 1970s, the word returned toJapanese newspapers last month when the Tokyo Labour bureau ruled that thesuicide of Matsuri Takahashi, a young employee of the advertising agencyDentsu, had been caused by overwork. She had worked 105 hours of overtime in asingle month.

Most of the chief executives I know routinelywork a 12 or 15-hour seven days a week. Few of them are familiar with studiesthat routinely show that productivity is not linear. After about 40 hours aweek fatigue sets in ,provoking mistakes. Any extra hours spent are needed toclear up the mess: reversing poor decisions, soothing ruffled feathers.

The classic, but comic, expression of thiswas produced by the efficiency expert, Frank Gilbreth. He found be could shavefaster if he used two razors but then wasted all the time he saved covering thecuts with plasters.

While a few chief executives love to boastof their powers of endurance, many insist their jobs simply require long days,weeks and months. But the speed with which the death, in 2003, of a Bank ofAmerica intern working in the City of London was interpreted as death byoverwork showed how fully everyone knew that the economic crisis and relativescarcity of good jobs was taking its toll on those at the bottom of the heap.

This mirrors what Professor Michael Marmot,the British epidemiologist, discovered when he conducted a longitudinal studyof 10,000 Whitehall civil servants: that stress tended to concentrate at thetop and the bottom of the pyramid. But when Marianna Virtanen continued thestudy to look at the long-term consequences of that stress, she found working11 or more hours a day doubled the risk of a “major depressive episode”. A lifetimeof long hours was also associated with cognitive loss in middle years.

All of this damage is invisible. If some ofthe wear and tear resulted in visible injury – perhaps companies would takemore care. Thinking is a physical activity, performed by the brain-which, likeevery organ, has limits to its capacity. We can see machinery break down, wenotice broken arms and legs. We do not see broken minds – until it is too late.

词汇总结

Razor     n.刀片；剃刀

He found he could shave faster if he used tworazors but then wasted all the time he saved covering the cuts with plasters.

Major depressive episode      重度抑郁期

She found working 11 or more hours a day doubledthe risk of a “major depressive episode”.

Interpret     v.理解；说明；口译

But the speed with which the death, in2013, of a Bank of America intern working in the City of London was interpretedas death by overwork showed how fully everyone knew that the economic crisisand relative scarcity of good jobs was taking its toll on those at the bottomof the heap.