Extra Hours at Work: Good for Your Career or Bad for the Rest of Your Life?

If you think about it, forty hours a week is a lot of time to spend doing anything. But for those who work full-time, we give at least that much of our lives to our jobs. If you're one of the lucky ones, you spend that time doing something you enjoy or can at least tolerate. If you're in the "working for a paycheck and not much more" camp, though, the workweek seems even longer and your time off flies by much too fast.

As if that isn't enough, many of us are faced with employers, jobs and work-responsibilities that require even more. We come in early, stay late, or drag ourselves into the office on the weekends to plow through piles of tasks we can't get to in our standard workday. We do it more out of necessity than by choice, and often resent having even less time to live the rest of our lives.

If you can't remember the last time you left work on time or took a full weekend without even checking your office email account, you might need to sit back and reflect a bit. Life is too short to give it all to earning a paycheck. When you're mired in a stressful and demanding job, it can be easy to get so locked into your routine of drudgery that you don't even realize life is passing you by. Even if you don't feel angry, bitter, resentful or overscheduled now, you could get there eventually if you don't take stock of your situation.

Only you can decide how much is too much. Once you make that decision, you're also the one who will have to decide what to do about it. The following are some questions you can ask yourself about your employer, your job and your life to help determine whether the extra hours you put in are worth the sacrifice.

Am I putting in extra hours because of a special project, goal or event, or is working around the clock an ongoing thing?

Almost every job has certain time periods where employees are required to get more done than usual. Maybe your company hosts a huge annual conference or event. Maybe you're implementing a new system. Maybe the publication you work for falls under a tight deadline a few times a year. During such periods, employees can expect to go above and beyond the normal call of duty.