Quotes & Sayings About Long Hours At Work

At Netflix, we think you have to build a sense of responsibility where people care about the enterprise. Hard work, like long hours at the office, doesn't matter as much to us. We care about great work. — Reed Hastings

At any given moment, millions of systems are at work all around us. The blood pumping through our veins. The planets. The food chain. They're all super-specific systems linked to one another. Some of the systems occur organically as a greater part of the universe, like surprises and sunsets. But others are just made-up. Like, why is the school day eight hours long? And why is it that, even though I'm the smartest person in the world, I can't vote? The arbitrariness of it all is the thing that drives me nuts. — Gabby Rivera

I work really long hours and work a lot and have done press tours and junkets, but there is nothing like a presidential campaign that I have experienced before ... I think at one point we visited three different cities in one state in 12 hours. It's exhausting. — America Ferrera

The fact is that your productivity begins to decline after eight or nine hours of work. For this reason, working long hours into the night, although it is sometimes necessary, means that you are usually producing less and less in more and more time. The more tired you become, the worse the quality of your work will be and the more mistakes you will make. At a certain point, you can reach "the wall" and simply be unable to continue, like a battery that is run down. — Brian Tracy

The idea, of course, might be to let them know that writing needn't be hard work; the hard work is getting out of bed in the morning or at noon; the hard work is looking at people's faces in long supermarket lines; the hard work is working for somebody else who is making money using your life's hours and years. — Charles Bukowski

But I was too restless to watch long; I'm too Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours
that's another matter. — H.G.Wells

We all look for the crack of dawn that signals the passage of responsibility to a fresh crew. We all know the system sucks, that the long hours make for fuzzy thinking and that they generate pure blind hate at facing that next ridiculous admission. We all feel the frustration of doing too much for too few, and the insecurity of not knowing how much is too much or if it was really too little. We don't like admitting how little we know, and none of us wants to look like fools. We don't like criticism and yet we need it. We flog and flog, and rarely have the opportunity to see the veritable forest for the trees. We hate the patients for making more work for us. We especially hate the grossly self-destructive ones who don't deserve our sweat and society's money. — Mikkael A. Sekeres

If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unemployment
assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure. In America men often work long hours even when they are well off; such men, naturally, are indignant at the idea of leisure for wage-earners, except as the grim punishment of unemployment; in fact, they dislike leisure even for their sons. — Bertrand Russell

Exactly what she was doing - tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and wove crooked paths down her cheeks. How could she have been so insensitive to her own sister? Chapter 24 All week Cassie had worked feverishly to put Steve out of her mind, but it hadn't worked. She couldn't wait to see him, and a week had never dragged on for so long. Nothing felt the same without him at the construction site, running the project. Saturday morning, Cassie was up early. The Hoedown was being held in an airport hangar, and a lot of work had to be done in order to get the space ready. Several other volunteers arrived to work off their hours by putting up long folding tables and chairs, placing red-and-white checkered plastic tablecloths across the tables, and then setting the tables, lining each place setting up perfectly. To the front of the hangar was a mechanical bull quartered off with stacks of hay. In the middle of the room were tables displaying — Debbie Macomber

The prospect of a long day at the beach makes me panic. There is no harder work I can think of than taking myself off to somewhere pleasant, where I am forced to stay for hours and 'have fun'. — Phillip Lopate

I wouldn't say I'm the anchor, I'm the one person who sees everyone at work - I don't get to see a lot of people outside of work too much because I'm there all the time. Everyone asks me "how you doing, have you slept?" so I know I'm working long hours. — David Giuntoli

Suppose you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree.
"What are you doing?" you ask.
"Can't you see?" comes the impatient reply. "I'm sawing down this tree."
"You look exhausted!" you exclaim. "How long have you been at it?"
"Over five hours," he returns, "and I'm beat! This is hard work."
'Well, why don't you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw?" you inquire. "I'm sure it would go a lot faster."
"I don't have time to sharpen the saw," the man says emphatically. "I'm too busy sawing!" — Stephen Covey

Obviously, personal responsibility is important. But there's no evidence that people who are poor are less ambitious than anyone else. In fact, many work long hours at backbreaking jobs. — Robert Reich

My mother's advertising firm specialized in women's accessories. All day long, under the agitated and slightly vicious eye of Mathilde, she supervised photo shoots where crystal earrings glistened on drifts of fake holiday snow, and crocodile handbags-unattended, in the back seats of deserted limousines-glowed in coronas of celestial light. She was good at what she did; she preferred working behind the camera rather than in front of it; and I knew she got a kick out of seeing her work on subway posters and on billboards in Times Square. But despite the gloss and sparkle of the job (champagne breakfasts, gift bags from Bergdorf's) the hours were long and there was a hollowness at the heart of it that-I knew-made her sad. — Donna Tartt

Human beings don't work like this in China. Time goes slower there. Here we have to hurry, feed the hungry children before we're too old to work. I feel like a mother cat hunting for its kittens. She has to find them fast because in a few hours she will forget how to count or that she had any kittens at all. I can't sleep in this country because it doesn't shut down for the night. Factories, canneries, restaurants - always somebody somewhere working through the night. It never gets done all at once here. Time was different in China. One year lasted as long as my total time here; one evening so long, you could visit your women friends, drink tea, and play cards at each house, and it would still be twilight. It even got boring, nothing to do but fan ourselves. Here midnight comes and the floor's not swept, the ironing's not ready, the money's not made. I would be still young if we lived in China. (1983: 98) — Maxine Hong Kingston

Larry implored us to exert more control over our careers. He said McKinsey would never stop making demands on our time, so it was up to us to decide what we were willing to do. It was our responsibility to draw the line. We needed to determine how many hours we were willing to work in a day and how many nights we were willing to travel. If later on, the job did not work out, we would know that we had tried on our own terms. Counterintuitively, long-term success at work often depends on not trying to meet every demand placed on us. The best way to make room for both life and career is to make choices deliberately - to set limits and stick to them. — Sheryl Sandberg

You know, there has never been a 24-hour period in five years when I have not responded to e-mail at Facebook. I am not saying it's easy. I work long hours. — Sheryl Sandberg

I don't resent working long hours. I shouldn't- I'm the one who set up my life this way. I love to work. It's the thing that I get the most satisfaction out of-nd probably what I do best. Not that I don't enjoy days off. I love vacations and loafing around. But I think much of the world has the wrong idea of working. It's one of the good things in life. The feeling of accomplishment is more real and satisfying than finishing a good meal- or looking at one's accumulated wealth. — Jim Henson

An effective breakout block is at least three-hours long and spent on things other than work. It is time scheduled away from your business during normal business hours that you will use to refresh and reinvigorate your mind, so that when you return to work, you can engage with more focus and energy. — Brian P. Moran

At a conservative estimate, there are probably a million men and women in their twenties and thirties who would happily work long hours doing what most needs to be done, if they were paid something for it. — Philip Slater

There are lots of reasons for that gap between men's and women's wages but to me, the big one is the work-family issue. Trying to juggle children and a job is tough under any circumstances, but especially if you're shooting for the kind of career that involves long hours at work and being on call 24-7. — Gail Collins

All my cuts are always about three hours, at the start, mainly because any scene in the movie that's 90 seconds, I probably shot a five-minute version of. If you just extrapolate that through the whole movie, I have a very long version of every scene, usually because, if there's one funny joke, I'll shoot five because I don't know if the one I like is going to work. I'll get back-ups because my biggest fear is to be in previews, testing the movie, and a joke doesn't work, but I have no way to fix it because I have no other line. — Judd Apatow

Being privileged to work hard for long hours at something you think is worth doing is the best kind of play. — Robert A. Heinlein

We work long hours, but we are laughing most of the time, and that's where my other valuable lesson came from: to feel blessed and recognize that working with people you like will make you want to work more! Everyone wears many hats and we all like to do many different things at our company. We all dream stuff up, but more important, we find ways to make it a reality. — Drew Barrymore

So I started to relax and would work on my act eight hours a day, sitting at a desk writing at my grandmother's house, and I would put on Richard Pryor Live on Long Beach and would play it like a loop and think and write. — George Lopez

I won't miss having to stand for two hours at 4:30 a.m. and have freezing cold glue applied to my feet. I won't miss two-hour drives to work or long, long, long days sitting in my trailer waiting ... waiting ... waiting. I won't miss one day off a week. I won't miss glue in my ears. But I would do it all again tomorrow. — Dominic Monaghan

Above a certain level of income, the relative value of material consumption vis-a-vis leisure time is diminished, so earning a higher income at the cost of working longer hours may reduce the quality of your life. More importantly, the fact that the citizens of a country work longer than others in comparable countries does not necessarily mean that they like working longer hours. They may be compelled to work long hours, even if they actually want to take longer holidays. — Ha-Joon Chang

I don't remember what script it was, but at the Monday table read, the [opening] teaser didn't work.We went back and had to think of a new teaser, and [after] four hours, five hours, we weren't landing on anything.And it was probably Glen [Charles] who said, "What are we, cowards?" You had to do it, no matter how long it took. — David Lee

[Clayton] Christensen had seen dozens of companies falter by going for immediate payoffs rather than long-term growth, and he saw people do the same thing. In three hours at work, you could get something substantial accomplished, and if you failed to accomplish it you felt the pain right away. If you spent three hours at home with your family, it felt like you hadn't done a thing, and if you skipped it nothing happened. So you spent more and more time at the office, on high-margin, quick-yield tasks, and you even believed that you were staying away from home for the sake of your family. He had seen many people tell themselves that they could divide their lives into stages, spending the first part pushing forward their careers, and imagining that at some future point they would spend time with their families
only to find that by then their families were gone. — Larissa MacFarquhar

Clouds heap upon clouds and it darkens. Ah, love, why dost thou let me wait outside at the door all alone?
In the busy moments of the noontide work I am with the crowd, but on this dark lonely day it is only for thee that I hope.
If thou showest me not thy face, if thou leavest me wholly aside, I know not how I am to pass these long, rainy hours.
I keep gazing on the far-away gloom of the sky, and my heart wanders wailing with the restless wind. — Rabindranath Tagore

At the rate these illuminations appear, it will no doubt take me a long time to gather the material for even one single book. For my inspired double
this phantom builder of sentences who maliciously impedes my work to dictate his clever discoveries
always comes at those (infrequent) hours of his choosing, drafts (at best) three little pages, then goes away. — Marcel Benabou

Recently there's been a trend to apply the term "bullying" to any kind of conflict at work, for example overwork and long hours. Although some bullying behaviours may be present in these issues, in my view this dilutes and devalues the term "workplace bullying" which should be used only for the more serious cases of conflict involving a serial bully. If there isn't a serial bully involved, it's probably not bullying you're dealing with. — Tim Field

You know, sometimes if you work - if you do a lot of takes and you work long hours, for me, at least, there is a delirium that starts kicking in on the fifteenth hour, and that can help. Below the just thirteenth hour is where I have a concern, because everybody's so tired. — Zach Galifianakis

When I think about, say, 1995, or whever the last moment was before most of us were on the internet and had mobile phones, it seems like a hundred years ago ... Time passed in fairly large units, or at least not in milliseconds and constant updates. A few hours wasn't such a long time to go between moments of contact with your work, your people or your trivia. — Rebecca Solnit

July had come, and haying begun; the little gardens were doing finely and the long summer days were full of pleasant hours. The house stood open from morning till night, and the lads lived out of doors, except at school time. The lessons were short, and there were many holidays, for the Bhaers believed in cultivating healthy bodies by much exercise, and our short summers are best used in out-of-door work. Such a rosy, sunburnt, hearty set as the boys became; such appetites as they had; such sturdy arms and legs, as outgrew jackets and trousers; such laughing and racing all over the place; such antics in house and barn; such adventures in the tramps over hill and dale; and such satisfaction in the hearts of the worthy Bhaers, as they saw their flock prospering in mind and body, I cannot begin to describe. — Louisa May Alcott

There isn't a day I do not work at my job, or a waking moment when I do not think through a work-related problem. Even my critics cannot begrudge the long hours I put in. Our people deserve a government that works just as hard as they do. — Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

Indeed, in the midst of the devastation, most Londoners demonstrated a dogged determination to live as normal a life as possible: it was their way of thumbing their nose at Hitler. Each morning, millions of people left their shelters or basements and, despite the constant disruption of the train and Underground systems, went to work as usual, many hitchhiking or walking ten or more miles a day. Their commutes, which frequently involved long detours around collapsed buildings, impassable streets, and unexploded bombs, could take hours. Of the staff at Claridge's, Ben Robertson noted after a particularly violent raid: "Everyone was red-eyed and tired, but they were all there." The head waiter's house had been demolished during the night, but he had shown up, as had the woman who cleaned Robertson's room. "She was buried three hours in the basement of her house," another maid told Robertson. "Three hours! And she got to work this morning as usual." FOR — Lynne Olson

They don't make poles long enough for me want to touch Microsoft products, and I don't want any mass-marketed game-playing device or Windows appliance near my desk or on my network. This is my workbench, dammit, it's not a pretty box to impress people with graphics and sounds. When I work at this system up to 12 hours a day, I'm profoundly uninterested in what user interface a novice user would prefer. — Erik Naggum

Four hours of makeup, and then an hour to take it off. It's tiring. I go in, I get picked up at two-thirty in the morning, I get there at three. I wait four hours, go through it, ready to work at seven, work all day long for twelve hours, and get it taken off for an hours, go home and go to sleep, and do the same thing again. — Peter Sarsgaard