Why do we buy into the 'cult' of overwork?
<i>&quot;The roots of this phenomenon can be traced back to the &#x27;Protestant work ethic&#x27; in the 16th Century - a worldview held by white Protestants in Europe that made hard work and the quest for profit seem virtuous. Sally Maitlis, professor of organisational behaviour and leadership at the University of Oxford, says that &quot;later, the drive for efficiency that arose out of the Industrial Revolution&quot;, as well as the way we prize productivity, have &quot;further embedded the value of consistent hard work, often at the cost of personal wellbeing&quot;.</i><p>The roots of the valorization of work may well have been religious, and maybe Christian (though I very much doubt it&#x27;s exclusively Christian in its origin), but it&#x27;s definitely spread throughout much of the world, even among the non-religious and even atheist population.<p>I can&#x27;t count the number of times I&#x27;ve heard people praise others as &quot;hard working&quot;... in all sorts of contexts, in many different parts of the world, native or immigrant, hard work is praised to the heavens and one of the best things you can say about a person is that they&#x27;re hard working.<p>I almost never hear the value of working hard being questioned, except when the subject turns to burnout.  Then everybody nods sagely and agrees that overwork is bad.. the next day they go back to praising hard workers.