No One Wishes They Had Worked More

No One Wishes They Had Worked More

You gave the office your best hours to take care of them. It can fill your desk in six weeks. They can never fill your chair at the table.

It is almost midnight and I have been on a call for the past two hours discussing the progress of a project we have been working on for six months with little progress. Finally the call ends and I still need to send a few emails before I can call it a night. A little later I walk out of the office only to notice the house has gone quiet, and my wife has fallen asleep. There was nothing special about that day. A regular Tuesday working late to deal with routine project teams spanning a few continents.

This is what my life looked like for more than two decades. Long nights, working late at times and being proud of working late.

For most of my adult life, working hard has always been celebrated. I would see colleagues who have been working 80+ hours a week for many years and the consensus wisdom was that this is what is needed to increase your chance of success. In one job, I had to commute to a nearby city every week, waking up around 4am on Monday to catch the 6am flight, stay at Airbnbs and fly back Thursday evening. Every week for two years. The long commute, and showing up every day hundreds of miles away from home was a sign of commitment, and I was more than happy to oblige. It even gave me a sense of pride and purpose.

Twenty years in corporate America, and a few grey hairs to show for it, have made me wiser. Throughout my career, I have observed several market cycles. My grad school began during the dotcom bubble, my first job coincided with the financial crisis, and through all my years of living the corporate life, I have observed the same pattern repeat over and over again. No matter what corporate culture is advertised, employees are an expense line item, and that line can easily be deleted or replaced if financials dictate it. Workers aged 55 to 64 have been with the same employer a median of 9.6 years and when they leave, their job is filled in about 44 days. Nearly a decade of loyalty is backfilled in six weeks. In one case, a hardworking and highly respected colleague in his late 50s had a heart attack and passed away unexpectedly. The company management was very supportive, and even asked us to have a moment of silence for him. A week later, he was all but forgotten and his role filled. This incident stayed with me. Would the people who actually loved him and cared for him remember him for all the long hours he spent with corporate customers? Or would they remember the family events he skipped, the quality time with loved ones he never got to spend?

Working harder is not just about spending more time at work. My colleague's heart attack was not just bad luck. The World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization found that working 55 hours or more per week raises the risk of stroke by 35% and of dying from heart disease by 17%. In one year, they tied 745,000 deaths to long working hours. Many of those who died were in their 60s and 70s, paying for overworking their bodies in their 40s and 50s. The heart attack of early retirement is often a bill from the person's overworked decades, leaving no time for them to enjoy the nest egg they worked so hard to accumulate.

Working long hours and not taking time off always came at the expense of time with loved ones, not taking that trip you always dreamed about or cutting back on experiences. Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, recorded the intimate reflections of her patients in their final weeks. Every single male patient regretted spending so much of their life working and missing out on spending enough time with their children, their spouse, and people who mattered to them. Similar research showed 76% of people's biggest regret is something they did not do. No one reaches the end of life wishing they had spent more time at work.

Many people stay at their jobs far longer than they had to out of fear. After I started writing about wealth psychology, a colleague reached out to consult with me on whether he could finally stop working. Looking at his finances, his net worth was over $10 million, and he had just turned 60. Looking at how much money they spent, he could have stopped working several years ago comfortably, and yet I could not convince him he had enough. And this is not unique to him. Retirees who saved the most spend the least. Data shows that retirees who have saved more than $500K spend less than 12% of it in twenty years, and far more consider themselves "savers" than "spenders" even in retirement. Many die with more money than they retired on. You spend your best years sacrificing your health accumulating wealth, at the expense of quality time with your family, only not to spend it in retirement.

What my colleague needed was not more money. He needed permission, and perhaps that is why he reached out to me. He was an executive managing a big team, and smart enough to know he had enough money. What prevented him from making the leap was fear, instilled in him through several decades of saving. And no amount of money can make his fear disappear.

Consider this essay as your permission. Not to blow your savings on a yacht! Take the trip you have deferred for a decade. Spend time with people who matter to your life. The hours you still have left are finally yours. And unlike the money, or your corporate job, no human can take them from you.

Now that I have transitioned out of corporate life, I still have long days working on Arcanomy. But the work never comes at the expense of life. The goal was never to stop working. That was never the test. I now spend my best hours with people I love or on activities and experiences I enjoy. Now the light goes off while the house is still awake, and I walk out of the office to a day that had nothing special about it, which I have learned is what the good ones look like.

Sources

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employee Tenure Summary, January 2024: median tenure of 9.6 years for workers 55 to 64. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.nr0.htm
• SHRM, State of Recruiting 2025: average time-to-fill of about 44 days. https://www.shrm.org/executive-network/insights/people-strategy/state-of-recruiting-2025-insights-to-maximize-recruitment
• WHO/ILO joint estimates, 2021: working 55+ hours a week raises stroke risk 35 percent and heart disease death 17 percent; 745,000 deaths in one year tied to long hours. https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2021-long-working-hours-increasing-deaths-from-heart-disease-and-stroke-who-ilo
• Bronnie Ware, "Regrets of the Dying." https://bronnieware.com/regrets-of-the-dying/
• Davidai and Gilovich, Emotion (2018): 76 percent name inaction as their biggest regret. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180529153106.htm
• EBRI (Sudipto Banerjee), Asset Decumulation or Asset Preservation? What Guides Retirement Spending? (2018): retirees with $500,000 or more spent down 11.8 percent at the median within the first 20 years of retirement; about one-third of retirees grew their assets. https://www.ebri.org/content/asset-decumulation-or-asset-preservation-what-guides-retirement-spending
• EBRI, 2024 Spending in Retirement Survey: 38 percent of retirees report a savings mindset versus 11 percent a spending mindset. https://www.ebri.org/content/2024-spending-in-retirement-survey