In this episode of The Effective Statistician, I tackle a challenge that many of us face—working long hours and feeling stuck in an endless cycle of pressure and expectations.

I’ve spoken to countless professionals who struggle with ever-growing workloads, limited resources, and rigid workplace structures that make it difficult to work more efficiently. But the real issue isn’t just about managing tasks better—it’s about shifting the way we think about work.

Here, I break down the limiting beliefs that keep us trapped, like equating our value with how hard we work, mistaking busyness for productivity, and chasing perfection at the expense of progress. Join me as I share strategies to work smarter, achieve more, and create a healthier work-life balance.

Plus, I’ll tell you about an upcoming free webinar where I’ll dive even deeper into how you can become a more effective statistician while still enjoying life outside of work.

Key points

  • Key Points from the Episode:
  • Long Hours Trap
  • Workload Pressure
  • Belief Shifts
  • Limiting Beliefs:
    • “Hard Work = Value”
    • “Busyness = Productivity”
    • “Perfectionism”
    • “Delegation is Weakness”
  • Productivity Strategies:
    • Prioritization
    • Meetings
    • Communication
    • Automation & Templates
  • Career Impact
  • Health & Relationships
  • Upcoming Webinar

If you feel stuck working long hours, it’s time to break free from the beliefs holding you back. In this episode, I share practical strategies to help you work smarter, deliver better results, and build a healthier work-life balance. Don’t let overwork stall your career or drain your energy—listen now to The Effective Statistician and start making real changes today. If you find this episode valuable, share it with your friends and colleagues so they can benefit too. Together, we can create a more effective and balanced way to work!


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Transcript

Breaking Free from the Beliefs Keeping You Stuck in Long Hours

Alexander: [00:00:00] Welcome to a new episode of the effective statistician. Today I’m talking about breaking free from beliefs that keep you stuck in working long hours. And I know that many of you out there are working very long hours. Every day, every week. I talked to a lot of people across the industry and I have the feeling the pressure is ever increasing.

So there are some companies that have really great pipelines and they get bigger and bigger pipelines, but they don’t hire. additional people so much. So there is limited hiring while a hugely increased pipeline. And that, of course, means there’s a huge increase in [00:01:00] pressure to get all the things done.

At the same time, very often you don’t get additional freedom to do things differently so that you can work more effectively. No, the Standard operating procedures and the expectations of how you do your work is still the same. Also culturally, things don’t change overnight just because management wants it.

So you still have lots of meetings to align on stuff and to get everybody’s opinion. And there are still lots of things to do and to double check. And, yeah, all the little details actually do matter. And so people work longer and longer. And I’ve been there as well. I’ve been there and working very long hours.

At one company, we were actually tracking these hours and [00:02:00] it was not allowed to track more than 10 hours a day because it was seen as illegal or at least not compliant with workers law in Germany. So people were. Going to the checkout, checking out and then returning to the desk. And that is what I think is happening quite a lot, especially in these environments where you don’t actually record your hours.

Yeah, you don’t check in and check out when you work, but you just work. And I think also when you work at home, it’s very easy to. Work on the weekend, work in the evenings, and in the end you work much longer. Now I think this is a huge mistake, because the longer you work, the less is your [00:03:00] productivity per hour.

And that can even lead to less productivity overall. And of course that also leads to health. issues. I’ve recently talked to a friend who resigned from a company because in that company the pressure became so big that he developed a depression and he wasn’t able to work anymore. And so he just resigned and currently has no job because he’s still suffering from this depression and he doesn’t want to go back into an environment where there’s always this constant stream of new things coming up very high expectations. These long hours can also lead to strained relationships. Both within work and even more, of course, outside of work. Guess [00:04:00] what? We all have also personal lives. We have spouses, we have parents, we have kids, we have friends, who also want to have time with us.

And if you’re working like crazy, you don’t have time for these kind of things. And that actually does matter. You probably agree with this pretty straightforward statement. And then there’s one other thing that is actually probably most frightening. If you work very long hours, that can even stall your career.

Yes, it can hinder you from achieving your goals. Moving forward, because then you are seen as someone who can’t manage all the different things already in your position currently. What about the next level? Why should someone promote [00:05:00] you when you are not able to appropriately manage your time? in your current position, then you will for sure not be able to manage your time in the next level because there the pressure will be even bigger.

So I think one of the key problems is not of how you do work, it’s more about what you think about work. And there’s a couple of limiting beliefs that I hear or read through between the lines that are coming up again and again. And I want to speak about these beliefs. The first belief is my value is measured by how hard I work.

That’s bullshit. You are measured on what you delivered, not how long you work or how hard you work. Nobody cares about all the hours [00:06:00] that you put in. What people care about is what comes out at the other end. You are pair you are paid. Not by hour, although that may be in your contract, but really what you’re paid for is what you create, the values that you create.

Focus really on these high value tasks that most drive impact. Yes, apply the 80 20 rule, you know about that. But really do. And then it is also not just about the values that you create. It’s about the perceived values that you create. If you create lots of value and your upper management doesn’t know about it.

It actually doesn’t matter for your career, so you need to also communicate your results effectively so that you can demonstrate your [00:07:00] contributions. And yes, that also takes time. And yes, your work will not speak for itself. You need to do self promotion. And yes, I hear that quite a lot that, ah, I’ve never learned that, that is not culturally where I’m coming from.

If you don’t speak about yourself, nobody else will. And for sure, help your supervisor understand what you contributed in terms of value. Not in terms of hours. The next limiting belief that I hear is, if I’m not busy, I’m not productive. So that is this kind of badge of honor that you’re working long hours.

And that is not true. Again, bullshit. Productivity is about effectively taking you all your time, working on the right things in the right [00:08:00] way. So if you’re spending long hours in unnecessary meetings. Or you write very long email chains that go ping pong. You are actually wasting a lot of time and you are not really effective.

So unnecessary meetings will just stop attending. For many meetings, it’s maybe just sufficient to read the the minutes of the meeting, or maybe you can organize a meeting in such a way that you can just contribute for the first couple of minutes and then you leave the meeting or something like this.

Yeah, that you just attend for the specific agenda items that you need to attend. And of course, that means you have well run meetings, because otherwise you can’t come in at 10 past the hour to attend exactly that item that has last for 10 minutes and [00:09:00] then drop out again. Also, you need to focus on the high And these are very often also not the tasks that are urgent. If you think of the Eisenhower matrix of urgent versus importance, Yeah, so urgent, yes, no, versus important, yes, no, then you should actually be most of your time in the not urgent, but important bucket. And if you’re always in this urgent bucket, you will not really move forward. So don’t wear this badge of honor of being busy.

That is not good. Limiting belief number three. I need to be perfect in everything I do. Perfectionism leads to perfectionism. People [00:10:00] working on minor details for so long, things like whether the standard deviation is in parentheses in the demographics table or whether it is in the next line or the full size of the footnotes or, all these kinds of different things.

Again, you need to create value and you’re not creating value in doing everything perfect. Lots of things good is good enough. Of course you need to understand what is good enough and where is really perfection or close to perfection necessary. So only work on those things. really highly detailed where it actually matters.

Yeah. For tables where you just want to get some kind of ballpark [00:11:00] figure. Guess what? They don’t need to look super nice and whatsoever. Yeah. So certain things

just focus on good enough. And yes, perfectionism is really something that drains a lot of us. And some supervisors or companies have this, these kind of scary rules of no mistakes and whatsoever that just leads to burnout. Yeah. And it doesn’t really create good value. Another limiting belief, and that’s of course, Last one I will talk about today is, if I don’t do it, no one else will.

Actually delegation is your duty. It helps you from getting overwhelmed, overworked. And that’s it. If you don’t need to do everything you will surely not be promoted. Because if you [00:12:00] can’t delegate, then of course you will not get a promotion. Because only people that can delegate effectively will get to any kind of upper level.

Because one of the most important tasks at upper levels is delegating effectively. And if you think You need to do everything? Then stay where you are forever. And then you will work long hours and will not get any credit for it.

And of course, before you delegate anything. There’s two other filters. First, can you actually delete it? Not do it at all. And if you can’t delete it, can you somehow automate it? And automation doesn’t mean you need to have a fully automated, something that is semi automated or that way use a template, or how can you make the task as easy as possible?

These are just four limiting beliefs [00:13:00] that I think are around a lot. My value is measured by how hard I work, if I’m not busy, I’m not being productive, I need to be perfect in everything I do, if I don’t do it myself, no one else will. If you Think about these and you look yourself into the mirror and really be honest with yourself.

If one of these is true, then please shift your mindset. Measure your success by outcomes, not by hours. Prioritize making progress over making something that is perfect. And really use tools that help you to work effectively. with deep work like time blocking and things like this. And of course you need to push back on all these kind of different things.

Now in an [00:14:00] upcoming webinar on February 5th, I will talk about Couple of my key learnings that are also mentioned in my book, how to be an effective statistician that speaks to things you can do to work more effectively, not efficiently, effectively, while having a great work life balance. Like I always talk about in the intro.

I want you to also have a thriving life outside of work. And a live ad work that doesn’t feel like a constant sprint sprint. Yeah. So head over to my homepage or just look for the show notes here and sign up for the webinar on the 5th of February happening at 5 p. m. Eastern. CET, so in Central European Time that is [00:15:00] 11 a. m. at the East Coast in the U. S. And that’s a nice free webinar, of course, that you can dial into and become a more effective statistician and it’s free. So sharing is caring. Please tell other statisticians, data scientists, programmers about this as well. It will be applicable to all of you and I can ensure you it will be applicable to you no matter where you are in your career.

Early in your career, mid career, late career, I think you can benefit from the guidance I talk about there quite a lot. Enjoy the rest of your day and make sure that you keep healthy and see you on the 5th of February for this webinar.

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