It's Friday. You're closing the laptop, but you can't say how many hours you worked. The calendar says 40. The late emails, calls and "quick" Sunday fix aren't on it.
"I feel overworked" is worth listening to.
Short answer: there isn't one hour count that diagnoses overwork. Start by logging actual work for two weeks, including calls and after-hours tasks, then compare your weekly total with the evidence: 49–54 hours has uncertain or limited findings, while the WHO/ILO reviews found an association between 55 or more hours a week and increased risks of ischemic heart disease and stroke. If your total is high or keeps rising, ask your manager which recurring task or deadline should move.
How many hours do you actually work?
Use a two-week log that counts work, not time away from home. Record each work session's start and stop, then add work calls, meeting time and after-hours messages that you handled away from your desk.
For each day, note the work blocks and subtract lunch, personal errands and other time you weren't working. Don't count your commute as work unless you worked during it. Sum the seven daily totals for the week; repeat for week two and divide the 14-day total by two.
Paper, a spreadsheet or your calendar is enough. Add a row whenever you stop and start again. For example, five 8-hour days plus 30 minutes of email each evening is 42.5 work hours. A one-hour commute each way adds ten hours away from home, but not ten work hours.
A 60 hour work week can hide in different schedules: 12 hours a day for five days, or 10 hours a day for six. The shape matters for planning; the weekly total is what you compare with the research.
If you already track time on your Mac, I make Timex. Its multi-day view shows weekly screen hours and turns amber from 50 hours; under the range total, a line compares it with the same span before it.
Treat that as a prompt to check your week, not as a work-hours total: it misses calls and meetings away from the Mac, misses phone work, and includes personal browsing. For a broader example of checking a log over time, see a 30-day audit of second-by-second time data.
Am I overworked? What 40, 50, 55 and 60-hour weeks mean
Is 50 hours a week too much? The studies compare groups of weekly hours; they don't define who is "overworked."
| Weekly hours | What the evidence says | What it does not say |
|---|---|---|
| 35–40 | The reference group used in the WHO/ILO joint estimates. For context, U.S. full-time workers who were at work averaged 41.9 hours a week in 2025, according to BLS (2026). | A reference group or average is not a guarantee that a particular schedule is safe or manageable. |
| 49–54 (including 50) | The heart-disease estimates were uncertain. The stroke review found a possible increase in stroke incidence (RR 1.13, 95% CI 1.00–1.28) and rated the evidence for harm "limited." | The results do not establish that a 50-hour work week causes disease or that everyone at this level will be harmed. |
| 55–59 | The WHO/ILO heart-disease and stroke reviews found an association at 55 or more hours a week with higher risk: ischemic heart disease mortality RR 1.17 (95% CI 1.05–1.31) and stroke incidence RR 1.35 (95% CI 1.13–1.61). | These are relative risks across study groups, not personal odds or percentage-point increases. The studies were observational, so residual confounding cannot be ruled out. |
| 60+ | This is still inside the studies' ≥55-hour category. | The pooled result does not give a separate estimate for 60-hour weeks. |
For the 49–54-hour band, the ischemic heart disease review found no clear increase in incidence (RR 1.05, 95% CI 0.94–1.17; low-quality evidence); its mortality estimate was also uncertain (Li et al. (2020)).
The stroke finding is different: the estimate was RR 1.13 from 17 studies and 275,181 participants, but the review rated the evidence for harm as limited (Descatha et al. (2020)). The WHO/ILO joint analysis by Pega et al. (2021) uses 55 hours as its long-hours category; 55 is a research threshold, not a definition of overworked.
For context on output, John Pencavel (2015) found that output among British munitions workers rose with hours but at a decreasing rate above a threshold. These were factory data from World War I, not a study of current office jobs. They support "more hours may add less output at the margin," not a universal productivity cutoff.
What should you change if you're working too much?
Use your two-week log to name one recurring block you can remove, shorten or hand off. If meetings account for much of it, count their weekly cost separately.
Take the total and the work with you to your manager. Try: "I logged 54.5 hours last week, including 3.5 after-hours. I can finish A and B by Friday, or add C. Which should move?" That gives your manager a choice about priority instead of asking you to fit three deadlines into the same hours.
If the log stays at 55 or more, bring that pattern forward rather than waiting for a perfect time record. If the total is lower but the workload still feels unmanageable, the count is still useful: it shows that the problem may be the load, interruptions or schedule, not just the total.
The honest caveats
Hour bands describe research populations, not individual capacity. The WHO/ILO risk estimates for long working hours combine observational studies; they show associations, and other researchers have disputed the strength of the ischemic-heart-disease conclusion. A week at or below 40 hours doesn't prove that your work is sustainable, and one 60-hour week doesn't predict what will happen to you.
Timex's screen hours are only one input. The free way to start is paper, a spreadsheet or your calendar; if you use Timex, fill in the off-screen work yourself. If you have symptoms or health concerns, talk with a clinician—the weekly total can't tell you what caused them.
If you want an automatic Mac-side record to compare against your own log, download Timex. The 100-hour trial is enough to see how much of your week happens on screen.
— DK