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'Flexible' Working Can Keep You Stressed Out For Longer, Lead to Illness (theguardian.com)
schwit1 sends news about the effects of flexible working schedules on the people who try them. Research has found that many employees fall into a "grazing" pattern for work — constantly being interrupted while working, and continuing to keep up with work emails when not — which results in having elevated stress levels for a longer period of time. This can make such workers more susceptible to illness, and it shows distinct biological consequences to having a poor work-life balance.
Flexible working policies can also raise the risk of poor working conditions, and create resentment among colleagues ... The findings are a blow to advocates of more sophisticated measures for enabling people to achieve a work-life balance in rich economies that tend to overwork some people while underutilising millions of others. With an estimated 10m working days lost to work-related stress in the UK last year, finding a good balance between the demands of home and the job now dominates concerns about the impact of work on health.
It usually means "I want to be lazy, not do any planning, not do my job and you'll be at my beck and call to iron out my blunders".
And yes, that's going to stress you into a burn-out.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I work flexible hours, and I'm the happiest and most stress-free I've ever been. Didn't realize it until lately when I started experiencing stress again in my personal life. What a change! Don't let work dictate when your working hours are if you can help it. And especially don't *be* flexible about when work can schedule your hours if you can't set your own. The not-knowing of next week's schedule is what will cause your a constant tremor of worry, but being able to say "Oh, something came up, boss, I'll finish Wednesday's hours on Saturday" is like removing the weight of the world.
You make a very good point. My current job vs my last job is a perfect comparison that makes your point (or a good complementary one). I was unemployed when I got my last job, so I took a wage below what I believed (and still believe) to be my value to the company because I did not have the resume to prove I could do what I said I could do. I worked my ass off to prove I was as good as I claimed expecting that I would get a commensurate raise. I discovered that the owners of that company had a philosophy of paying the least they could get away with (which came back to bite them later when they lost customers as a result and could no longer afford even my discounted rate).
I was once again unemployed when I got my current job. Once again I took below my value to the company to get the job. Once again I busted my ass to prove my ability. This company saw my value and gave me that raise. Not only that, they saw that I could be more valuable to the company in the future and based that raise on where they expected me to be in six months, not where I was at the time of the raise. I will continue to bust my ass for this company, while the last six months at my last company (after I realized that they were not going to pay me for the effort) I spent doing what they paid me for and no more.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I think the problem is that you care too much about the risk of interruption.
I think the problem is that you don't understand that some people's brains are not wired in such a way that they can shut that sort of thing off.
These are the same people who make sure your product actually *works*, instead of just building a prototype or saying "Oh well; we'll fix it in the next release". People who are detail oriented can't simply shut that crap off.