I once had a boss who had a rule I still abide by: no work on weekends.

Now, this shouldn’t be a revolutionary concept. If you’re paid for your time on a Monday-Friday basis, then of course your Saturdays and Sundays should be yours, to do with what you will.

But data from global HR and payroll provider ADP tells a different story. During the pandemic, they found 70% of Australians were regularly doing unpaid overtime, with the average worker putting in more than 7 hours overtime per week, without remuneration.

A quick survey of my nearest and dearest – slightly less scientific – backs this up. “I’m happy to do it”, one says. “We take it upon ourselves to put in the extra time to get the job done, but then there is ample opportunity to take extra time off when the load is light. It works both ways.”

Another friend feels she can’t afford not to go above and beyond. “I’m in a secure job that’s withstood the pandemic”, she says. “In fact, I’m actually better off now – with a smaller team I managed to negotiate a pay rise and since our office closed I’m working from home with flexible hours. So I feel pressure to make myself invaluable. If I was made redundant now I don’t know what I’d do.”

It’s a fact that looms over the heads of many in this insecure job market. But what about the cultural mythology we attach to our attitudes to work? We’ve all heard a “back in my day” story, suggesting that young people today are somehow lazy or unwilling to do the hard yards. But a friend of mine in management believes we’ve been sold a lie when it comes to the ‘Australian Dream’ mythology of hard yakka and mateship. “Ultimately, it’s not my company”, she says of her employer. “They want us all to buy into this idea that we’re a team and a family, but at the end of the day they’re pocketing all the profits of my extra labour, and meanwhile my salary’s barely risen in 3 years.”

It’s an interesting point. We all want to be seen as team players, never one to let the side down. But is it really a team if only the captains take the win?

Before anyone launches into a story about how they built their empire doing 16 hour days and never taking holidays – and power to you – we need to mention the way technology has changed the workday. Because while workers may have put in the long hours a few decades ago, the office is now almost inescapable. On any given day I have emails arriving as my iCal alerts ping, Zoom notifications pop up, WhatsApp buzzes and my Slack feed stretches out. Instagram DMs flood in. And while the flexibility of being able to work from just about anywhere is incredibly freeing, it also means work can follow you just about anywhere too. Even when I’ve clocked off for the day, I’m always contactable, and it’s hard to really switch off mentally when your notifications are doing the opposite.

And I’ve got to admit, there are times when the grind makes it feel like you’re killing it. In a particularly busy week recently, I caught myself feeling kind of smug as I cooked dinner with one hand, my laptop open on the kitchen bench so I could reply to emails with the other. There’s a sense of purpose that comes with going above and beyond, and after months on end of lockdown, it’s nice to feel a rush of adrenaline, even if it is for a looming deadline.

And that might just be the key to the grind – with so much of our identity tied up in what we do, we’ve been conditioned to relate our work performance to our self worth. “I go above and beyond because of a sense of duty”, a friend tells me, “and a sense of obligation. But it’s also for satisfaction, and pleasure. Work is where I express my identity, outside of being a mum.” And if your work is part of who you are, then choosing to do the bare minimum can’t be particularly gratifying.

That said, there’s nothing glamorous about a nervous breakdown, or shouting at your kids, or lying awake at night because your pre-bed email check revealed a crisis to be attended to the next day. So, I’m sticking with my no work on weekends rule. 

But if something urgent comes up, you know where to find me.