How does the working week calculator work?
- Enter your contracted hours. The figure on your contract or rota.
- Add the extra hours you actually work. Early starts, late finishes, lunch at your desk and weekend catch-up all count.
- Add your commute and how many days you make it. Enter 0 for the commute if you work from home.
- Add the minutes you spend on work messages outside hours. Email, chat and calls, averaged across every day of the week, including days off.
- Read your real working week. The calculator shows the hours you work, the total time work takes, and what is left of each day after sleep.
The example already filled in is a 37.5-hour contract with 4 extra hours, a 50-minute round-trip commute five days a week, and 20 minutes of messages a day. It comes to 48 hours a week given to work: 10.5 hours beyond the contract, or 546 hours over a year of weeks like it. Nothing you enter is stored.
How many hours a week is too many?
There are two useful reference points. In the UK, GOV.UK states that "You cannot work more than 48 hours a week on average", which is "normally averaged over 17 weeks", although "You can choose to work more by opting out of the 48-hour week."
The second comes from health research. A joint WHO and ILO study defines long working hours as "at least 55 hours a week". Compared with a 35 to 40 hour week, it found "an estimated 35% higher risk of a stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from ischemic heart disease", and estimated that long hours caused 745,000 deaths from stroke and heart disease in 2016.
| Hours worked a week | Where that sits |
|---|---|
| 35 to 40 | The comparison group in the WHO and ILO study |
| 41 to 48 | Within the UK 48-hour weekly average |
| 49 to 54 | Over the UK average limit, unless you have opted out |
| 55 or more | What WHO and the ILO define as long working hours |
The WHO and ILO figures are population estimates, not a prediction about any one person. For what they do and do not show, read do long working hours actually harm you?
Why count the commute and after-hours messages?
Because they come out of the same week even though no contract counts them. The legal limit applies to working time as the rules define it, so the calculator keeps the commute and messages out of your hours worked and shows them in the total time work takes instead.
Messages matter for a second reason. A 2017 meta-analysis in Frontiers in Psychology found that doing work-related things in your own time had a "medium sized average negative relationship" with detachment, the ability to mentally switch off. Detachment, in turn, was associated with "less exhaustion, higher life satisfaction, more well-being, better sleep". Twenty minutes of email a day is a small slice of time, but it can cost more rest than its minutes suggest. Our guide to why switching off matters more than time off covers how to protect it.
What does the time left each day mean?
It is what remains of the week after sleep and work, divided by seven. It is not free time. Meals, chores, getting ready, caring for other people and everything else come out of it too, so real free time is usually a good deal smaller. For how much free time actually seems to matter, read how much free time you actually need.
What can you do if the numbers look wrong?
- Start with the hidden hours. Extra hours and after-hours messages are often easier to change than your contract.
- Give messages a finishing time. Turning work notifications off at a set hour removes the most frequent interruption to switching off.
- Find out what your evenings are missing. The rest quiz points to the kind of recovery you are shortest of.
- Take exhaustion seriously. If long weeks have left you drained and cynical about work, read what burnout is, according to the WHO.
