Newly Corporate

This guest post was contributed by Shannon Wills, an avid reader and contributor to a number of other professional blogs.

There are some people who swear that their job is their life, and then there are others who try their very best to prevent their jobs from becoming their lives. It’s different strokes for different folks, but no matter which category you belong to, there will come a time when you have to work harder than ever, stay long hours at the office, spend your weekends cooped up in your cubicle, or have to forsake your holiday because an important project just cropped up. Whatever the reason for you to work on a weekend, here are a few things you must remember:

• Don’t expect bouquets for it: While it may prevent you from getting brickbats, don’t assume that working weekends or longer hours is going to get you any kind of appreciation from your boss or supervisor. Rather, your efforts could boomerang on you – if you work a few weekends consecutively, they may even feel disappointed in you when you don’t show up at the office the following week. So if you’re doing this just to get into your boss’s good books, forget the whole idea. I’m not totally dismissing the fact that your efforts will be appreciated, but you have to be prepared to not receive kudos for the extra time you’re putting in.
• Don’t use the weekend to catch up on your week’s work: If you’re working weekends because you’ve goofed away the whole week, then you’re not a hard worker as other people perceive you to be. Rather, your methods are shoddy and inefficient. You’re a regular procrastinator who keeps putting away today’s work for tomorrow, little realizing that tomorrow will come with its own share of work. So get your work done during the week and leave the weekends free for friends, family and yourself.
• Working longer hours does not mean you are a better worker: If you stay all of Saturday and Sunday at the office, from early in the morning till late at night, it doesn’t automatically prove that you’re a good worker. Rather, it shows your inefficiency and your tendency to procrastinate and waste time. When you spend all day at the office doing nothing worthwhile, it is equivalent to not going in to the office at all. Gauge your value as a worker using the amount of work you manage to complete within a certain period of time, not by the amount of time you spend at your desk.

Working weekends does not matter unless you’re able to prove to your superiors that you’re worth your weight in gold, that you’re a sincere worker who is responsible towards your work and the company, and that you’d go the extra mile if the need arose.

This guest post is contributed by Shannon Wills, she writes on the topic of Online Engineering Degrees and other professional education topic areas.  She welcomes your comments at shannonwills23@gmail.com or in the comments on this post.

Photo Credit: Office