Hard work isn't all it's cracked up to be. Quite apart from the fact that working your proverbials off is likely to result in stress, depression, heart disease and possibly even some types of cancer, it makes no economic sense from a global perspective.

Consider what would happen in a typical organisation if one person decided to work twice as hard as the rest. The chances are that management would avoid the logical solution - sack the fool before any real damage is done - and instead raise the benchmark of acceptable workload to match this keen muppet's output. So now everybody has to work twice as hard, including the managers. This will, until stress effects kick in, make that organisation more efficient than its competitors. So those competitors will, in turn, have to goad their workforce into working harder.

And so it goes on. Before too long, everybody in the country is working harder and the only way to gain a competitive edge is to outsource manufacturing and services to other, 'cheaper' countries. All of which works fine until those countries 'catch up'. Then you're back where you started, only the entire world is working harder than before.

This has already happened. American management techniques forced UK companies to raise their game in the eighties, although the roots go back much further. India was the prime outsourcing country for UK organisations in the nineties, especially for IT and customer services, but now it too is feeling the squeeze from less 'advanced' countries - i.e. those with employees willing to work even harder for even less reward.

Companies in Western countries talk a lot about the "one percent world", as a euphemism for profit margins so slim that only a tiny profit is made on a huge turnover. You might think that this is a good thing - after all, we don't want these companies making a fat profit at our expense. That's true to an extent, but when profits are reduced, what gets cut? Directors' salaries? Unlikely. Research & development, customer services, employee salaries and product quality are first against the wall. The marketing budget will go up to help sell the new, lower quality products.

Computers - originally predicted to be labour-saving devices - have helped all this happen. Faster communications make it easier to outsource to other companies and other countries, while helping keep a close rein on employee work behaviour. If you're old enough to remember a workplace without computers (i.e. you're over 30), ask yourself whether the computer on your desk has really decreased your workload. And when was the last time you had a proper lunch hour?

There are benefits to this hard work, of course; our lives have become richer in material terms and many of us enjoy significantly better medical care than in the past. Arguably we're more cash-rich than we were before. To many people that's a fair trade.

What it all boils down to is; the harder everybody works, the cheaper things become. Or, to put it a better way, the cheaper things become, the harder we all have to work. Remember that the next time you decide to shop around for cheaper goods and services. If you're reducing the profit margin of the seller or producer below a certain amount, you're indirectly increasing your own workload. It is economically impossible for products and services to become cheaper without someone, somewhere, bearing the brunt.

So, learn to relax again. Get back into the habit of taking a proper lunch hour. Take your colleagues with you if necessary, then you can all claim it as a working lunch. Get to work at 9am, leave at 5:30pm (or the equivalent if you're on a different shift). If people make snide remarks such as "Oh, leaving on time?" (which I heard a few times myself when I was an employee), say "Yes, that's right, on time. I'm good enough at my job to get all my work done by the end of the day." If anyone asks you to work longer, get it in writing and claim time off in lieu or overtime payment.

OK, I know some of this is fantasy. You're not likely to change your company's working practices so easily and your contract probably contains clauses to deny you paid overtime. But it's worth the effort. If anyone calls you lazy, turn to them and say "I'm not being lazy, I'm improving the global economy."