Abstract:In Chinese academic circle, the research on overwork focuses on the present. From the angle of historic development this paper examines overwork of human being, analyzing overwork in the past, present and future. To this end, this paper puts forward a theoretical model of overwork, based on which explains the reasons that after the industrial revolution, overwork was severe and common initially, and then with the increase in consumer goods, accumulation of capital, and the progress of technology, overwork gradually eased off, which is supported by the data. It can be anticipated that in the near future manual labor will be replaced largely, and hours of work will further decrease, causing intensive manual labor will become the history. In the future, the industrial competition will focus mostly on the talents of intelligent design and management, and overwork will be a problem mostly in this group