Do you have a "breaking point" for your life -- a point where long work hours send you over the edge into work-family conflict?

In a startling finding, researchers discovered telecommuters on flextime schedules can cram in 19 more hours of work a week, compared with people who work entirely in the office, before they begin to report work-family conflict.

Those who did all their work in the office began to complain of work-family conflict after 38 hours of work.

The study was co-authored by E. Jeffrey Hill, a professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University and a long-time researcher on work-family issues.

Based on new research on 22,436 IBM employees in 75 countries, many people do, and that breaking point varies dramatically based on whether employees are free to work from home part of the time, or not.

However, those who were able to extend their workday from home by telecommuting, rather than putting in longer hours at the office, could log 57 total hours before starting to feel the strain, counting both hours at the office and at home, Dr. Hill found.

This basic pattern rings true to me.

The hourly tallies are based on the point at which 25% of each of the two groups of employees -- the office-bound workers and the telecommuters on flextime-reported work-family conflict.

Since I began telecommuting years ago, I have found I could happily log longer work weeks than when I was confined to the newsroom.

The size of the 19-hour gap in this study, however -- about two additional workdays a week -- is surprising.