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I always say never work too hard. Managers don't know how long things take because they don't do any actual work. Set expectations accordingly.
complete task early, turn in results in the last day. never give them reason to up your workload
Around bonus time log lots of extra hours and turn in two products on the last day.
This is the way.
It's a pretty damn sad thing having to do it if you're a fair and honest person, but that's just how the world works.
(There are a few managers out there whom you can be honest towards without them taking away your reward for being efficient of going the extra mile, but in my personal experience those are pretty rare).
I've pretty consistently seen the 1st level of management able to understand when you worked hard, and that it is not repeatable. Those problems tend to appear only when they report up what is happening.
What is to say that often (not always), you can be honest with your manager if both of you can keep a secret.
Well, sorta.
Plenty (maybe even most) of 1st level manages will see and understand, but are still unable or unwilling to push back on unrealistic expectations coming from outside (sometimes not even from above, just from customer) so from the point of view of those working under them the result is the same if they're not doing their own internal time reporting averaging and and are honest towards them.
Further, they often fuck-up things, from planning to analysis and taking in account the dependencies on external providers and it's the team that has to make up for it. Absolutelly, the managers will notice people going the extra mile ... and do the same thing again next time around and it will be just as "unexpected" and "we have not other option" as all the previous times.
I would even go as far as saying that the "understanding" manager that fucks you up anyway (sometimes because they'll always put themselves above those working for them and might even be fake, others because they're not very good at playing the game that needs to be played to other stakeholders) is the most common of all.
Looking back (to almost 30 years of experience in several countries), some of my worst managers were "really nice" people but the team still suffered massivelly because they were not in fact good managers (they suffered alongside the team, for all the good that did to the rest) - essentially the team was holding the career of somebody who should probably be doing something else and at the end of the day, the managers rather than the rest were the ones getting more pay and bigger bonuses.
Plenty (maybe even most) of 1st level manages will see and understand, but are still unable or unwilling to push back on unrealistic expectations coming from outside
My manager directly told me after a "meets expectations" annual review that he had originally put "exceeds expectations" but was overridden by someone above him and told he could not give me that evaluation. I then got a less-than-inflation "raise".
I have adjusted my efforts accordingly.
They are members of the cult of the line, and the line must go up.
Not just members, advocates of the line. Their compensation is a function of the surplus value workers create.