Sleep is only a part of it — avoiding burnout (which is the real goal here) requires taking time not only to sleep, but also to work out, do your laundry, cook and eat food, see friends... we’re not just our jobs. We need lives outside of work or we will burn out — often at the most stressful and least opportune moment. If you’re working 100+ hours a week, you’re almost certainly offloading all that extra work to someone — usually a romantic partner, which can damage the most important relationship in your life.
That leaves at most 60 hours a week to truly dedicate to work. The people who work more are sacrificing quality of life for productivity. While a very small minority of people really can maintain that, most of us can’t. We shouldn’t take advice from the outliers who can. We shouldn’t work for companies where a schedule that leads to burnout is the norm. It’s a signal that the company wants to suck you dry then toss you away.
Furthermore, with knowledge workers... we often never stop thinking about a problem. The thinking is “real work” — I’ve had inspiration about how to solve a problem strike during dinner. Whip out the phone, send myself an e-mail, then deal with it in the morning. But the obsession with maximizing individual productivity at all costs is literally killing us.
Comments
Sleep is only a part of it — avoiding burnout (which is the real goal here) requires taking time not only to sleep, but also to work out, do your laundry, cook and eat food, see friends... we’re not just our jobs. We need lives outside of work or we will burn out — often at the most stressful and least opportune moment. If you’re working 100+ hours a week, you’re almost certainly offloading all that extra work to someone — usually a romantic partner, which can damage the most important relationship in your life.
That leaves at most 60 hours a week to truly dedicate to work. The people who work more are sacrificing quality of life for productivity. While a very small minority of people really can maintain that, most of us can’t. We shouldn’t take advice from the outliers who can. We shouldn’t work for companies where a schedule that leads to burnout is the norm. It’s a signal that the company wants to suck you dry then toss you away.
Furthermore, with knowledge workers... we often never stop thinking about a problem. The thinking is “real work” — I’ve had inspiration about how to solve a problem strike during dinner. Whip out the phone, send myself an e-mail, then deal with it in the morning. But the obsession with maximizing individual productivity at all costs is literally killing us.