Elon Musk is widely regarded as one of the most influential entrepreneurs working today. He\u2019s one of the founders of PayPal and the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. He wants to help put a colony on Mars and be buried there.<\/p>\n\n
Because Musk is considered such a visionary, many people want to learn his methods and follow his example. However, they run into a serious problem. Musk may be a genius, but he\u2019s also a workaholic who proposes untenable work habits.<\/p>\n\n
In an 2010 interview<\/a>, Musk advised entrepreneurs to be \u201cextremely tenacious and then just work like hell. You just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week.\u201d<\/p>\n He explained, \u201cIf other people are putting in 40 hour workweeks and you\u2019re putting in 100 hour workweeks, then even if you\u2019re doing the same thing \u2026 you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s perfectly good advice. For a robot.<\/p>\n Some people live to work rather than the other way around. But even high achievers are not meant to work those kind of hours. Our first clue ought to be Musk\u2019s own life.<\/p>\n Musk admitted that 100 can be \u201cwearing\u201d and produce \u201creally a high amount of pain\u201d over time. Even his lower number of 80 hours is too much for a healthy person to pull off consistently. The costs on our lives are simply too great to bear.<\/p>\n In survey after survey, Americans say that they are overworked<\/a> and struggling to get any sort of clarity about what they ought to be doing better. It\u2019s a damaging situation, and the last thing we need is encouragement to drive even harder. Why?<\/p>\n Overworking like Musk recommends costs us in three primary areas: our relationships, our health, and our productivity.<\/p>\n Musk has been married three times to two women. \u201cElon was obsessed with his work,\u201d his first wife, Justine Musk, said<\/a>. \u201cWhen he was home, his mind was elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n He even works when he\u2019s with his children. \u201cWhat I find is I\u2019m able to be with them and still be on email. I can be with them and still be working at the same time,\u201d he told<\/a> South by Southwest attendees in 2013.<\/p>\n Whether his kids can get through to their father when he is on email is a whole other question. \u201cMusk frequently gets so caught up in his multitasking that it sometimes takes two or three tries at his name, uttered at full volume to get a response,\u201d reported Inc.<\/a><\/em> when it named him \u201cEntrepreneur of the Year\u201d in 2007.<\/p>\n When we engage in overwork, we\u2019re asking our spouses and children to carry the weight of our ambition. And that burden can be crushing.<\/p>\n Andy Stanley uses the metaphor of a rock<\/a> to make this point. It\u2019s like we have a stone we give someone to hold for us. If the duration is brief, it\u2019s not a big deal. They can manage. But Musk recommends we make that duration permanent. How long till the rock drops on our families?<\/p>\n To cope with the workload, Musk used to drink caffeinated beverages practically nonstop. \u201cI got so jacked that I seriously started to feel like I was losing my peripheral vision,\u201d he admitted. That should tell us all we need to know about the stress that kind of workload produces.<\/p>\n Because of the hours we work, most of us don\u2019t get the sleep we need<\/a>. To save time in the kitchen, we eat for convenience, not nutrition\u2014or even joy. We don\u2019t get enough exercise. And our rest and relaxation often looks like collapsing exhausted in front of the television or mindlessly clicking away time online.<\/p>\n When we\u2019re weary and worn out, we\u2019re not as clear about things as we could be. We get irritable and irrational, make bad calls, and often see the world more negatively than we should.<\/p>\n The result? Despite our relative wealth, Americans are unhealthy, stressed, and depressed compared to other countries<\/a>.<\/p>\n One nine-year study of financial workers found that long hours essentially ruined them. They \u201cstarted to break down in their fourth year on the job,\u201d business reporter James Surowiecki said<\/a>. \u201cThey suffered from depression, anxiety, and immune system problems, and performance reviews showed that their creativity and judgment declined.\u201d<\/p>\n The drain on employees is also important to consider. An 80 hour workweek will dry up even the most energetic employees. \u201cWhat was clear is that people who worked for him were like ammunition,\u201d one former Tesla employee said<\/a> about Musk, \u201cused for a specific purpose until exhausted and discarded.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of us can effectively work 40 or 50 hours a week comfortably. And we can work longer on occasion, when it\u2019s crunch time and things simply have to get done. But trying to work longer, regularly, is foolish.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t even controversial among researchers. Harvard Business Review<\/em> published an article in 2015 whose title<\/a> left zero room for misunderstanding: \u201cThe Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and Companies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a large body of research that suggests that regardless of our reasons for working long hours, overwork does not help us,\u201d HBR<\/em> reported. In fact, in one revealing study, \u201cmanagers could not tell the difference between employees who actually worked 80 hours a week and those who just pretended to.\u201d In other words, the additional hours resulted in no measurable gains in productivity.<\/p>\n Indeed, the consensus view these days is that \u201cConsiderable evidence shows that overwork is not just neutral\u2014it hurts us and the companies we work for.\u201d Even if the occasional phenom could pull off the longer workload consistently, as Musk claims to do, there is no way that would be a good example for many others to follow.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not judging Musk. That\u2019s not my job. In fact, I\u2019ve fallen for the same trap in the past.<\/p>\n But I am calling foul on the idea that we need to follow his lead. The reason Musk himself can\u2019t manage a 100 hour workweek\u2014and why no one should even try\u2014is that our minds and bodies are simply not designed to do that. And the costs are clear to almost anyone paying attention.<\/p>\n Musk has many great ideas, but the 100 hour workweek is a bit like those early SpaceX rockets that never quite made it into orbit: ambitious but explosive.<\/p>\n If you find yourself trapped in a cycle of overwork, you might be suffering from one of four predictable reasons I detail here<\/a>. The good news is that if your life is out of balance because of overwork, you can choose a better outcome starting today.<\/p>\n\t\t1. The Relational Cost<\/h3>\n
2. The Health Cost<\/h3>\n
3. The Productivity Cost<\/h3>\n
Explosive Advice<\/h3>\n