As Labor Day approaches, and a single day of rest from all the hours we Americans spend on the job is upon us, people can't seem to stop talking about the crazy hours they work.
One of the most-read articles on the Wall Street Journal's web site last week was a piece about how 4 a.m. -- a time so ungodly there's even a TED Talk about how surreal it is -- has become the most productive hour for go-getters. Donald Trump has been endlessly knocking Hillary Clinton for sleeping (gasp!), calling out her lack of stamina as he brags about not needing much sleep and his former staffers say that vacations would "bore and perhaps scare" the GOP presidential nominee.
And then there is Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who said in a recent Bloomberg BusinessWeek interview that she regularly pulled all nighters when she worked at Google and can judge a startup's chances for success by whether people are working on the weekends. "Could you work 130 hours in a week?" Mayer said, referring to the value hard work played in Google's success. "The answer is yes, if you're strategic about when you sleep, when you shower, and how often you go to the bathroom."
This has got to stop. No one, no matter what the upside may be, should have to be that strategic. The idea that being well-rested could be a black mark against a leader is preposterous. And even if a super early wake-up time works for some people -- and they're sensitive about sending out email before dawn -- if you're having to get up at 4 a.m. to avoid distractions in your day, there's probably something wrong with how we're working.
Americans' weekly work hours, on average, actually fall somewhere in the middle of the pack among developed nations. But four in 10 of us don't use all the vacation time we're allotted -- which is far less than it is in most countries. Researchers have looked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey and found we're literally trading sleep for work.