It seems counterintuitive to suggest that working less could actually improve productivity. For generations, we have associated long hours with ambition, commitment, and success, which makes it easy to assume that more time at work naturally leads to better results.
But hours alone tell us very little about the value someone creates.
Every leader faces seasons that demand more time and effort. A major deadline, unexpected challenge, new opportunity, or period of rapid growth may require early mornings, late nights, and extra attention. Those seasons come with leadership. The problem begins when an organization turns extraordinary effort into its everyday operating model and starts confusing constant activity with meaningful productivity.
That distinction matters even more today. Technology keeps us connected almost everywhere, while artificial intelligence helps us complete in minutes tasks that once consumed hours. Yet instead of using those advances to create more capacity, many of us simply fill the newly available space with more meetings, messages, projects, and expectations.
Perhaps we need to stop asking how much more we can fit into the day and start asking how we can use our time, attention, energy, and judgment more effectively.
A Warning About Overwork That Still Holds True
Years ago, author, speaker, and former CEO Michael Hyatt offered a memorable warning about overwork when he said, “Working 80 hours a week is ambitious but explosive.”
The workplace has changed considerably since Hyatt shared that perspective, but his point carries even more weight today. Email, text messages, Teams, Slack, virtual meetings, and smartphones allow work to follow us almost everywhere, removing many of the natural boundaries that once separated our professional and personal lives.
A leader can answer emails before breakfast, move from meeting to meeting throughout the day, respond to messages during dinner, and then spend the evening catching up on the work that required uninterrupted concentration in the first place. When that pattern becomes routine, more hours do not necessarily produce better results. They often produce tired leaders who have little time left for the thinking, relationships, and decisions that matter most.
Ambition remains valuable, but ambition without boundaries eventually carries a cost.
Productivity Is Not the Same as Activity
A full calendar creates the appearance of progress, but meetings, emails, messages, and administrative tasks can consume an entire day without moving the organization’s most important priorities forward. Microsoft’s research into what it calls the “infinite workday” found that some employees encounter a meeting, email, or notification as often as every two minutes during core working hours.
That constant interruption competes directly with the work leaders need to do most.
Strategic thinking requires concentration. Developing people requires presence. Solving complex problems requires perspective. Building relationships requires attention. Making significant decisions requires enough mental space to consider what matters instead of simply reacting to whatever appears next.
Leaders who want greater productivity should therefore ask more than, “How much did I accomplish today?” They should also ask, “Did I give my best attention to the work that mattered most?”
Those questions lead to very different ways of working.
More Hours Eventually Produce Less Value
Hard work matters. Leaders cannot build strong organizations, navigate uncertainty, serve customers, or accomplish ambitious goals without sustained effort. However, adding hours does not guarantee that people will continue producing value at the same rate.
Research from Stanford economist John Pencavel found that productivity eventually declines as working hours increase. Fatigue affects concentration and performance, which means each additional hour can contribute less than the one before it.
Long working hours can also affect health. Research from the World Health Organization and International Labour Organization linked working 55 hours or more per week with higher risks of stroke and ischemic heart disease compared with working 35 to 40 hours per week.
None of this suggests that leaders should watch the clock or avoid periods of intense effort. Instead, it challenges a deeply ingrained assumption that more hours automatically demonstrate greater commitment or produce greater results.
A distracted, exhausted 12-hour day may accomplish less than several highly focused hours directed toward the right priorities. Leaders create more value when they focus on the quality and impact of their work rather than simply accumulating more hours.
AI Changes the Productivity Equation
Artificial intelligence makes this conversation even more important because it gives individuals and organizations the ability to complete certain types of work dramatically faster.
Leaders can use AI to summarize information, analyze data, prepare for meetings, develop first drafts, organize ideas, automate repetitive processes, and identify patterns that previously required significant time. When we use these tools effectively, we create something every leader wants more of: capacity.
What we do with that capacity matters.
If AI saves someone three hours and the organization immediately fills those three hours with additional meetings and tasks, we have not necessarily improved productivity. We have simply increased the speed of an already crowded system.
The greater opportunity comes when leaders intentionally redirect some of that capacity toward higher-value work. Instead of spending an hour assembling information, an executive can spend that hour deciding what the information means. Instead of handling repetitive administrative work, a manager can coach an emerging leader. Instead of producing another report, a leadership team can spend more time discussing the decisions the report should inform.
AI gives us an opportunity to reconsider where human contribution creates the greatest value. Judgment, critical thinking, creativity, relationships, empathy, accountability, and leadership still require people who have enough time and mental capacity to bring those qualities to their work.
The goal should not simply be to use AI to produce more. We should use it to make more room for the work that matters most.
Your Energy Affects the Quality of Your Work
Everyone gets the same 24 hours each day, but we do not bring the same level of energy, focus, and clarity to every hour.
Think about the difference between trying to solve a complex problem after ten exhausting hours and approaching that same problem when you feel rested and focused. Both situations may occupy the same amount of time on a calendar, but they rarely produce the same quality of thinking.
That is why sleep, exercise, relationships, hobbies, reflection, and time away from screens contribute to professional performance rather than compete with it. These activities help leaders maintain the physical and mental capacity they need to make sound decisions, remain present with people, navigate difficult situations, and provide perspective when others feel overwhelmed.
Earlier conversations about productivity often placed these practices under the umbrella of “self-care.” That language still works, but leaders can also think about them as disciplines that protect their capacity to lead.
Athletes understand that sustained performance requires both exertion and recovery. Leadership works much the same way. You cannot continually draw from your physical, emotional, and mental reserves without eventually replenishing them.
Leaders Teach Their Teams How to Work
Leaders also need to recognize that their personal work habits influence more than their own productivity. People watch how leaders work and use those behaviors to interpret what the organization actually expects.
When a CEO regularly emails employees at midnight, people may assume they need to respond. When managers fill every open space on the calendar, teams learn to prioritize availability over concentration. When organizations consistently praise the people who work the longest hours, employees quickly learn that visible effort matters more than meaningful results.
Leaders can change those signals without lowering expectations.
A leader can send an email at night while making it clear that no one needs to respond until the next workday. A manager can protect focused work time while still holding people accountable for results. An organization can celebrate people who solve problems efficiently instead of rewarding unnecessary busyness.
Healthy boundaries and high expectations can reinforce each other. When people understand the priorities, know what results matter, and have enough uninterrupted time to do excellent work, organizations can create a healthier and more productive environment.
Build a More Productive Way of Working
Greater productivity rarely requires a complete overhaul of your schedule. More often, it requires leaders to examine how they currently spend their time and remove the habits that consume attention without creating enough value.
Start with your calendar. Look at your recurring meetings and ask whether each one still serves a purpose, whether everyone needs to attend, and whether another form of communication could accomplish the same outcome. Then protect meaningful blocks of time for work that requires deeper thinking rather than allowing every open space to become another meeting opportunity.
Next, examine your technology. Notifications may seem small, but each interruption asks your brain to switch attention. Decide which communication channels truly require immediate attention and which ones can wait. Technology should help you control your work rather than continually control your attention.
Apply the same discipline to AI. Identify repetitive work that technology can accelerate, but decide in advance what you want to do with the time you regain. Without that intentionality, other tasks will quickly consume the capacity you created.
Finally, measure productivity by outcomes rather than visible activity. Busyness is easy to observe because calendars, emails, and long hours leave obvious evidence. Impact often requires more thoughtful measurement. Leaders need to define the results that matter and then give people the clarity, tools, and space they need to achieve them.
Ask a Better Question About Productivity
For years, we have approached productivity with a relatively simple question: How much can I get done today?
The changing nature of work gives leaders an opportunity to ask something better: Where can I create the most value with the time, energy, and attention I have?
Sometimes the answer will require another hour of work because an important situation demands it. At other times, the best decision will involve delegating a responsibility, declining a meeting, turning off notifications, using AI to eliminate unnecessary work, or stepping away long enough to return with greater clarity.
Michael Hyatt’s warning about the explosive nature of an 80-hour workweek still resonates because it addresses something deeper than a number on a timesheet. Ambitious people naturally want to do more, achieve more, and make a greater impact, but continually adding hours does not guarantee any of those outcomes.
Today’s leaders have access to tools and technology that previous generations could hardly imagine. Those tools give us an opportunity to work faster, but they also give us an opportunity to work differently.
The real measure of productivity is not how many hours we can fill with work. It is how effectively we use those hours to create meaningful results, develop people, make better decisions, strengthen relationships, and move the organization forward.
Working less will not automatically make someone more productive, just as working more will not automatically make someone successful. The goal is to work with enough clarity and intention that our best energy goes toward the work that matters most.