Elon Musk the‘poster boy’of culture of obsessive overwork
If ever there was a watershed moment that might help bust the myth that executives can work 120-hour weeks, sleep just a few hours a night and have no regrets, it might be Elon Musk’s tearful interview with The New York Times and the conversation it has sparked in the days since.
Describing his past year as “excruciating,” acknowledging it has “come at the expense of seeing my kids” and admitting to using Ambien to help him sleep, Musk’s emotional interview laid bare in surprisingly vulnerable terms the effects of his all-consuming work.
The interview, which came in the wake of Musk’s unexpected Twitter announcement he was thinking of taking the automaker private, drew articles warning about the health risks of overwork, tweets of concern about his well-being and even open letters from anti-burnout champion Arianna Huffington calling on him to heed the science and regularly find time to “refuel, recharge and reconnect.” (Musk’s early morning response: “You think this is an option. It is not.”)
Experts say all the attention on Musk’s emotional state may have little effect on the overwork culture practiced by many business leaders and celebrated in corporate America today. It’s baked into the culture and inseparable from the kind of careers people idealize for themselves. And with the proliferation of smartphones, our work goes with us everywhere.
“He is really the poster boy of a contemporary culture that celebrates impulsive authenticity and obsessive overwork,” said Gianpiero Petriglieri, a professor at INSEAD’s business school who directs its executive education program. “He’s the symbol of a workplace culture in which we long for a very personal, even romantic relationship with work” – even if that means it becomes all-consuming.
Musk, after all, has sounded alarm bells about his stress levels before.
A year ago, he tweeted in response to a Twitter user wondering about his “amazing life” that “the reality is great highs, terrible lows and unrelenting stress. Don’t think people want to hear about the last two.”
Asked whether he was bipolar by another, he first said “yeah” but then “maybe not medically,” saying “bad feelings correlate to bad events so maybe real problem is getting carried away in what I sign up for.” And back in 2015, he recommended against running two big companies – Musk leads not only Tesla and SpaceX but has side ventures like the Boring Company – saying “it really deceases your freedom quite a lot.”
Yet the 47-year-old entrepreneur’s bruising hours somehow remain an idealized conception of what executives might be capable of if they just knew how to squeeze every bit of productivity out of their bodies and their time, experts say.
Els van der Helm, who co-founded a company and app that helps companies coach their employees to get better sleep, said Musk’s name comes up often as an exception to the rule people might want to emulate.
“When we work with clients we always get that question – what about those leaders that only sleep three to four hours? How is that possible?” she said. “For the longest time, (Musk) was one of those who, at least to the outside world, fit that successful stereotype.”
And even if executives take Huffington’s words to heart and try to get more sleep and take breaks when needed, they may not come out and admit it if they’re having trouble. Musk’s emotional candor about his long hours did little to calm investors, already jittery after his take-the-company-private tweets. On Friday after the interview was published, Tesla’s stock dropped nearly nine per cent.