Working yourself almost to death brings no benefits

At last, the world is starting realise that optimal productivity in business does not mean we all have to work ourselves into the ground to succeed.

Economies worldwide lose tens of billions of US dollars in productivity each year because employees have consistently overworked themselves to the point of breakdown.

Conditions such as stress, depression and anxiety have become a worldwide epidemic.

Numerous surveys show that more than three-quarters of our business leaders are at or near burnout.

One Harvard Business Review study found the percentage to be as high as 96%.

All this has gone a long way towards proving that you cannot optimise productivity through driving humans to become superhumans.

This is true from executives at major companies to the entrepreneurs responsible for the day-to-day survival of their businesses.

In books and lectures, executives of Fortune 500 companies have shared stories about their wake-up call — that moment when they finally realised that operating at superhuman productivity levels was unsustainable.

Usually, the early signs that all is not well are ignored. Executives typically only hear their wake-up calls when catastrophe strikes: a mental breakdown; hospitalisation due to severe medical conditions, often detected at late stages; or legal battles as a result of having made ill-informed decisions during the supposed optimal productivity phase.

Arianna Huffington, cofounder of the Huffington Post, even defines it as the missing ingredient in the formula for success.

In her book Thrive, she details how her wake-up call came when she collapsed and was hospitalised.

Now she spends her days helping the world realise that you do not have to burn out to succeed.

Even though these stories are shared worldwide, we continue to work in the same old way, trying to be a superhuman in the expectation that one day it’ll all be worth it.

It is important to note that hard work is important and critical for success.

What I am challenging is the extent to which we push ourselves, to the point where, I would argue, productivity is compromised.

We do not have to look far to see the consequences of this: most of us can easily name people within our own networks who have been laid low by overwork.

But instead of learning from those who have made similar mistakes, we tend to postpone making any changes.

We ignore the early signs of stress, anxiety and depression, and wait until that significant catastrophe forces us to put a stop to our bad habits. Picture: Getty Images

The problem with this approach is that we discover — in hindsight — that the catastrophic events tend to be so detrimental to us, it’s not worth it.

Knowing and understanding our limits is not rocket science.

After all, our bodies are smart enough to report to us the early signs of overwork, long before they become severe.

The problem is that we have grown so numb to that kind of intuitive physical awareness that, by the time we realise anything is wrong, the situation has become way too severe for us to cope with unless there is a major intervention.

There is a saying that we have to learn to listen to our bodies when they whisper so that they do not have to scream to get our attention.

By the time the screaming begins, it might just be too late.

I often tell leadership teams about the importance of working hard to get to their desired business outcomes.

At the same time, I emphasise that this needs to be done in a manner which ensures that, a couple of decades later, you are still around and functional enough to enjoy the fruits of your hard work. Ideally, you also need to ensure that when the good times come round, you have not alienated the very family and community with whom you would have liked to have shared your prosperity.

It is time we stopped operating in a manner that comes at the expensive cost of our wellbeing.

We ignore the early signs of stress