No, Elon, ‘working the weekend’ is not a superpower

What were you doing at 8.30pm last Saturday night? Let me take an educated guess: you might have been heading out to a restaurant with your partner, sharing a meal with close friends, settling in on the couch to watch your new favourite series or trying to get your kids to sleep.

These are all relatively common things to be doing during the peak of the weekend, but what do you think the richest man in the world was doing at that time?

Elon Musk sends possibly his 68th tweet of the day.Credit: AP

Well, we know exactly what Elon Musk is doing at any given moment because he tweets every inane thought bubble he has 68 times a day (and yes, there’s still no equivalent verb for ‘X’ing, so we’ll have to stick with tweeting).

At 8.30pm last Saturday night, Musk was working. Alongside a few dozen colleagues – almost all young men – he was working late in the US federal government offices as part of his so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” attempt to slash and burn it to a size and ideology that he deems appropriate.

“Very few in the bureaucracy actually work the weekend, so it’s like the opposing team just leaves the field for 2 days!” he gloated. “Working the weekend is a superpower.”

Putting aside the bizarre notion that the “opposing team” are actually career civil servants who have dedicated their working lives to doing important government work, someone really needs to explain to Musk that working the weekend is not the superpower he thinks it is.

As a society, we desperately need to push back on unhealthy narratives that demand we work more, and harder.

I know he’s probably not used to having people around him who disagree with his increasingly unhinged rants, but giving up precious hours of your Saturday night to proudly and endlessly toil away is no healthy way to work or live.

You want to know what real superpowers are? Being able to switch off from work so you can refocus properly and gain perspective is a superpower. Forging a good relationship with your family by spending quality downtime with them is a superpower.

Having friends who keep you grounded is a superpower. Reading books to release stress and increase empathy is a superpower. Moving your body through exercise is a superpower. Putting down your phone to allow you time to think without distractions is a superpower.

As a society, we desperately need to push back on unhealthy narratives that demand we work more, and harder, and say that the only way to succeed is to sacrifice ourselves on the altar of work.

The New York Times reported this week that Musk has even moved beds into the headquarters of one of the offices his team is working from so that he and his staff can literally sleep where they work.

Sure, you might feel like you’re temporarily winning because you’re working more hours than the “opposing team”, but where does all of this end? Working the occasional overtime isn’t going to kill anyone, but doing it repeatedly and gleefully as part of your identity just might.

Musk’s unsustainable mantra ends up in only one place: utter exhaustion. This is not a leadership vision that anyone, let alone impressionable young men, should model themselves on. A recent Boston Consulting Group survey of 11,000 workers in eight countries – including Australia and the US – found that around half of the respondents were grappling with burnout.

We need periods of collective time off to properly rest between the hours that we work. It’s necessary to reduce stress, enhance creativity and improve our mental health. In fact, we should all be pushing for more time off and pushing back against billionaires who tell us we aren’t working hard enough.

Tim Duggan is the author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com

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