The Burnout Illusion: Why Working More Delivers Less

Lately, a curious pattern is emerging from the C-suites of America’s most powerful corporations. CEOs are pushing harder for longer workweeks, more hours at the desk, and a wholesale return to the office. The justification? Higher productivity. The reality? A dangerous illusion. Some argue that without 40+ hours a week, you simply can't deliver results. Others go as far as saying that if you care about work-life balance, you're not cut out for success. That kind of mindset baffles me.

Why is it that individuals who’ve built empires, leaders with unlimited resources, data, and talent at their disposal fail to grasp something so fundamentally human? Working more does not equal producing more.

Our brains are not machines. They are sophisticated, adaptive systems that need time to rest, to make sense of information, and to build new connections. The more you force it into overdrive, the more you sabotage its ability to deliver peak performance. “Il nostro cervello ha bisogno di decantare informazioni… ha bisogno di lasciare le connessioni neurali intrecciarsi.”

Our brains need time to decant information, to let neural connections weave together naturally. I’ve seen this firsthand. Throughout my career, I’ve worked alongside people clocking double my hours yet producing a tenth of the outcome. Not because they weren’t smart. But because their minds were drained, scattered, unfocused. When you give your brain the pause it needs, it responds with clarity, speed, and insight. You solve problems faster. You make fewer mistakes. You produce real results without burning out.

As someone who started his journey programming lines of code deep into the night, I understand how tempting it is to push through. But some of my most elegant solutions didn’t come from brute force. They arrived when I stepped back, breathed, and gave my mind space to reorganize. And yet, corporate culture keeps marching in the opposite direction. More hours. Less rest. Higher expectations. It’s a race to nowhere.

Let me offer a thought for every leader reading this: your employees didn’t sign up to hand over their lives. They joined your mission, your vision not your obsession. If you expect them to surrender their balance, then perhaps you should also be ready to share your profits not just the scraps.

As a dear friend from high school always said: “Si lavora per vivere, non si vive per lavorare.” You work to live. You don’t live to work. There are those of us who have turned our passion into our profession, and for us, the line between life and work is blurry by choice. But that is exactly what it is, a choice. You can’t impose your path on everyone else and call it leadership.

Here’s the kicker: by pushing harder, you end up losing your best people. The truly high performers know they don’t need to work 70 hours a week to deliver breakthrough results. They know the value of strategic recovery, of focused execution, of self-awareness. And they won’t stay in an environment that devalues that. So the very people you want, the 10x thinkers, the creative problem-solvers, the ones who can build what others can only imagine, will walk away.

A work culture that respects balance isn’t a luxury. It’s your company’s competitive edge. “The work-life balance should not be a perk. It should be the mission.” Because only then do you unlock the true potential of your team. Only then do you build something that can scale without breaking the humans who build it. It’s time we stop romanticizing burnout and start designing organizations that are truly sustainable. For everyone.