A 5-mile hike with no cell service turned into a question: AI was supposed to give us shorter workdays, so why are so many teams working longer than ever? This issue digs into the data on vacation, disconnection, and the 996 overwork culture spreading through AI startups, then into what decades of productivity and health research actually show. The takeaway for leaders is not “work less.” It is that sustainable performance is an operational design problem, and the teams that