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AI Made Work Faster. Why Are We Working Longer?

AI promised us shorter workdays. Instead, overwork is at record highs. Here is what the data on hours, vacation, and productivity actually shows, and what leaders should do about it.


A Walk to Remember

We were about 2 miles into the 5-mile hike, when it dawned on me.


I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed being in the woods, completely unplugged, with no chance of reconnecting because of how remote we were.


It was refreshing. It was relaxing. An unexpected bonus was that the lack of cell service nudged my wife, our teen, our pre-teen, and me into family time we’d forgotten how much we enjoyed and needed. (OK, the kids may not cop to saying they “enjoyed” it, but we were pretty sure they were having a good time.)


When our devices came back online 20 miles outside North Cascades National Park, the kids’ heads were buried back in them (did you see the Celtics traded Jaylen Brown for Paul George!?!) and we jumped into emails (too many to count). Groans from the parents, glee from the kids.


It got me thinking. What does the data show about the significance of unplugging completely in the age of AI? Have the trends changed over the past 3 years? What does this mean for productivity, business outcomes, and leadership?


Over the past two decades I’ve led Customer Success, Revenue Operations, and AI Operations teams through hypergrowth, acquisitions, turnarounds, and more than a few fire drills. One lesson keeps resurfacing: high-performing organizations aren’t built by asking people to work longer or harder. They’re built by designing systems that perform well even when people step away.


Let’s dig in.


The Rarity of Digital Disconnect and Its Impact

Despite some form of paid (or niche unlimited) vacation being a nearly universal benefit, only about half of employees use all the vacation they’re given, and when they do, they rarely disconnect.


The issue appears to start from the top, where studies find only 51% of employees say their manager actively encourages them to take it. Not surprisingly, 80% of staff say they’re more likely to use their time off when managers promote doing so.

Leaders themselves don’t exactly “lead” here either, with 54% of managers taking less time off than they’re offered, versus 42% of non-managers. It gets worse if you’re salaried, where a 13-point gap exists between them and hourly employees (52% versus 39% take less than offered).


Among those who did take time off, 60% struggled to disconnect, 86% checked emails from the boss, and 56% took work calls.


The real takeaway isn’t that companies need better vacation policies. Most organizations already have those. They need leaders whose behaviors make employees believe it’s actually safe to unplug. Culture isn’t written in the handbook. It’s demonstrated every day by management.


If your team sees you talking the talk and then walking the walk of truly unplugging and taking a break, then the data shows they will too.


The Truth Behind Vacations, Productivity, and Getting Ahead

All of this sounds encouraging until we ask how vacationing actually affects one’s performance within the business.


Conventional wisdom holds that those who work the hardest and longest “win” the day (and in business the larger promotion, title, pay, etc.) Is this true? When you weave through the data you’ll find the answer is nuanced, and context is key.


A popular and oft-cited study from Project: Time Off declares work martyrs are 23 to 27% less likely to be promoted and 78 to 84% less likely to get a raise.


This is a suspiciously convenient finding for the U.S. Travel Association, which led the study. Further evidence of that potential bias: the same body of research concedes that would-be work martyrs were actually “no more likely” to be promoted than the average worker (28%).

Peer-reviewed studies and publishing from credited sources provide more direction on the impact of taking holidays on one’s career.


An earlier meta-analysis in the Journal of Occupational Health found that well-being rises during vacation, then fades back to previous levels within two to four weeks of returning to work.


A newer and larger meta-analysis by Grant, Buchanan, and Shockley in the Journal of Applied Psychology revised that timeline upward, finding the boost lasts longer than we assumed, closer to six weeks, and holds best when people fully detach and stay active.


A consistent theme across this research is that what drags people back to baseline fastest is the workload they return to. So while none of this is conclusive about whether a break helps or hurts your career, it is very informative for any leader trying to help a team overcome the holiday hangover.


That fade-out is fundamentally an operational design problem, not a vacation problem.


Organizations that invest in documented processes, cross-functional training, clear customer ownership, and intelligent automation create teams that can absorb planned absences without sacrificing customer outcomes. When those systems aren’t in place, customers feel it too through slower responses, inconsistent experiences, delayed decisions, and reactive service.


The AI Vacation De-evolution

The technology revolution pitched to make us more informed, better equipped, and so highly productive that our lives get “easier” has instead led to the most extreme overwork culture in a generation. The data shows this, and science tells us this grind will be self-defeating.


First reported by Wired, the “996” schedule (9am to 9pm, six days, a 72-hour week originally popularized and later banned in China) took hold in San Francisco AI startups, and others are following. The Washington Post, Fortune, Axios, and Forbes have all covered this trend through late 2025 and into 2026.


Copycat cultures, 500,000+ tech layoffs from 2022 to 2024, tighter venture capital, and a winner-take-all AI arms race are no doubt influencing leaders who proclaim working weekends is expected and 60-hour work weeks are the “new norm”.


Here’s where science and data may help restore sanity to the machine.


Stanford studies show output per hour drops sharply after 50 hours a week, and after 55 hours the cliff is so steep that someone working 70 hours produces essentially nothing more than someone working 55. The extra 15 hours are dead weight.


A joint WHO/ILO study revealed working 55+ hours a week is associated with a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease compared with a 35 to 40 hour week.


Even inside the AI world, the 996 economics are shakier than the headlines suggest. One SF founder who offered 996 with a 25% pay bump and double equity got under 10% uptake.


VC Deedy Das argued the founders glamorizing it are mostly young and lack the maturity to see that experienced people accomplish more in a 40-to-50-hour week than in an 80-hour one. And the culture disproportionately pushes out women and caregivers, in a venture landscape where only about 2% of funding goes to women-only-founded startups.


The market is running a live experiment to determine whether brute-force effort can outperform thoughtful execution. Decades of research suggest otherwise.


Organizations that use AI to eliminate repetitive work, rather than extend working hours, are far more likely to build sustainable competitive advantages than those that simply expect employees to work longer.


What Business Leaders Should Know

Having led teams through combat, then spent two decades building and transforming Customer Success and AI Operations at companies of every stage, I know the mindset those experiences forge, where the mission gets done no matter what.


That same grind-or-die mentality runs deep in business leaders too. But we must acknowledge what the recent studies and data trends in the private sector clearly show:

  • There is no measurable improvement in outcomes from pushing the team to work beyond 50 hours a week.

  • The vacation numbers you see may reflect who already feels secure in their performance, or who has an encouraging manager, more than they reflect your company’s true culture around time off.

  • Just because a person is on “holiday” doesn’t mean they’re totally unplugged, and being completely disconnected from work is the most important measurement.

  • The holiday-hangover is real, and the gains from a break fade fastest when people return to a heavy workload.


What Leaders Should Do

  1. Build operational resilience before people take time off. Vacation shouldn’t expose single points of failure. Document key processes, cross-train employees, clarify ownership, and ensure critical knowledge isn’t trapped inside one person’s head.

  2. Measure outcomes instead of hours. Research consistently shows productivity declines sharply beyond roughly 50 hours per week. Reward execution, customer outcomes, and business impact. Those are the goals, not visible busyness.

  3. Use AI to remove repetitive work, not extend workdays. The best AI strategies reduce administrative burden, improve decision-making, and create capacity for higher-value work. They shouldn’t become an excuse to demand even more hours from teams.

  4. Design the employee return experience. Vacation benefits disappear within weeks because employees return to overwhelming backlogs. Build structured handoffs, prioritize work before employees return, and allow time to regain momentum instead of immediately recreating burnout.


Final Thought

I used to take pride in this picture. It’s me, sitting at a campfire on the Oregon coast while my wife and (then) toddler were playing waiting for me to be “done” with work. (I was responding to an enterprise RFP request.)


Now I just look at it and groan. A clear example (one of many) where I never really truly disengaged, refreshed, and was present anywhere other than work.


I believe deeply in hard work. Nothing in the research argues against commitment, discipline, or high expectations. What it does challenge is the growing belief that longer hours are the same thing as better outcomes.


They aren’t.


The organizations that will outperform over the next decade won’t be the ones asking their people to do more. They’ll be the ones building operational systems, leadership cultures, and AI-enabled workflows that allow people to consistently do their best work.

Now if you’ll excuse me, “the mountains are calling and I must go.”


Work With Me

If your organization struggles to disconnect because everything depends on a handful of people, you’re probably dealing with an operational design problem rather than a people problem. That’s exactly the kind of challenge I help organizations solve.


I help SaaS and healthcare organizations improve Customer Success, Revenue Operations, and AI Operations by designing scalable systems that reduce operational friction, improve customer outcomes, and allow teams to perform at a high level without burning people out.


If that sounds familiar, I’d be happy to compare notes and explore what’s getting in your team’s way.



What’s one thing your organization does that genuinely helps people disconnect without creating more work when they return?


Sources


LLM models were used to support research, grammar, and structural clarity. All thoughts, opinions, lived experiences, and recommendations are my own.

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