They’re working hard for you …
Mr. Obama’s tendency to work late into the night will also pose problems. Politico.com reports that the White House staff is “preparing for a return to long nights, heavy weekend shifts.” Requiring a senior staff that meets at 7:30 a.m. to work until 11 p.m. or 12 a.m. will quickly cause burnout and diminish the quality of advice and oversight.
Perhaps too hard?
I don’t know running a large organization from fishing for cod in the Atlantic, but I do know about working long hours.
Meeting at 07:30 means getting to the office at 07:00 at the latest – you gotta get your stuff lined up for a meeting. Which means leaving for the office by 06:15, so awake by 05:45. So .. 5 1/2 hours of sleep at best after getting home after working until midnight.
Every .. day.
And this is the senior staff – the younger and dumber junior staff will man up and come in earlier and leave later than their bosses.
You can work seventeen hour days for a while, when it’s important. But you can’t really do that on a regular basis without burning out. You start making dumb mistakes and your thinking gets sloppy.
Which might not be a great idea when you’re the guys who want to run the country.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.
I worked at a summer camp for four years. When you’re there, you’re on— 24/7. It only took two weeks of that before the head counselor volunteered himself to look after my evening archery shoot so that I could get my one night a week off, because it really does make a difference.
Two weeks is about the most you want to push that kind of schedule. After that you either need to scale it back to a four-day work week or cut the hours.
Incidentally, Evil Rob’s job looks unkindly upon its staff working long hours. (He works about 50 hours a week.) The idea is that if you can’t get your job done in normal working hours, there’s something wrong with you. It’s very nice to know that as he works up this corporate ladder, he doesn’t have to compete in terms of working extra-long shifts.
I did this for years working for a consulting company. It was hard but we got the job done in a way we knew the clients couldn’t have done given five times as long to do it. I’d have thought the notion that the guys at the top are going to put in the hours to sort out the shambles they inherited was a good thing?
I’d have thought the notion that the guys at the top are going to put in the hours to sort out the shambles they inherited was a good thing?
Not if it’s a daily grind that comes at the cost of fuzzy thinking and bad choices.
I’ve worked long hours when I’ve had too – in the Marines and in the civilian world. But it was work – com watch in a van at 03:30, walking a wire in the dark looking for a break, installing and debugging enterprise software on a deadline.
Now, what the guys in the head shed are doing is _work_, but you don’t gotta sit around punching buttons on a computer to make it happen: their job is to think for a living. You can’t think if you’re not giving your brain a rest and recharging your batteries.
I did this for years working for a consulting company.
I’ll bet you had downtime between engagements – and when the engagement was done you were gone and their problems were no longer yours.
What Team Obama is talking about is a daily grind every day for at least four years. With no downtime or slack.
Well, where in the Constitution does it say that the morning meetings have to start at 7:30AM? If Obama is more of a night person, and needs his senior staff there with him, then move the morning meeting schedule back to 10:00 or so.
This was reason why SAC had a 12 hour maximum duty day. Sure we cheated a little and you could get by with an occasional 13 hour day, but no one wanted a tired airman or flight crew handling “special” weapons, delivery systems, or components.
Jim, I wonder if a tired aircrew is ever a good idea.
I think it is possible the concept of ‘crew rest’ was abused from time to time … I recall that a flight from PI to Bangladesh was stopped for ‘crew rest’ in Thailand. And that the California Air Guard crew doing the flying were curiously well equipped for 24 hours of partying and cheap shopping there.
Meanwhile, no one thought to tell the dumb guys in cargo hold we’d be staying in Thailand for 24 hours .. and me short on cash and with no civilian clothes.
Brian, the Tanker crews did have a reputation for enjoying various recreational activities during “rest” time. Bombers usually just passed over head without landing. Crew time for B52′s were extended through pharmaceutical means to allow 36 hour missions but these were rare. Anyone for a non stop, and no landing, flight from LA to Egypt and back? Or a quick run from LA to down Bagdad, make a delivery without landing, and come home? That is not to say that rest time did not start with a selection of beverages to ensure a good sleep.