How leaders can stop working weekends

Do you find yourself working over your weekends? You’re not alone. A recent Harvard Business School study found that CEOs work an average of 62.5 hours a week, with 79% working weekends. Meanwhile, Samsung recently mandated a six-day workweek for leaders, to “inject a sense of crisis” after its weakest financial year in over a decade last year.

Samsung’s move reflects a profoundly misguided understanding of effective leadership. It’s akin to placing a bucket under a leaky roof instead of repairing the roof—likely to cause more harm than good. This decision underscores a common issue where leaders, under immense pressure to drive success, run up what I call an “emotional overdraft”—overcoming business challenges at the cost of their own mental and physical health.

Overworking leaders can lead to poor decisions, lower productivity, and increased burnout. Effective time management, including adequate rest and personal time, is crucial for sustaining high performance and leadership effectiveness.

Here’s how you can avoid this pitfall, stop working weekends, and maintain a 40-hour week without sacrificing success.

The high cost of working weekends

Leaders often feel under pressure to work at weekends, which can have severe consequences. Here’s why it’s damaging:

1. Reduced resilience: Continuous work without adequate rest depletes your resilience. Over time, this can lead to burnout, leaving you less effective and unable to handle challenges efficiently. 

1. Decreased productivity: While working longer hours might seem productive, it leads to diminishing returns. Fatigue impairs decision-making and creativity, reducing overall productivity. 

1. Mental and physical health risks: Extended work periods increase stress levels, contributing to mental health issues like anxiety and depression, as well as physical health problems. 

1. Strained relationships: Working weekends often means sacrificing time with family and friends, which can strain personal relationships and lead to a sense of isolation. 

1. Poor work-life balance: An unhealthy work-life balance diminishes job satisfaction and can lead to higher turnover rates, affecting overall team morale and productivity. 

The drivers of weekend working

Ten key drivers are potentially damaging behaviors that push leaders to work more than the 40-hour week.

1. Duty: Believing you must be available at all times because “the buck stops with you.” 

1. Self-Worth: Tying your self-esteem to your work and believing you are only valuable if you’re always working. 

1. Trust: Not trusting others to handle tasks leads to micromanagement. 

1. Empathy: Staying late to support your team, thinking it makes you a better leader. 

1. Urgency: Feeling that everything is urgent and needs your immediate attention. A lack of prioritization. 

1. Cost: Trying to save money by taking on tasks yourself or offloading them to already stretched workmates instead of hiring help. 

1. Expectation: Believing it’s normal to feel stressed and overworked. 

1. JFDI (Just Flipping Do It): Taking pride in being a doer and handling everything yourself. 

1. Load balancing: Stepping in to fill gaps when your team is overloaded. 

1. At a loss: Feeling out of ideas and overwhelmed, defaulting to working harder. 

Achieving a 40-hour week

Build awareness of what’s triggering your emotional overdraft: Awareness of emotional overdraft, even if initially it’s just the term, helps leaders to understand themselves better. It enables them to acknowledge their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and ultimately make better choices to return to a healthy work/life equilibrium.

Get familiar with your key drivers. Simple awareness will allow you to plan or mitigate times you’re likely to start dipping into your emotional overdraft. Everyone needs to work a little harder sometimes, but consistently working weekends is unsustainable.

Prioritize and delegate: Identify tasks that only you can do and delegate the rest. Trust your team and give them the autonomy to succeed. This lightens your load and empowers your team.

Focus on high-impact activities: Most CEOs spend 20% of their time on mundane tasks—work that anyone could do but you pick up anyway. Focus on high-impact activities that drive your organization forward. Eliminate or delegate tasks that do not require your expertise.

Reject the myth that it should be hard: A particularly harmful myth about leadership is the prevailing belief that you must always struggle. Work smarter, not harder: get some help; call in some favors; delegate; improve processes. There are thousands of ways to get more done with less effort if we can break our habitual ways of working.

Build a support network: Create a personal board—including a coach, a cheerleader, a mentor, a peer, etc.—who can provide guidance, support, and accountability. This group can offer perspective, help you stay focused on your priorities, and warn you when you’re slipping into unhealthy behaviors.

Understand the ripple effect: Your behavior sets a precedent. By working weekends, you signal to your team that this is expected. Change starts at the top, so model the work-life balance you wish to see in your organization.

Value your own health: We all have different levels of resilience. What is exhilarating and energizing to one person can be a week of recovery for another. Without your resilience, your impact and effectiveness at work and at home wanes. Start to appreciate sleep, rest, and play – see them as enablers to get your best work done, rather than an inconvenience that stops you from sending ‘just one more email’. After all, if your mobile phone battery dies, you don’t expect it to make “just one more call” and consider it weak if it doesn’t work.

Be empathetic, but not at all costs: While empathy is important, it should not come at the expense of your wellbeing. Support your team, but also set clear boundaries to protect your own time and health.

Samsung’s six-day mandate starkly contrasts with global trends towards shorter work weeks. Trials of four-day workweeks in the UK, Iceland, and New Zealand have shown significant benefits, including increased productivity, reduced sick days, and improved employee satisfaction.

Leaders can achieve remarkable success without sacrificing their weekends, and they must. I know lots of highly successful CEOs who also sleep well at night. By understanding and managing the drivers that push you to work excessively, setting clear boundaries, and prioritizing effectively, you can enjoy a balanced workweek. This benefits your personal wellbeing, enhances your leadership effectiveness, and drives sustainable business success.