Elon Musk hates the weekend. For well over a decade, the world’s richest man has proclaimed the necessity of working at least 80 hours a week — “peaking above 100 at times,” as he said in 2018 — in order “to change the world.” Now he and his subordinates at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency are supposedly toiling up to 120 hours a week, which is why, in Mr. Musk’s view, their “bureaucratic opponents” stand no chance. “It’s like the opposing team just leaves the field for two days!” Mr. Musk recently remarked. “Working the weekend is a superpower.”

This association between incessant work and entrepreneurial success is pervasive in American business culture today. Jeff Bezos reports working 12 hours every day of the week in the early years of Amazon. The Apple chief executive Tim Cook is famous for sending emails at 4:30 a.m. Mr. Musk’s ostensible boss, despite

Keep reading this article on The New York Times Small Business.