In any field, there are few, passionate people constantly priding themselves on working late.

I was talking to a good friend of mine, who was working in Japan. In Japan, there is a national vacation week in May called “Golden Week”, where every weekday of that week is somehow a holiday. She didn’t have that week off.  Instead, the company opted to have everybody work in order to “use this time to get ahead of the competition!”

A brilliant plan, had the competitors and virtually every other company in Japan not reached the same conclusion. This policy of “let’s have a vacation-NOT” effectively pisses everyone off, and brings the morale down.

There is a certain sense of glory in any profession, to be “working when nobody else is working.” This is admirable, and often necessary when passion and work comes together. However, brute force such as the quasi-vacation above, only has negative effects. Working through time designated for resting comes at a cost.  Like a loan shark demanding unreasonable interest, it will eventually come and kick your door down.

It’s not difficult to stay up all night working. It takes more skill to have a healthy rhythm in life, working efficiently within a certain timeframe.  This is not the responsibility of a organization, but of the individual.