Consider this:

The average American sleeps less than 6 ½ hours a night — and the costs include not just much higher rates of illness, but also significantly worse performance.

A comprehensive study by Ernst & Young showed that the longer the vacation their employees took, the better they performed. Yet more than half of all Americans now fail to take all of their vacation days and 30 per cent of Americans use less than half their allotted vacation time.

Working more than 50 hours a week has been correlated in a raft of studies with less sleep, less physical activity, higher job dissatisfaction and ultimately worse performance.

In our own work in companies, we've consistently observed that the longer and more continuously people work, the less marginal return they get from each additional hour — and the more alienated and disengaged they become.

Getting more tasks accomplished — say writing and responding to scores of emails in between other activities — may technically represent higher productivity, but it doesn't necessarily mean adding greater value.

Instead, the ethic of more, bigger, faster ultimately generates value that is narrow, shallow and short-term.

Working frantically all the time leads to collapse. "How are you?' we ask each other. "Busy!!!!" is the standard reply. But busy doing what?

What happens when we are exhausted and frightened? We miss stuff. We narrow our focus so we cannot see the connections. We become "blind". We also become ill and dysfunctional.

How do we get off this treadmill? I think the key is to look for what the key outcomes should be and not the tasks. Most leaders don't even know what the key outcomes should be.

Do you know yours?