An executive can keep meeting visible commitments while the work takes progressively longer. Preparation moves into the evening. Small decisions are postponed. A day off becomes time to catch up on tasks that no longer fit the week.
These changes deserve attention before they become the ordinary way the role operates.
Identify what recovery is competing with
Review two recent weeks. Mark late work, travel, interrupted sleep and periods when there was no real opportunity to disengage. Then distinguish exceptional demands from arrangements that repeat.
The most useful change may concern ownership. If every exception returns to the executive, a protected evening will remain vulnerable until the escalation rule changes.
Repeated short sleep can affect performance without a matching increase in how sleepy a person reports feeling. Van Dongen and colleagues' experiment is one reason to avoid using familiarity with fatigue as proof that it has no cost.
Make a change that survives a busy week
Choose a recurring demand to reduce. Establish a travel buffer, move an avoidable late call or give another person authority over a defined class of decisions. Agree on the exceptions in advance.
Track whether the new arrangement happens. Ask whether preparation improves, work stops closer to the intended time or fewer matters have to be revisited.
Persistent sleep problems, exhaustion or changes in functioning may require qualified medical attention. At work, the responsibility is to examine the demands the organization is creating and stop treating every one of them as inevitable.
