Why Does Spencer Greenberg Call 70-hour Weeks a Trap?

Spencer Greenberg says healthy productivity equals time times efficiency times importance. It is the value you produce each week from what you fundamentally value, across everything you care about, rather than one kind of output.

Time is the number of hours you work. Efficiency is the fraction of a project you complete with each hour. Importance is the total value, based on what you care about, of finishing the project. Chasing only how much you create at a job can cost family life, relationships, and hobbies.

The equation shows where to tune. When the hours on things you care about are low, raise time. When the week is already 70 hours, pushing time is a trap. The last few hours cost a lot and return very little.