Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) underlings are powering his takeover of the government with a “hardcore” work ethic that sacrifices sleeping for around-the-clock grinding.

Musk boasted that they are working long hours, even over weekends because their “opponents” take that time off. They moved sofa beds into the Office of Personnel Management and other government agencies. One seller of trendy “sleep pods” generously sent their product to Musk and his team, hoping to help them catch some precious zzz’s.

It is an old-school Silicon Valley mentality, which values an absolute time commitment above everything else. The image of Musk hunkering down in a federal office building evokes the tales of him sleeping on the Tesla factory floor. The hustle culture of Silicon Valley is replete with these legends of company founders and their minions sleeping at their desks for days on end trying to crack an important problem on their way to glory. This is a culture that has sought for years to “hack” sleep — something they view as a woeful inefficiency — by, for example, the practice of breaking sleep into bite-sized portions throughout the day rather than one big chunk at night.

Some House Republicans have suggested that Capitol Hill, the entire federal government, and the country in general have something to learn from this zealous work ethic. The pandemic-driven heyday of remote work is over; corporate executives across different industries are increasingly pushing workers to recommit to coming to the office and generally prioritizing work above all else, a more Muskian ethos.

But the fetishization of this hardcore, no-sleep mentality chafes against what the vast majority of research advises: We need more sleep — not less. The modern world makes it hard to get a good night’s rest. A lack of quality sleep affects not only our short-term cognitive and physical capabilities, but also the longer-term prognosis for deadly diseases like heart disease and cancer.

The medical research here is clear: We are not better off subsisting on five or six hours of sleep while we grind away — we need more.

The challenge is figuring out how to get those eight hours, no matter whether you are overhauling the federal bureaucracy or just trying to be your best self.

Why our brains need sleep

The modern eight-hour standard took shape in parallel to the Industrial Revolution, when more people started working clearly........

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