Elon Musk dropped a bombshell: his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team clocks 120 hours a week. That’s not a typo—120 hours out of the 168 hours we all get in seven days. Do the math: even if they used every leftover minute for sleep, they’d max out at 6.8 hours a night—well shy of the eight hours doctors swear by. And that’s assuming they don’t eat, shower, or see their families. Spoiler: they probably don’t.

“Our bureaucratic opponents optimistically work 40 hours a week,” Musk quipped back in February. “That’s why they’re losing so fast.” For Musk, it’s a flex—a brutal, sleep-deprived middle finger to the 9-to-5 crowd. But at what cost?

The Human Toll of Musk’s Workaholic Gospel

Let’s break it down. A week has 168 hours. Subtract 120 for work, and you’re left with 48. If DOGE employees somehow turned every one of those into sleep (no commute, no meals, no life), they’d still average just 6.8 hours a night. Reality check: Musk hates remote work—he’s called it “morally wrong”—so these folks are likely schlepping to an office, shaving that sleep number even lower. Naps under the desk, anyone?

Science isn’t on Team DOGE’s side. The Mayo Clinic warns that dipping below seven hours of sleep nightly is a fast track to weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, depression—you name it. The CDC doubles down: less than seven hours is a health crisis waiting to happen. And that’s before you factor in the grind itself. The World Health Organization dropped a grim stat in 2021: working 55+ hours a week killed 745,000 people in 2016 from strokes and heart disease alone. Compared to a 35–40-hour week, it’s a 35% higher stroke risk and 17% higher chance of keeling over from heart issues.

“Working 55 hours or more per week is a serious health hazard,” says Dr. Maria Neira, WHO’s public health chief since 2005. Musk’s crew is more than doubling that.

Productivity? More Hours, Less Output

Musk’s all-in philosophy might backfire, too. A 2014 Stanford study found productivity tanks after 50 hours a week. Push to 70, and you’re barely outpacing 56. Translation: those extra hours might just be sweat-soaked busywork. Musk himself hinted at the strain recently, admitting he’s juggling DOGE, Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI “with great difficulty.”

Yet this is vintage Elon. In 2022, he told Baron Capital CEO Ron Baron about his three-year stint living in factories—Fremont, Nevada, take your pick. “I slept on a couch, in a tent on the roof, under my desk in the open,” he said. “I’d wake up smelling like metal dust. Damn uncomfortable.” Work hard, sleep less, win big—it’s the Musk mantra.

The DOGE Dilemma

So here’s the rub: Musk’s DOGE team is outpacing bureaucrats by 80 hours a week, but they’re running on fumes. Six-point-eight hours of sleep—if they’re lucky—won’t cut it long-term. Neither will the human body. Musk may see this as a triumph of will, but research screams caution: overwork kills efficiency, health, and, sometimes, people.

Is this the future of government efficiency? Or a cautionary tale of ambition gone overboard? One thing’s clear: Musk’s DOGE crew isn’t just burning the candle at both ends—they’ve torched the whole damn box.