Thinking about this should keep you up at night

A friend of mine posted an interesting Washington Post article on Facebook today which describes the grueling work schedules of Obama's White House staffers. Often in work by 6am and not home until 10pm, many are abandoning their work-out routines in order to squeeze more hours out of the day for productivity. According to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, "This is a place, because of the stress, the schedule and the sheer hours, that just chews people up and spits them out."

Readying to leave with the President on a weeklong trip across ten time zones, Gibbs analogized himself to a heavyweight boxer lying on the mat after getting knocked out.

Analysts note that the Obama team has had a particularly arduous start as a result of inheriting the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, two wars, and the team's agenda of pushing health care reform, bailouts, Middle East peace, nuclear disarmament, and education reform. The night before the Administration's housing plan was announced this past February, a Treasury Secretary lawyer emailed a document at 3am, requesting comments. 5 people responded back immediately.

What is particularly disturbing about this is the affect of sleep deprivation on work performance and decision-making. Studies tell us that mental fatigue leads to errors in judgment, and is equal to a blood-alcohol level of .10 percent -- which is higher than the legal limit here in New Jersey.

This means that we've got top-level White House staffers and Administration officials walking around with, at best, a serious buzz. At worse, they're essentially drunk on work. This should get our attention.

According to Harvard University professor Martin Moore-Ede, the American politics is one of the few areas that still resists a culture of ensuring people get enough rest.

For the average person, it is not healthy to get less than eight hours sleep nightly over a prolonged period of time. It's also not healthy to be sedentary and eschew exercise.

We all have jobs to do. Many of us have very specific employment obligations which require us to perform narrowly focused, time-consuming tasks which sometime come at the cost of a family outing or weekend off. And yes, I think we all understand that working at the White House requires something more than just a traditional 9 to 5 mentality.

But, like the inevitability of Father Time, failing to lead a balance life, over a period of time, has consequences.

For the United States, it looks like our White House staffers have no intention of striking a balance anytime soon.

So I'm wondering, is this workaholic culture going to change before the chickens come home to roost in the form of a monumental error with potentially devastating ramifications?