"To me, being a CIO is not a job, it's a lifestyle," he says. "When I got into this business, people told me it was a 9[am] to 5[pm] job, but I'd say it's really a 5[am] to 9[pm] job, and there's nothing wrong with that."

Mary Crouch has taken a different path. Crouch is now CIO of Laughlin Memorial Hospital in Greeneville, Tennessee. In her previous job, Crouch regularly put in 60 to 70 hours a week handling operations and security issues as both CIO and CSO of the Phelps County Regional Medical Centre in Rolla, Missouri. As if that weren't demanding enough, Crouch was working on a BS in health-care — a program that required her to be in school for five hours a night on Tuesdays and Thursdays and left her with 30 hours of homework each week. Do the maths. She spent nearly 100 hours working each week. Crouch coped by delegating most day-to-day IT management chores to her three assistant directors. She hired most from inside the hospital and personally trained each of them in areas such as incident response and help desk. She also used money from the general IT budget to pay for external training and classes to supplement what they learned on the job.

"My job is to have a vision," she says. "When you work as hard as I do, it's key to have people who can tackle the day-to-day stuff and make decisions without having to come to me to make every single choice."

Earlier this year, when the hospital's e-mail system crashed, Crouch assigned an assistant to oversee damage control. By spreading the responsibility, she says, she insulates her team from working too hard.

The Price You Pay

Crouch's strategy worked for her and her staff members, but being an extreme CIO isn't all a series of highs and fat paycheques. There are drawbacks to working this long and hard.

While 70- and 80-hour workweeks can be exciting, that sort of intensity can cause productivity to suffer, leaving some leaders spinning their wheels. In fact, productivity decreased by as much as 25 percent when white-collar workers put in 60 or more hours per week over a long period, according to a 2003 study by Circadian Technologies. Fifth Third's Dury usually accomplishes all of his tasks in a given week. But he says there are days where he feels he can't get out from under the to-do list. "Those are the days where I get home and I think to myself: 'Can I run like this forever?'," he says. "Of course, they're usually followed by totally exhilarating days, but the point is that everyone gets challenged from time to time."

There are other drawbacks. Nearly 69 percent of respondents in the CWLP study said they believe they would be healthier if they worked less extremely. They're right. Multiple studies have linked excessive overtime to employee health issues, including high rates of heart disease, high blood pressure and work-related injuries, according to Circadian.

The CWLP study also found 46 percent of extreme workers said work got in the way of good relationships with their spouses. Crouch says that during particularly busy weeks in her last job, she would sometimes go from Monday to Friday without seeing her husband for more than a few minutes.

The couple does spend weekends relaxing and playing golf together, but their busy schedules (he's a hospital plant manager and goes to school at night as well) make weekdays trying and sometimes, as she puts it, "lonesome".