5 years, no days off, one 5 day holiday per year, on call 24/7 for the duration, and I'm just fine.
You mention hard work, but I would argue you are really not working that hard. Working hard (either physically or mentally) like you say you do is simply not sustainable long term. I have known people who have put themselves in the hospital through burnout. Sleeping at the office 6 days/week, living on vending machine food, and the stress of the whole thing is physically dangerous. This doesn't even address the quality of their work which went down over time.
It's similar to the overtraining concept when weight lifting. If you are only playing with the pink weights then it's easy to workout for hours each day, every day. Start messing around with real weight on the same schedule and your body will eventually start regressing. It simply does not have time to fully recover from each workout. I believe this also happens with tough mental work.
Keep in mind this isn't talking about a crunch time or short stints of crazy work. Burnout comes from long runs of working at a non-sustainable pace.
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5 years, no days off, one 5 day holiday per year, on call 24/7 for the duration, and I'm just fine.
You mention hard work, but I would argue you are really not working that hard. Working hard (either physically or mentally) like you say you do is simply not sustainable long term. I have known people who have put themselves in the hospital through burnout. Sleeping at the office 6 days/week, living on vending machine food, and the stress of the whole thing is physically dangerous. This doesn't even address the quality of their work which went down over time.
It's similar to the overtraining concept when weight lifting. If you are only playing with the pink weights then it's easy to workout for hours each day, every day. Start messing around with real weight on the same schedule and your body will eventually start regressing. It simply does not have time to fully recover from each workout. I believe this also happens with tough mental work.
Keep in mind this isn't talking about a crunch time or short stints of crazy work. Burnout comes from long runs of working at a non-sustainable pace.