Work to die.

Tech sector has been for ages had an obsession for long work days, at least from 80s when personal computing started to take off - it was passion for the tech. Love the job you do and you'll never work a day in your life, right? And that has been a thing ever since. Love the work and work long hours. But it's not just that, not anymore. Passion argument has been taken over and now everyone should - must - have it. And everyone must work long days. Not too long ago Jack Ma praised his underlings' for working very hard, with so called 996 schedule - 12 hours a day (9 to 9), 6 days a week - but bringing on some hard criticism towards the practice.

Long time ago I found out that even typical 8 hours a day for 5 days a week isn't fully productive on creative side of things, and I do believe this applies to repetitive work (like assembly and other such production) as well. On a good day I can do maybe six hours (minus breaks) of creative work, after which my mind seriously needs some recharging time. Sometimes productive time is even less. After that all that happens is just sitting there, staring the screen without getting anything worthwhile done. Fortunately I at least can just get out and go home, instead of being forced to waste both my and company time by pretending to actually do something.

Really, anyone who has done this kind of work who is also not lying to themselves (and others) knows this perfectly well, yet for some reason so many are still willing to "work" insane hours for oftentimes no rewards at all (no overtime pay). These days corporate doesn't even reward this - people are just replaceable cogs in machine that are to be thrown out when they inevitable burn out and break. Only thing this does is to make long work hours without pay a norm and thus not playing the long work hour game becomes a punishable offense. And a new, fresh (and cheaper) cog is brought in to replace that now worthless (to them) cog.

Fortunately I don't have to play that game. In Europe (generally speaking) situation is much, much better so not paying overtime is much harder for corporations to get away with (yet it still happens), and since I own my own business, I can set my own work hours. And I do.

I still do occasionally work for longer days too, of course, but only rarely and then it is to get one single critical thing done, and in general I have set myself a strict 8-16 schedule in office, and work is left in the office at the end of the day, allowing me to relax properly before the next day. Without this I very quickly find myself in highly strung, anxious and even angry state, with blood pressure being through the roof.

Even if I do directly benefit from the work I do over time, it still isn't reason to kill myself by overworking myself right now. Especially when I know I would not be productive working long hours anyway.

And you really should admit this to yourself too. Playing stupid games gets only stupid rewards, and risking ones health for essentially no benefit is one of the stupidest rewards I can think of.