I've been working 80+ hours per week for nearly 20 years. I wholeheartedly enjoy what I do but I don't just work on one thing though. It's a combination of direct work, research, and FOSS.

Wow. Well I guess there you are. I cannot imagine this! And I work well over 40 hours a week, last few weeks have been near 80. But as a rule, no way. Guess it takes all kinds.

He is including time spent on here :P

He is including all time spent learning stuff and so on. 40h work + 40h learning/reading HN/doing hobby projects is pretty common.

Is it really? That's 16 hours of work 5 days a week. If you sleep for 8h you don't do anything but work or learn for all of your waking hours.

A more reasonable person would probably put a fair amount of learning time on the weekend, but even then you leave very little time for a social life, physical exercise, eating, relaxing.. things that most healthy people, if not everyone, requires.

Working 40 hours per week and sleeping 8 hours at night leaves you 72 hours of free time a week so you still have time for other activities.

Also, learning and hobby projects can include social aspects.

It's not just about being able to keep that up, either - it's less efficient to work 80 hours consistently and you end up with a large number of hours worked that you get a negative return on because they contribute to burnout without increasing the amount of work you get done by much at all.