The Winter Olympics are starting in a week. Pay attention to the interviews with the athletes and the behind the scenes footage. These are some of the best athletes in the world, and they spend a great deal of their time doing exercises that barely look like the sport they compete in.
If you want to be great at something, you have to work very hard but some of that work has to be doing something else.
Take ten or twenty or thirty of those hours and do something else. Write a video game, blog, learn linear algebra, maybe again. Get some cardio. Meet new people and learn how to talk to them. Read some philosophy and ethics.
Any and all of these will further your goal.
In reference to the movie "Election", don't be a Tracy Flick in the workplace.
Running as fast as you can in the wrong direction helps nobody. It’s the difference between being efficient and being effective. You need to step back and think about what you’re doing frequently.
People who are behaving in unsustainable ways and have employees reporting to them tend to be pretty awful managers. I've worked in teams run by such managers - it's a shitshow. When employees are routinely crying in the bathroom because of a single person, it's certainly not just "self" destructive anymore.
I had a few months shipping a project where work alone, before studying in spare time, hit about 80. I was not at a great company but was bumped up very high compared to the rest of the new grads and put at the helm of an important project for the company... it was a great career opportunity and I had to get a lot done. Working 80 hours is a bragging right only for a fool. I would do it again in a heartbeat if I owned the company, had a big slice in it, or something like that. However, aside from all of that, looking at my thoughts and actions and all that- staring at a computer screen figuring out logical patterns for 16 hours/day in a cubicle without any meetings is kinda fun- but it’s its own certain kind of madness. Would not put myself into that exact situation again.
If I would code for just 60 hours/week I would only last less than two weeks. My spine and back would probably give up on me before that. Other than that I would be the worst father, friend and husband ever since my brain would be totally messed up between working hours, and in the long run during them as well.
Not to mention my productivity would be dipping to like 30% after a week or so with that pace. Today I have 5-7 highly productive hours out of 8 working remote. Sometimes less, sometimes more. But if I lose my balance and start working an extra hour each day I usually start dipping in productivity and sleep as the days go by.
I really love working 80+ hours, I love hacking shit together as much as the next person here, and I'd like my own company someday so I will likely be working those hours again.
However, I am aware of the damage it will cause to any balance existing in my life and that's a decision I (and anybody else who does so) have (has) to make.