I wasn’t so much trying to make my example a reason, as to say that I relate my own experience to the wealth of evidence.

> The level of stress isn't linear as the weekly number of hours increases.

This is true, and I definitely can relate to that as well. And I’d still feel the same way, now, if I’d only ever worked 50 hours in a week.

I’ll also add that the level of stress isn’t even consistent over multiple sustained weeks of the same level of overwork. When I even could work a 60 hour week, the second one in a row was much harder. The next one drastically harder still, and so on. And my probably-permanent burnout wasn’t from one particularly long week, it was from sustaining 60-100 hour weeks for about six months straight, with a lot of prior stressors, while developing a very strong internal rejection of sustaining anything like it while it was happening. In the end it was an action motivated by a sense of duty to address problems that put me in this position as fully as I could, so I could move on and never overwork for anyone or anything ever again.

But I’m cautious even saying all of that now, because any way I frame it suggests there’s an overwork compromise that might make sense. There isn’t. In hindsight, the first week I put too much of myself into work was one too many.