People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours
Many years ago I was working for a small consulting firm and had a stretch of time with a lot of overtime; aka &quot;crunch time&quot;. Since these were billable hours, time was tracked daily, even if they weren&#x27;t all actually billed. The tracked hours varied over the ~6 month span, but ranged from 55 hours a week to 93 for one week. Of course not 100% of the time was spent on actual work but it was pretty close.<p>The 93 hour week was pretty much: go to work, eat meals at desk, go home, work from home until bed time, go to sleep, then repeat. But in general weird things happened during that time, probably due to a combination of stress and unhealthy habits. For example:<p>- I&#x27;ve never been a morning person and struggled to wake up before 9 all my life. During this time I woke up early to meet with the client early in the morning. After some time I&#x27;d habitually wake up 15 minutes before 6, which was when my alarm was set at. Also due to lack of sleep I&#x27;d always be pissed that I was missing out on 15 minutes of sleep too.<p>- I was sleep deprived but didn&#x27;t feel sleepy at all during the day. Granted I did consume a lot of coffee, but still. Adrenaline?<p>- Got drunk really easily. Part of client facing work is drinks with clients every so often. I used to be able to drink 4-5 beers and not show much effect externally. Towards the end of this period 1-2 drinks and I&#x27;d be slurring.<p>- Perversely, things were often times &quot;fun&quot;. The team got really close to each other and we actually looked forward to going to the client office to do &quot;battle&quot;.<p>Definitely not sustainable nor healthy. I got pats on the back and some token raises &#x2F; bonuses but I&#x27;ve since learned that going above and beyond like this is not worth it. The hit to mental and physical health is just not worth the small amount of extra money and (possibly) career advancement.