Any farm kid can tell you that animals are smart, especially if they've gotten into a battle of wits with a goat.
As Mark Twain said (and I am paraphrasing), "the only distinction between man and the lesser animals is that the lesser animals don't sit around and talk about what makes them different from us."
I remember reading this published insight[1] from Marissa Mayer a few months ago:
Burnout is caused by resentment
Which sounded amazing, until this guy who dated a neuroscientist commented[2]:
No. Burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fail. It's the result of a negative prediction error in the nucleus accumbens. You effectively condition your brain to associate work with failure.
Subconsciously, then eventually, consciously, you wonder if it's worth it. The best way to prevent burnout is to follow up a serious failure with doing small things that you know are going to work. As a biologist, I frequently put in 50-70 and sometimes 100 hour workweeks. The very nature of experimental science (lots of unkowns) means that failure happens. The nature of the culture means that grad students are "groomed" by sticking them on low-probability of success, high reward fishing expeditions (gotta get those nature, science papers) I used to burn out for months after accumulating many many hours of work on high-risk projects. I saw other grad students get it really bad, and burn out for years.
During my first postdoc, I dated a neuroscientist and reprogrammed my work habits. On the heels of the failure of a project where I have spent weeks building up for, I will quickly force myself to do routine molecular biology, or general lab tasks, or a repeat of an experiment that I have gotten to work in the past. These all have an immediate reward. Now I don't burn out anymore, and find it easier to re-attempt very difficult things, with a clearer mindset.
For coders, I would posit that most burnout comes on the heels of failure that is not in the hands of the coder (management decisions, market realities, etc). My suggested remedy would be to reassociate work with success by doing routine things such as debugging or code testing that will restore the act of working with the little "pops" of endorphins.
That is not to say that having a healthy life schedule makes burnout less likely (I think it does; and one should have a healthy lifestyle for its own sake) but I don't think it addresses the main issue.
Then I finally realized how many times I've burnt out in my life, and I became much better into avoiding it. Which is really hard to do.
And it seems to me that this is one of the many points that Ben Horowitz talks about on his What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology[3]
Great! Finally somebody explained this to me, I thought it was just a marketing term related to different patents of similar ideas.
I was puzzled by this as I was stopped by a ranger coming out of Waipio Valley on Hawai'i, where there was a sign "4WD only" and my rental car had AWD. I thought they were the same, just different names, so I argued with the ranger that I do in fact have 4WD, which is in my case just called AWD and in other cases 4x4 as well. Well, he was still pretty upset but the "I am a European and we have different cars" finally disarmed him...
I've been working professionally in IT for about 6 years now and the concept of 'working too little' has never come up from any of my managers. I have a strict personal policy of working the exact amount of hours discussed upon hiring, and never responding to calls or email outside of those hours. For example I worked at a Fortune 50 with a 37.5 hour workweek and always stuck to that. I even counted the time I spent at lunch. Issue never raised.
I am not saying cases exist where workers are asked to work more than their agreed hours. I killed myself in kitchens for a $25k salary before switching to tech. These cases are a problem.
My point is that this behavior is often self-imposed. People seem to feel a sense of importance when they overwork themselves. Simply stick to the number of hours you've agreed upon and tell your manager to discuss with their supervisor if they bring it up as a disciplinary issue. This all qualified by being in a position of demand as an engineer.
Point is, you'd be surprised with what you can 'get away with.'
As Mark Twain said (and I am paraphrasing), "the only distinction between man and the lesser animals is that the lesser animals don't sit around and talk about what makes them different from us."