This. One summer I worked 80 hour weeks doing construction. I did restaurants when I was young and in university. Coding is a walk in the park compared to actual exhausting work.
Well one is taxing the muscles and the other the brain, can’t both be exhausting, in different ways? Neurotransmitters are not an infinite resource, and there’s trash the brain generates in response to activity that needs clearing out every night.
Physical work exhaustion also means complete mental exhaustion at the same time. You can write code for 10h/day and be completely mentally exhausted but turn off laptop and immediately go enjoy swimming in pool or running or sitting in bar drinking with friends. On the other hand you can move heavy boxes for 10h/day and the only thing that you could do afterwards is lay down half-dead. Certainly not having energy for coding or using computer in any way, or no longer than 10-15 minutes before going to sleep in the chair. At least this is how it works for me personally.
I don’t agree. I’ve been in this situation multiple times where I worked physically until exhaustion. Grabbing the MacBook and doing some coding felt good afterwards.
