>Does that mean that from just working extremely hard, you can never (very likely) get a burnout? That would be big news. The research suggests that burnout is

>Does that mean that from just working extremely hard, you can never (very likely) get a burnout? That would be big news. The research suggests that burnout is a lot less likely if you enjoy your job and have sufficient support (see the Demands-Resources model of burnout). From research into the brain (see Boksem 2008, and Noakes 2012) there appear to be areas in the brain dedicated to calculating the costs vs benefits of performing activities. Some of the inputs to this system are emotion-based, but others are physiological (e.g. sleep, tissue damage, etc). You can override your brain's fatigue/tiredness signals, but if you do that long-term then burnout will still likely occur. An interesting factoid is that fatigue itself is actually an itself (see Noakes' reviews). So what will likely happen if you continue working hard 16 hour days is that your brain will say "enough is enough" at some point, and you will start to feel negative emotions towards your work even though you previously enjoyed it (and even though consciously you still want to do it). >By the way, I've heard that sleeping a lot (like 10 hours per night minimum) helps with burnout; not sure if it is universally true. Well, it will certainly help if you are suffering from short-term burnout, or to avoid burnout in the first place. Sleep is definitely one of the factors that the brain uses in determining fatigue/burnout.