I'm definitely not suggesting this is the norm (especially for new investigators or those going up for tenure) but my time in academic research has been kind of

I'm definitely not suggesting this is the norm (especially for new investigators or those going up for tenure) but my time in academic research has been kind of the opposite. Almost everyone in my lab would take at minimum the week from christmas to new years off. There's a pretty big annual conference in my field every late October/early November, so really every year, not much gets done at all from November to mid-January unless you're a student close to defending your dissertation. In fact a lot of people I knew at the time outside my own lab cited non-strict hours as being one of the main perks of the job along with being relatively easy to take time off for holidays. Again, I get that it's not like that everywhere, but just thought I'd share the "24/7/365 crunch time" isn't completely universal either.