Others have said said it: learn to say no. However, tooling helps. Some will not like this suggestion: look into scrum or kanban agile. A single backlog of task

Others have said said it: learn to say no. However, tooling helps. Some will not like this suggestion: look into scrum or kanban agile. A single backlog of tasks and units of work. With scrum, you tell the business "we can do the following stories/tasks in the next two weeks." It is on you and your team to only commit (ie, say no) to work you can reasonably finish in that period. This gives the opportunity to the business to give priority to things they feel are important. If you find that you are over committing, commit to less the following iteration. Understand that, as you said, it is unreasonable to pull heroic hours. Stick to 36 to 44 hours a week. If work is not completed, you alter the following iteration to do less. Finally, a quote that I internalized as a kid: if you can do something about a situation, do so and don't worry. If you cannot do something, then don't and don't worry. Applied to this context, I would take that to mean you can put limits in place and you shouldn't worry if that makes the business upset. This is your life. Time lost with friends and family can never be gotten back. Finding reasonable balance with work is paramount. It is not just that easy. It requires work and discipline. I'm still working on taking the same advice and not working crazy long hours. Fortunately, my manager helps me here and says, "dude. It's late. Go home. Family time."