> what would be the cost to our society, and to the individuals personally, if Einstein, Dirac, Pauli, or whoever had been told to cut down on the amount of tim

> what would be the cost to our society, and to the individuals personally, if Einstein, Dirac, Pauli, or whoever had been told to cut down on the amount of time they spend thinking about physics stuff, they need to achieve good work/life balance. I think Einstein's balancing of work (at the Patent Office) / life (his academic hobby in Physics) served him well. > Nobody goes to the kung fu school and says "hey it's bad to exercise this much, you shouldn't kick so high or punch so fast, just make sure not to train that much, okay?" Overtraining is absolutely a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtraining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtraining > in today's world, there are always proximal things you can do that are not damaging that will improve your job or your ability to do your job over time. There's always an opportunity cost, even if those proximal things don't directly cause damage. For your impassioned knowledge worker, this might be not getting enough sleep, or not practicing your more general interpersonal skills, or not having enough downtime to let your subconcious mull over work problems from new angles. Working hard is great... to a point. Doing nothing but working hard can have some serious side effects, including to your productivity, that one should be cognizant of. Yes, even if you seem to enjoy your job.