Many if not most productive academics have such insane schedules. They’re not necessarily asocial. I think the important distinction is in what I’d call “bullsh

Many if not most productive academics have such insane schedules. They’re not necessarily asocial. I think the important distinction is in what I’d call “bullshit socializing.” A lot of what regular people do in the name of socializing is probably not helping them in any way. Academics get trained to not need this to relax necessarily. I did my PhD in a lab that demanded it: we were expected to put 6 days, 12 hours a day. It’s possible for maybe 30% of population maybe? Especially if you’re privileged and don’t have to worry about other things in life (like kids, parents, money, physical health, chronic issues, mental health, etc). So in some ways the ability to train and be able to adopt this more “productive” life is a bit exclusionary and even discriminatory. In the end I chose not to continue in academia primarily because of this demand, I just didn’t feel like it was worth it. Now I’m in tech and I do get bored, but happy that I have the choice to set my hours.