I'll second this, I've also seen a lot of people that like to brag about, e.g. working 80 hour weeks, but usually don't actually do much work. At any given mome

I'll second this, I've also seen a lot of people that like to brag about, e.g. working 80 hour weeks, but usually don't actually do much work. At any given moment they're likely talking to someone, or playing on a phone, etc. As a single dad of a young child, and an academic, this is just impossible for me. I have a few precious hours to work, and need to get the most out of them. I end up being pretty socially isolated at work. I don't agree with the "you might as well forget about it" thing you wrote. Funding in academia is about explaining why what you want to do actually furthers the agenda of the funding agency. If you can master this skill, you can fund almost any work from almost any funding source. It might sound dishonest, but I am convinced it's actually not- the phenomena in our natural world are all connected, and we don't understand them that well. To solve almost any random problem deeply requires work that translates to fundamental advances in almost everything else. Norbert Wiener explains this well in his book Cybernetics, where he talks about how work on missile guiding technology led to his concept of cybernetics, which was a revolutionary way to understand both engineering and biology.