If you read more from Carmack, I think you can see why. He pretty much just works on things he finds interesting. Even at FB/Meta, he avoided the draining work

If you read more from Carmack, I think you can see why. He pretty much just works on things he finds interesting. Even at FB/Meta, he avoided the draining work of active leadership and was basically a research scientist that occasionally made posts to try and influence people. It's pretty easy in my experience to work long hours on things that are intellectually engaging. It's the stuff which is frustrating and causes stress/burnout that is hard to work on all the time. I could easily spend 50 hours a week building a compiler but not 50 hours a week writing google docs, sitting in meetings, and talking to people - that would kill me.