Mental vs physical exhaustion

Early on in my career, I would be able to work 80+ hour weeks at my job. It wasn’t uncommon that every few weeks in a quarter, we’d be so busy that many of us would be in the office 14+ hour days. By the end of that stretch, I would be physically exhausted but after a few good nights of sleep, I’d be back in good position to do it again.

Nowadays, I don’t nearly work that many hours thankfully, but I do feel that I am even more exhausted after a week than I used to be. Part of it could just be age. I was in my early and mid 20s when I was pulling those hours. But perhaps the bigger part of it is that the work I’m doing now is just much more mentally exhausting.

When I was an Associate at my firm, I would just grind out spreadsheet after spreadsheet for 14+ hours a day. It could be mentally stimulating at times, but it was a different part of my brain… I suppose the side that works with numbers and calculations.

Nowadays a lot of what I’m doing requires deep thinking and brainstorming. If it isn’t deep thinking, it’s dealing with people. The work nowadays is just much more mentally taxing than grinding out a spreadsheet for me.

It’s a much different kind of exhaustion from work and simply sleeping it off doesn’t always work. For this reason, I believe weekend time off and vacations are vitally important. I believe the risk of burnout from mental exhaustion is much higher than the risk from physical.. at least for me.