Devils Advocate: people often use the excuse of "I'm feeling burnt out" to not push themselves. Taking your metaphor of the professional runner, while its clear that they need breaks between marathons, they also push themselves to extremes during training and races to make themselves better.
I think people often feel like they are the technology equivalent of a professional athlete and need time to recover, yet while they are working, they never actually push themselves to their physical (and mental) limits.
No argument that if you work hard, you need vacations. Thats absolutely correct.
Athletes don't push themselves to extremes during training - I remember reading about the training schedule of a pro cyclist (Cavendish IIRC), and it was a lot lighter than my usual day. He was getting up early, doing a couple of hours in the morning, lunch+siesta, then another couple of hours in the afternoon. And nice and early to bed. (He also had someone to cook for him, do his washing, etc. etc.)
Racing is of course a different matter, but even the hardest working athlete (say during the playoffs or a major tournament) is only playing every other day. The Tour de France riders are some of the hardest working, but even then the top riders are only expected to actually be competitive in one major race per year...
I guess it depends on your definition of extreme. My definition is that they are constantly pushing the boundary of what they are capable of, i.e. always just surpassing their current proficiency so that they can constantly get better.
I don't see that same level of intensity in most tech workers I've met.
I think you're overestimating how hard athletes push the boundary of what they're capable of during training: professional athletes are very careful not to overtrain, as that inevitably leads to injury.
That said, I'm not sure we're completely disagreeing, perhaps it's more semantics than anything else... but my definition of intensity also includes a time factor - and a professional athlete has loads of rest time available, something a lot of (most?) tech workers don't seem to have.
There are some sample times here (no guarantees of accuracy, but they seem in line with what I've read previously in interviews), the highest seems to be about 40hrs/week:
I really have a problem with the generalization of "people often use the excuse..." Clearly I'm being picky about language semantics here; however, I think that it's important to note that there is no proof of such a claim.
I hear about "feeling burnt out" so infrequently that I'd argue the opposite is true, and I work around a LOT of hard working people. Then again, I'd have no proof of such a claim.
> ... yet while they are working, they never actually push themselves to their physical (and mental) limits.
You could argue that in the long run, only those who push themselves see any kind of career progression. For the likes of your example the future holds stagnation or, in the most extreme case, unemployment/unemployability.
I think people often feel like they are the technology equivalent of a professional athlete and need time to recover, yet while they are working, they never actually push themselves to their physical (and mental) limits.
No argument that if you work hard, you need vacations. Thats absolutely correct.