I used to be a serious workaholic, sleeping 3-5 hours a night during the week-days and, as you suggest, catching up in the weekends. I also used to be a moron. In retrospect, both states were correlated.<p>The first wake-up call was when I moved from Belgium to the US. In Belgium, one enjoys much more paid vacation than in the US. This discrepancy showed me that I did not truly recover in the weekends - I needed my vacation days to recover.<p>Though I consider the work-life balance a misnomer (you have one life; part of the time you 'work,' part of the time you do other things), it is still something you need to regulate. First of all, assuming you are what I would like to call a 'knowledge' worker, you need to do other stuff to keep your mind fresh.<p>Secondly, as a rule of thumb, I would suggest that if your job requires you to work 10+ hours a day, you are doing your job wrong. Though it might sound odd, this is a useful rule of thumb. Whenever you find yourself in such a situation - STOP. STOP and reconsider.<p>EDIT: changed to 10+ hours... (btw: this includes transit)