There is a peculiar point in working life when commitment stops being commitment.

It becomes endurance.

Working hard can be satisfying. There are periods in almost any career when longer hours are necessary, deadlines matter and we choose to push ourselves because something is important to us.

But there is an enormous psychological difference between choosing to work hard and existing within a culture where exhaustion has become the price of belonging.

I first wrote about this during the pandemic, prompted partly by reports surrounding working conditions at Goldman Sachs. Junior bankers were describing extraordinarily long working weeks, disrupted sleep, intense pressure and a culture in which saying that you were struggling could itself feel professionally dangerous.

At the time, much of the conversation centred on banking.

The larger question was never really about banking.

It was about what happens when unhealthy behaviour becomes normal simply because enough people participate in it.

When Exhaustion Becomes a Status Symbol

We have an odd relationship with overwork.

Someone who exercises for eight hours every day despite injury would probably concern us. Someone who refuses to sleep because they need to remain productive would eventually worry the people around them.

Yet professionally, similar behaviour can acquire prestige.

Busy becomes successful.

Exhausted becomes committed.

Available at all hours becomes dependable.

And gradually the boundary moves.

What would once have seemed unreasonable becomes an ordinary Tuesday.

The problem is that human physiology does not renegotiate its requirements simply because an organisation has established a demanding culture.

We still need sleep.

We still need relationships.

We still need periods in which our attention is not being sold, measured or interrupted.

And psychologically, we need something perhaps even more fundamental:

the experience that our life still belongs to us.

The Problem Isn’t Working Hard

This distinction matters.

I am not opposed to ambition. Nor do I believe every difficult working environment is inherently damaging.

There are times when people willingly work extraordinarily hard. Entrepreneurs do it. Healthcare professionals do it. Artists do it. Parents do it. People building careers or businesses sometimes decide that a particular period of sacrifice is worth what they hope to create.

Agency changes the experience.

The deeper problem begins when sacrifice is no longer genuinely voluntary.

When leaving at a reasonable time damages your reputation.

When declining another task makes you appear uncommitted.

When everyone knows the workload is unreasonable but nobody wants to be the first person to say so.

That is no longer simply a discussion about working hours.

It becomes a discussion about power, conformity and fear.

Perks Cannot Repair a Broken Culture

One of the stranger developments in modern workplaces has been the attempt to solve structural problems with individual wellbeing initiatives.

Yoga.

Meditation apps.

Mental-health webinars.

Resilience training.

Free food.

Wellbeing days.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things. Some are genuinely useful.

But they become absurd when offered as compensation for the very conditions causing the distress.

If someone is chronically sleep-deprived because of their workload, teaching them breathing exercises does not solve the workload.

If someone cannot disconnect from work without fearing professional consequences, an online seminar about boundaries does not give them boundaries.

You cannot wellness-programme your way out of an unhealthy system.

Sometimes the environment needs to change.

What Overwork Does to the Mind

Chronic pressure does something subtle before it does something dramatic.

People adapt.

That sounds positive, but adaptation is not always health.

We can become accustomed to anxiety.

We can become accustomed to exhaustion.

We can become accustomed to checking messages late at night, waking thinking about work and feeling guilty when doing absolutely nothing.

Eventually a person may stop asking:

Is this reasonable?

Instead they ask:

Why can’t I cope with it better?

That is an important psychological shift because the problem has moved from the environment into the person’s interpretation of themselves.

The workload remains excessive, but now the individual feels inadequate for struggling with it.

Money Complicates the Question

High-paying professions make this particularly interesting.

If someone is being compensated extremely well, where does personal responsibility begin?

That question cannot simply be dismissed.

Adults make trade-offs. Someone may knowingly accept a highly demanding position because the salary, experience, contacts or future opportunities make the sacrifice worthwhile.

But money does not make every condition healthy.

Nor does accepting a job mean permanently consenting to whatever culture develops around it.

There is also a trap hidden inside increasingly high remuneration.

The more expensive your lifestyle becomes, the harder leaving can feel.

Mortgage.

School fees.

Car.

Status.

Professional identity.

Social circle.

Suddenly the salary that once represented freedom becomes the thing preventing you from exercising it.

That is worth thinking about.

There is little point earning enough money to create freedom if the process leaves you psychologically unable to use it.

Work From Home Didn’t Solve the Problem

The pandemic disrupted another assumption: that the office itself was the primary source of workplace pressure.

For some people, working from home was liberating.

For others, the boundary between work and life almost disappeared.

The commute vanished — but so did the psychological transition between being at work and being at home.

Technology made people reachable almost everywhere.

That has left us with a question that remains relevant years later:

If work can happen anywhere, where does work end?

The answer cannot simply be wherever the laptop closes.

It has to involve boundaries of attention as well.

So When Is Enough, Enough?

There isn’t a universal number of hours.

One person may thrive working fifty hours on something meaningful while another becomes depleted working thirty-five hours in an environment they dread.

The better questions are:

• Can I psychologically leave work when the working day ends?
• Am I regularly sacrificing sleep to keep up?
• Do I still have meaningful relationships outside work?
• Can I say no without disproportionate fear?
• Is this pressure temporary, or has temporary become permanent?
• Am I choosing this life, or merely becoming accustomed to it?
• And perhaps most importantly: if nothing changed for five years, would I still choose it?

That last question can be uncomfortable.

It is supposed to be.

A Note From 2026

I originally wrote about this subject during the COVID period, when working practices were changing extraordinarily quickly and reports about extreme working cultures were receiving considerable attention.

Several years later, I think the more interesting question is not whether Goldman Sachs — or any particular company — worked people too hard.

It is why human beings are so capable of adapting to circumstances that make them unhappy.

We do it in workplaces.

We do it in relationships.

We do it with money.

We do it with families.

Something becomes normal, and because it is normal, we stop asking whether it is good.

There is a difference between resilience and accommodation.

Resilience helps us move through difficult periods without losing ourselves.

Accommodation can mean becoming so accustomed to an unhealthy situation that we no longer recognise it as unhealthy.

Work matters.

Achievement matters.

Money matters.

Purpose matters.

But none of them should require us to disappear in order to obtain them.

Sometimes the most important question isn’t:

How much more can I manage?

It is:

Why have I decided that I should have to?