This through crossed my mind because I had just finished two weeks of vacation where I literally did nothing related to work, and it was really relaxing.
So the take away is that in order to avoid burnout you need to mindfully develop the skill of 'stopping work'. While that is easy when you work on a factory line and you can't bring the tools home, and its really really hard when your job consists mostly about thinking about how to solve a problem.
I found early on that since I really enjoy programming I couldn't "stop" instead I had to shift to one of my projects so that it would be more enjoyable for me. That works a bit but not as much as sitting on the deck of a mountain cabin with no Internet connectivity does :-).
But the bottom line is figure out a way to "not work", whether it is by reading, exercising, or doing some hobby, so that you don't let the stress of work overwhelm you.
As someone who often struggles to 'turn off' after work, this is my favorite way to disconnect. I try to make it out fairly regularly to camp deep in the backcountry–there's no better relief from work stress than sitting by a campfire in the forest, a full day's hike from the car, parked an hour's drive past the last trace of cell service.
The feeling of freedom is intoxicating–the feeling that there is literally no way that some work 'emergency' could crop up and demand my attention. It's something I used to get on airplanes, but with the increasing availability of in-flight wifi it's not quite so peaceful.
Sports in general are really effective against stress, it's hard to think of something else at all when engaged in the exercise. Make that a hobby and it's a long term recipe for a great career.
Given my typical new year's resolution I'll have to try the physical activity trick as well :-)
Some production work is like that. You don't have a "real" production network unless the SCADA is air gap firewalled from the rest of the universe for safety reasons, and if its safety critical some of your coworkers will be onsite 24x7 so you can relax when you're offsite.
Learn to say no to your boss. Work, computers and internet are only a small part of life.
Personally, it's not worth the stress. I was in the hospital for stress induced heart failure last year and work was a contributing factor along with urban life. Now I divide my time amongst other things. The market where I live is competitive and anyone who expects me to work a 60 hour week for them all the time and attack me for not doing so can politely fuck right off as it's not worth my life. Thankfully I don't have to deal with this; companies don't like paying overtime and I'm thankful to work for a company that respects my time.
I think loving ones work is the only way to really maintain good work/life balance while working from home.
My work/life balance is essentially balancing things between my hobbies and my family. So, it's a much nicer situation than if I was working on something I didn't love and I had to balance that with hobbies and family life.
Please man up and don't do it to yourselves and to other people.
That said, outside of paid work, I often work/read up on stuff which benefits ME, whether it is professional or personal development.
Actually, my salary is on par with the standard salaries for my area. No, it's not SV level, but salaries in Dallas are much lower than SV across the board.
Cost of living is so much cheaper, though, that I'd rather work at a defense contractor in Dallas than at a unicorn in SV. I can handily afford a 1500 sq. ft. townhouse on $65k/year, here... (I could afford it on less actually... I was making $42k when I first moved in). I don't think anybody in California can say that.
My company recently forced Vodafone Mobile device Management upon us, since that happened many people also stopped syncing their own smartphones (what a horrible app on Android). But I am in R&D where I guess deadlines are less strict...? Even during my PhD the lab would be mostly empty at 18:00 though I guess the people that were still working were the ones ending op at MIT.
I guess there is a reason we don't have a booming start-up culture here :)
Would the Netherlands (one of my favorite places in the world) have a booming startup culture with changes in laws and cultural norms? No, I don't think so. Anyone who wants to be involved with that stuff moves themselves over anyway.
It's odd because the Europeans were the first real entrepreneurs with colonialism, but it seems like that part of European culture (or maybe those particular minded Europeans) were exported and sent off as well.
I'm personally very interested in colonial era history and subsequent history of the Americas since that was the beginning of modern North/South America, and would love to run across a writeup someday attempting to breakdown the differences between new/old world thinking. Because even the Latin nations like Mexico are significantly different in how entrepreneurship is admired than from say, Spain or Italy.
If you own your business, no matter what, you are always thinking of your business. Especially when your business is small and will always be small enough that you're the only significant leadership in the entire company. You won't be doing too much delegation of responsibilities in a food truck.
I wasn't stressed, but not all that satisfied.
My chemical engineer friend gets called into the plant all the time on nights/weekends when things catch fire.
When I said factory I mean like someone who works on the line fixing the machines and works on a fixed schedule with a team of people who all do the same thing.
That sounds like work, why not do it at work?
One of the last things I was supposed to be piloting at my last S/W dev job was Predictive Maintenance scheduling and working with the service techs on what data they used to decide when something needed to be repaired.
At least that was my experience.
There's also a nagging bit that says "the wife and kids are asleep, there's nothing stopping you from sending those emails/working on the fixes you were looking at earlier". Then one email becomes four, a feature is completed/tested/checked in, and it's midnight.
It's not that my employer feels entitled to free labor, it's that my brain can't stop thinking about work. My job has somehow become my hobby.
A friend in Sweden is sometimes on call overnight, but is expected to sleep. If he's called, he gets the rest of the day off, because of Sweden's implementation of the EU law these rules implement.