While it would be silly to claim that software engineering is the most demanding profession, there’s more to the work hours than the time spent in front of the screen.

In my personal experience a lot of time is spent working “in the head” that does not involve me being in front of my computer - my wife says I have a programming face often when I sit at dinner or when we are out somewhere because I have code running in my head somewhere behind my eyeballs. At peak times this can persist for days (and needs downtime after to recover).

Switching that off is very hard for me - in contrast with when I did some more physical work in the past where you can get your mind back as soon as you down the tools.