I agree with everyone here in the thread. Balance is super important.
We are not mindlessly sitting in a factory, screwing pipe A to pipe B for 8 hours a day but rather solve problems in beautiful ways through critical thinking, exploration and a keen eye to the future.
I trained and worked as a chef for over 8 years before joining a design school and starting my career in ID.
I loved cooking and the gratification of telling compelling stories through food, but the business killed my passion. I have worked for top people both in kitchens and design firms and I can tell you that even if the schedule in design seems like a challenge sometimes, it’s a cakewalk compared to most high end restaurants out there.
Work is 6 days a week, min. 12 hours a day. High pressure and an aggressive atmosphere constantly. That it was such long hours didn’t actually matter though, since you got paid so badly that on your day off, there was no money left over to do anything anyway…
…but on the flipside, you got to see and learn from true artists at work. So when I was younger I didn’t mind it and loved the ride.
To Yo’s experience, I also was not healthy. There is a culture of drugs and alcohol, personal relationships are fleeting and non-committal, the job always comes first.
Once I got older though, I realized that there is no future there for me and I realized that my passion was more about creating good experiences for people, whatever the medium. Today it’s aluminium and TPU instead of truffles and ribeye.
So sometimes I can’t help but role my eyes a little when I hear young designers complain about too little free time. Not saying this is the case here. Just lending another perspective from another passion driven field.