[Warning: Long Post]Thanks for all your comments on my previous post! There were many really interesting points made, so I thought I would continue some of the discussion here.
First, the previous post was not intended to disparage people who work 40-hour weeks. Nor is the distinction between 40 versus >40 hours necessarily along the lines of blue- versus white-collar jobs. I have aunts, uncles, and cousins who work blue-collar jobs. Some work fewer hours than I do and some work more. Most people I know, including me, strive for shorter work weeks as
EcoGeoFemme does.
The problem is that, for many of us, 40 hours a week is insufficient for achieving the level of success in our professions that we desire. Perhaps we ought to heed
Arbitrista's and
CAE's suggestions to get our priorities straight and develop healthier and more realistic perspectives on work and success. But as
Propter Doc points out, some of us are simply too much of overachievers to be willing to ease up on the gas pedal.
Is working long hours really necessary for success? Clearly, being efficient at work helps by allowing
Arduous and
EcoGeoFemme to accomplish more during their work days. Incidentally, I hate the idea of "face time," which is one reason I favor an
unstructured system in which I can set my own work schedule and am judged by my productivity instead of my work hours. Academia supports such work habits fairly well, but it's not possible in all professions.
But efficiency can only get one so far. An experiment I often perform is started on Day 0, must be manipulated again on Days 3 and 6, and must be analyzed on Day 7. If I were to never work on weekends, I would only be able to do two of these assays a week, whereas someone who is willing to work on weekends can start seven of these a week. Even if we work equally efficiently, that person would still beat me to publishing the results and, by extrapolation, out-compete me for jobs and funding.
This is the crux of the matter: long work hours are driven not by excessive workloads
per se, but by competition amongst scientists for limited resources. I hadn't even thought of competitiveness in the global economy, as
Arduous discusses...I'm still fixated on competition with the people I know!
Propter Doc and I both have overachieving colleagues who consider their work to also be their hobby, passion and life. And as
Doc-In-Training points out, we additionally have to compete against scientists in our field worldwide.
One competes for resources via publications; the more papers the better, and the higher profile the papers, the better. Getting scooped on a publication by a competitor decreases both the number and profile of one's publications. So one works harder and longer in an attempt to stay on top of the game. It isn't necessarily true that longer hours translate into more and better papers (there's an element of luck involved), but it's definitely true in my field that perpetually working shorter hours than one's competitors results in fewer and lesser papers.
Is there a solution to the problem of long work hours?
EcoGeoFemme suggests adding more people to the workforce to decrease each individual's workload. I'm not sure that will help in academia since it will result in more scientists, each with fewer first-author publications due to credit-sharing, all competing for the same number of faculty positions. If we increase the number of faculty positions to compensate, that will result in more faculty competing for the same amount of funding. If we had the power to increase funding to a level that would support all the extra faculty, we wouldn't be in our current state of intense competition to begin with.
One could also choose to work in positions that are less demanding, as
Propter Doc suggests. There is great variance in work hours between labs, departments, and institutions, but there's a catch: places that are less demanding also tend to be less highly-ranked. And there is definitely a "pedigree effect," based on the prestige of one's PI or institution, that influences one's chances of getting grants funded, even at the postdoctoral level. At the faculty level, working at less highly-ranked institutions will affect one's ability to attract high-quality graduate students and postdocs, which in turn affects one's productivity and ability to get funding.
So perhaps the best course of action is to follow
Academic's advice and try to find a decent work/life balance by setting aside some work-free hours each day. I think it's also helpful to have a realistic notion, as
ScienceGirl does, of how many hours one is willing to devote to work, and whether that will accommodate the kind of personal life one wants to have.
I decided at the end of my postdoc not to pursue tenure-track positions in part because I knew that the number of hours I was willing to put in would not allow me to be competitive in the type of institutions I would want to work at. What I have now is a compromise between career ambition and personal life. And at least so far, it's working out fine.
But it's not quite that simple. This isn't just about whether the religious right believes in evolution...frankly, I'm of the same opinion as the bumper sticker. This is about religious conservatives sinking their claws into every major socio-political issue and infesting policy with their dogma. Should we tolerate pharmacists who would sit in moral judgment of a rape victim and refuse to fill her prescription for the morning-after pill? Should we tolerate homophobes who use religion to justify their bigotry and have pushed through constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage in multiple states? How about some tolerance for the publishers of the "Nuremberg files" website?
The “works with very small and potentially dangerous organisms” badge. In which recipient conducts hazardous research on very small creatures.
The “sexing up science” badge. In which the recipient has had experience with things such as selective breeding, crossing, mate selection, prokaryotic conjugation, fertility studies, STD related microbiology, and/or any other acceptable interpretation of the badge. 
The “I work with way too much radioactivity, and yet still no discernable superpowers yet” badge. Although not for lack of trying….
The “I’ve set fire to stuff” badge (LEVEL IV). In which the recipient has set fire to his or herself while performing experiments in the name of science. Cooking or drinking accidents do not qualify one for this badge.
The “has frozen stuff just to see what happens” badge (LEVEL III). In which the recipient has frozen something in liquid nitrogen for the sake of scientific curiosity.
The “has done science whilst under the influence” badge. This can apply to both achieving moments of intellectual clarity or actual performance of an experiment whilst under the influence. It presumes talking about science under the influence a given.
Thanks to movies like "Outbreak" and books like The Hot Zone, the name "Ebola" inevitably conjures up images of a panic-stricken populace, medical workers in biohazard suits, and terrified victims locked away in isolation chambers and bleeding from every orifice.
