Burnout and health

What 80-hour weeks do to your body, and what changes after you leave

7 min read

The mental side of finance burnout gets talked about. The physical side gets ignored until it announces itself. And it does announce itself. People who lived it describe the body keeping a ledger the whole time:

"I was living on cortisol and adrenaline the whole time. I've been sick more since leaving, on normal sleep, than in the prior five or six years."A former analyst, on what the hours were hiding

That last part is the tell. Many people are not actually healthy during the grind. They are running on stress hormones that mask the damage until they stop.

What the hours quietly cost

• Chronic stress load. Constant cortisol and adrenaline are useful in a sprint and corrosive over years. The body is not built to stay in that state indefinitely.
• Sleep debt. Reports of "severe insomnia despite amazing deal flow" are common. Sleep is where the body repairs; take it away and everything else degrades.
• Visible toll. People describe dropping "close to 30 pounds", "barely any time to shower, eat, or sleep." One person recalled, "I once worked 25 hours straight and had a mental breakdown in the shower."

What people notice after they leave

The recoveries are strikingly consistent. Once the cortisol drip stops, sleep returns, minor illnesses that were being suppressed surface and then clear, and energy comes back. As one person put it, "no amount of money was worth my mental and physical health, and I've never regretted leaving." Another, months out, was simply "so happy to be free of it."

What to do with this

None of this is an instruction to quit tomorrow, and health is not the only variable in the decision. But it belongs in the decision, weighted honestly, not discovered in a hospital. If your body is already sending signals, that is real evidence, and evidence deserves a place in the calculation. Our piece on a job that's hurting you vs. one that's just hard helps you read those signals.

The Decision puts your health alongside the money and the identity questions, so nothing that matters gets left out. The first chapter is free.