Comment by AnimalMuppet

One of the tenets of Extreme Programming is, "Quit when you're tired." Why? Because it's faster.

It's not faster today - if you kept working, you'd presumably get more than zero done. But you'd also create more bugs, and you'd come back more tired tomorrow. Coding is not an assembly line; your brain needs to be fresh.

Taking time to pause, reflect,and think is the same. It's slower in the next minute, maybe in the next hour. But stopping to think and realizing what is the right thing to do can save you days of waste.

My first boss said, "You need to learn when the most productive thing you can do is go look out the window for 15 minutes." After 30 years, it's still good advice.

I'm ignoring your point about work-life balance here. All I'm saying is, too much emphasis on speed slows you down, even only considering work.