Social, maybe. Perhaps we should just do a better job of teaching people that the highest productivity in mental tasks lies at the point of 38 hours per week. Anything more is folly. It might work in _very_ short bursts, but it causes more problems than it solves.
It's just like all nighters. Sure, you get more done tonight, but you're useless tomorrow. Trading 3 hours today for 8 hours tomorrow. Bravo! Good job!
Same goes for stuffing too much into a single week.
But here you are falling into the same trap that causes this problem in the first place, treating people as individual machines, assuming that the limits are to be solved with rules and guidelines.
The real problem is that social context matters and that devoting all one's time towards work for an extended period distorts that context. Coding in isolation (which to be fair is where we all bulk code) also distorts that context.
I usually put in far more than 38 hours a week. The reason I can do this is I work from home around my wife and kids. But I also put in less than 38 hours of heavy-lifting work (the rest is spent in smaller time parcels doing things like financial review, strategic planning, marketing, blogging--- yes I include that since it is part of my marketing--- etc).
To live is to work. But when work is devoid of non-work social context, i.e. where work and home life are separate, then one cannot merely work. This also has the effect of excluding women and all kinds of other problems.
It's just like all nighters. Sure, you get more done tonight, but you're useless tomorrow. Trading 3 hours today for 8 hours tomorrow. Bravo! Good job!
Same goes for stuffing too much into a single week.