I have long believed in the 80-hour week. That’s the quantity of sleep I aspire to, including naps and droopy-eyed bed reading.

So whenever I meet people who live by the 80-hour workweek rather than sleep-week, I’m intrigued. In always-on, digital-age America, they are multiplying like email-addicted bunnies. Ostensibly out of concern (and perhaps out of guilt for my relative sloth), I invariably ask these bankers, lawyers and technologists: Couldn’t you work less?

Couldn’t you work one-quarter fewer hours, and still afford your 48-inch, dual-fuel Viking cooking range? Couldn’t you share your job with a colleague?

And what America’s overworked high-performers invariably reply is: No. We can’t. We’re indivisible.

Bankers say they can’t leave at 8 p.m. during an all-night deal closing because their relationships and intangible knowledge can’t be handed off. High-end software coders argue that their output is art, and working less would mean Da Vincis finishing what Michaelangelos started: Impossible!