I'm sort of heartened to see that some other respondents feel they have an adversarial relationship with sales staff/account managers and project managers! That stuff used to consume me - I believed them to be the most evil, greedy and selfish beings on the planet. (And if some sociological profiling is to be believed, they are!) The trouble is, without them, we don't have any work to do. But I do object to the expectation that I have to work harder to justify taking some leave. That's a human rights issue surely.

So how to strike the balance? That is a tough one as only you can do it - this means in all respects - e.g.

A/ not being a doormat for these bozos versus losing yourself a paying job through being unhelpful. This is about expectations - that means you have to communicate with them effectively about what you can and cannot deliver. Then they only have to be truthful with their customers to set the correct expectations (and that's their problem)

B/ do you live to work or work to live? What are we fighting for anyway? Most people can think of a bunch of things they'd rather be doing when they're at their desk. So make sure you're not waiting for retirement to get started on them. Set your work/life balance now and start working to achieve it.

C/ Political jingoism of the 80s promised us less work and more leisure time. (I thought they meant individually, not that 5% of the population would be jobless, broke and on the sofa watching satellite tv while the rest worked 60 hour weeks!) But again, no one's going to set the balance for us. The solution is to work smarter rather than longer and harking back to Steve's original question, this should include delegating. Hell, what is everyone else doing when they bring you more work?

Now that business needs to look more for sustainability and less for year on year growth, the overhead of running IT needs to be something that is efficient and requires less man hours - easy to say, much harder to do. But the right thing nevertheless.