Yes, his job was literally to spend his time "thinking and recording his ideas" which he did probably 6 days a week. I imagine the day he "gather likeminded colleagues to read papers and discuss ideas" was the 'fun' part of his time allowing him to decompress

I think you can say the same for most non-physical labor jobs..

When I worked in sales I spent my weekends frequently answering emails and improving my knowledge in ways that specifically related to work.

Now I work more in "engineering".. and when I'm gardening, or mowing, driving, I'm thinking about work projects at least half the time.

One of the silly things of our culture is over-specialization. A human needs to challenge his or her memory, must do a good deal of thinking, must study but also must make strength and endurance efforts. Perhaps you don't need to but we should at least configure society to allow it if you desire it. The casual thoughts while doing manual work is lovely if you have something constructive to think about.

> Academics are always working...

Just like comedians. They are always playing scenarios in their head and playtesting jokes.

That's probably true for authors as well (not that I am one).

I suspect these trades are artefacts of that way of thinking. Some people have a frequent flow of ideas they are compelled to capture in one way or another.

Why do comedians feel the need to tell us how hard their life is all the time?

Because they want to talk about things from their life (which is because, among other reasons, having personal experience with the things they're talking about is rather helpful), and if they were saying how great their life was, that might evoke resentment. It also seems possible that the space of "funny things you can say about how something sucks" is bigger than the space of "funny things you can say about how something is good".