"Burning the candle at both ends" means working very long hours. It comes from times when working at night required burning a candle, whether you got up before dawn or stayed up past sunset. If you did both, you had to burn a candle at both ends of your workday. Also, if you were to burn both ends of a candle at once, the candle would be used up twice as fast. So, to burn the candle at both ends combines both pictures, and means that you are getting up early, staying up late, and wearing yourself out quickly.

Burning the candle at both ends means doing too much.. it could be too much work, or it could be too much partying.. or it could be both.. Ultimately resulting in not enough rest/sleep. The phrase comes from the idea that if you light a candle at both ends, it would burn (disappear) twice as quickly. I hope that makes sense!

Hi Sasha, Imagine that if you can burn the candle at both ends, you produce twice as much light but your candle wax runs out twice as fast too. The extra light produced represents the extra number of hours someone puts in at work (at the expense of sleep) and the amount of wax represents one's vitality or health. As you can see, there has to be a balance between work (i.e. burning the candle) and rest (i.e. the candle wax). In your sentence, it means that many people in the industrialised world choose to stay up later at night in an attempt to do more but this eats into their sleep and ironically, they end up with a lower productivity and poorer health. Hope this helps.

The American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay uses this expression in a famous poem: My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light!

It is just a saying, it doesn't really make sense literally. It means people are working too hard all the time and not taking the time for rest. Basically in every part of their life (both ends) they are working too much (burning the candle).