These observations of binary stars form the basis for the empirical mass-luminosity relationship for hydrogen burning stars.

This relationship is shown below and it reveals the important empirical scaling between Mass and Luminosity.

For simplicity, let's take the scaling to be L goes as M⁴.

What implication does this have for stellar lifetimes?

Well the lifetime of a star is equal to its total fuel (which is M), divided by the fuel consumption rate, which is the Luminosity of the star).

so lifetime goes as M/L which goes as M/M⁴ or M^-3.

The calibrated relationship is, when M is measured in solar masses, the lifetime is:

10¹⁰ years / M³

Thus a 10 solar mass star would have a lifetime of only 10 million years.