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Comment by bamboozled | Hacker News Reader

"I work remotely 80-90 hours a week"

I think that's your problem right there, regardless of all the extra measures you're taking, that's mental.

I love my work, and doing something 80-90 hours a week that I love hardly seems like a problem. :-) I work 7 days a week, so it works out to around 12 hours a day. That gives me 4 hours of 'other' time if I sleep 8 hours a night.

>I love my work, and doing something 80-90 hours a week that I love hardly seems like a problem. :

I think his point is that regardless of the measures you're taking, your health will likely suffer.

I'd hazard sitting a lot in a 40 hour job and moving around the rest may be safer.

My point is that unless we come up with some concrete definition of what "work" is, it's rather pointless to talk about its effects. A weight lifter might refer to 'work' as exercising. A truck driver might refer to 'work' as driving a truck. Those two forms of 'work' have a much different affect on your health.

I would be surprised if weight lifters train for 80 hours a week though

regardless of whether you love it or not, somebody better be paying you bucketloads of overtime for that

Why are some people always suspicious of others who work a lot ? Genuine question as I don't have this kind of sensibility it seems.

>> Why are some people always suspicious of others who work a lot ?

Sometimes it's bragging. Sometimes it's somewhat delusional. A lot of folks who say they work that long don't really.

To be forced to do that much is awful, to do it voluntarily is probably obsessive.

We absolutely do not want that to become 'normal' or accepted. As others have mentioned, our forebears fought very hard to get the right to a family life, the right to time away from the grind. We shouldn't give it up so easily.

It's also likely to be really unhealthy.

People were imprisoned or killed because they advocated for an eight-hour work day.

Though I think "I work 80-90 hours for myself on my own projects" would be received differently than "I work 80-90 hours for my employer."

Working 16+ hour days is not sustainable in the long term and is counter productive. Usually when people say they work "80-90 hours a week" I take it with a grain of salt.

Working 80-90 hours a week remotely with the freedom to work from an environment that you find relaxing is a lot different than working 80-90 hours a week in an office or dealing every day with the stresses of traffic and commuting. Yesterday I was laying in a hammock feeling the breeze come in off the lake and listening to the birds while working on my laptop. I couldn't work 80-90 hours a week if I didn't have the ability to look up from my laptop and instantly feel relaxed.

Are you assuming a 5 day workweek? Divided by 7 gives a different picture.

It's something that one can do at certain times in one's life, in certain circumstances. There was a period in my life when I worked eight hours in the office, commuted nearly an hour each way, had dinner, worked another four hours at home and did this for months on end.

Not 80 hours but about 60 which in my opinion is still far too much in the long run.

It was worth it for the results but I wouldn't, and quite possibly couldn't, do it now thirty years later.

So it's not necessarily a problem unless it becomes an uncontrollable obsession or is forced on one.

I think he might be counting his exercise time in that and working 7 days a week. 11 hour work day with a total of 2-4 hours of breaks interspersed sounds about OK.

Pretty hard to found a startup and not work 80 hour weeks.

On the other hand, if you are a w2 employee paid salary, don't work 80 hours ;)

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