80+ Hours a Week: The Follow-Up

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16 points·jmtame··5 comments

Entrepreneurs have a code written in their DNA that says “make the world a better place than it was before you came here.” That’s what drives us, and if we can’t do that, we feel like failures, and we look like failures.

I'm not clear how working long hours is a precondition for making an impact on the world around you. I'd argue instead that barreling headlong in a single direction for years on end might rob you of the necessary perspective to tell what does and does not have a positive impact.

It's admirable to take pride in the work that you do. But like anything else, entrepreneurship done for its own sake contributes only to your own sense of accomplishment. If that's what drives you, that's dandy, but I think there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

It's not. It's usually a route to failure rather than success to begin with, but it's so culturally ingrained into the illusion of a work ethic that we've become a society of butt-in-seat workaholics.

Getting stuff done is a prerequisite for changing the world. Growing your ass, burning yourself out, and neglecting your life and that of your loved ones (if you have any left by the time you burn yourself out) is not the way to get stuff done. It's the way to get stuff dumb, to paraphrase Steve Yegge...

Of course, don't forget to exercise ;)

Aside from the fact that my wife would kill me... I would neglect my daughter which is perhaps the most unappealing aspect of this whole business... I guess a compressed 30 years of 9-5 does not sound good to me.

Like you, spending time with my daughters is the single most important thing to me in the world. It probably means I won't be rich, or change the world with my startup but I'm okay with that.

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