On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others

But that doesn't change the fact that the group I am referring to does exist. In the first 20 years of my life, I couldn't really be motivated to do much. And then my college roommate invited me to start a company together. On day 3 or 4 into this venture, I remember being so excited by what was happening that I literally couldn't sleep and instead stayed up all night. Once the sun went up in the morning, I was looking at the fruits of my labor and had the type of endorphins flowing through my body that I had never experienced before.

I was genuinely shocked that I loved this project as much as I did. I had never thought about starting a business before, had never stayed up before for work, and never looked up to people who seemed to work really hard. In hindsight, the only sign of some type of an inclination towards entrepreneurship that I had exhibited before was a strange admiration for the characters in Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. We read that book as a part of an English class, and most of the students were highly critical of the lifestyle described in the book. I too could tell that those characters were highly out of balance, but I couldn't shake off the feeling that I would have loved to be a part of that group.

20 years later, I am looking back on a successful entrepreneurial career, and can more accurately trace back that fascination with entrepreneurship to a personal trauma that I experienced as a child. As it turns out, that trauma caused a lot of discomfort in my development years, which led to this unhealthy obsession for entrepreneurship, which in turn gave me passion and motivation to push myself to the limit, and which somehow resulted in success that made the whole thing somehow... worthwhile. As I grew older, I did thankfully find a way to diversify my life and interests, and today you would describe me as fairly average in my work-life balance.

Just wanted to share this because PG's "How to work hard" essay caused a lot of discussion, and I think many people didn't take away from it one important bit: if that essay didn't resonate with you, it's ok - your life didn't include the same type of influences that shaped PG into becoming the person that he became. That might be a good or a bad thing, but it's a thing and let's all just realize that each one of us has to find a recipe that's authentic to us and fits the exact right formula of our individual lives.

> The problems pulled me in, and I’d get so involved I’d be unable to sleep until I solved a problem, sometimes escaping into my dreams if I hadn’t found a natural pause point.

I can relate to this, so much. It's an incrediblely productive time period when my brain is like this at 7/8/9pm, but inevitably I lose out on a day or two following it. It sounds cliched, but exercise + mindfulness are a hard requirement for me, and not doing either of those inevitably has my brain racing on whatever I'm working on at 4am.

> Grey found me at exactly 5pm and forced me to logoff.

Nobody ever told me to work late, but nobody ever told me to _stop_ working. If my boss/bosses boss/<etc> came up to me a once or twice and told me "hey, you shouldn't work past <x> PM", particularly in my first few days, _and most importantly_ they left too, that would have set an excellent example on how to have a work-life balance.

As the great sages tend to say, you're not going to be on your deathbed wishing you'd signed that extra deal, you're going to be lying there thinking of your family, your love, the time with your kids.

Now that's not to say there aren't moments in your life when you're up for working hard. And your 20's can be a good time for this: you're full of energy, you're free of encumbrances like kids and mortgages, and it can feel pretty great to bust your balls doing something you enjoy.

But let's not forget that it also feels great busting your balls actually enjoying yourself properly, too. When you're in your 20's that can be sex or travelling or socialising or a million other things.

As a whole though, the ethic of "gotta work hard all through your life" troubles me. There aren't enough spaces for creativity, relaxation, debate, books, or simply doing nothing.

It's these things that make a life worth living, not (just) some meteoric rise through a career.

A big problem I see on an ongoing basis is the confusion between time spent working and work produced. After ~10 years in this field, I feel like a pitcher who loses their fastball sometimes, and have learned when to sense that and pull myself from the game (stop working). I feel for people who don't see or sense their performance deteriorating in a way that just calling it a day and coming back with fresh eyes could improve.

Should you just plow through sometimes? Definitely. But if I find myself needing to consider that for more than about a week a quarter, someone probably planned poorly or is taking advantage of the fact that I care about completing my work.

There are other comments about work vs personal/skills development - the latter I do not consider work, personally, even if they're inter-related at times. I have actually noticed a big difference between my previous employer and current employer. I had enough slack at my previous employer to pack in quite a bit of high value personal/skills development after I finished my work and on weekends. Ironically, its this slack that gave me the time to learn skills that I was eventually hired for at my current employer - however, I have none of this mental bandwidth or time at my current employer. I can't figure out how much of that is pandemic-related, new child related (had a baby while at the new employer), or new employer culture/balance issues with how I work best. I guess it's just hard to track the true cause when the world goes into a blender while one's life changes significantly too.

The thing is, it didn't feel like a struggle, in the way that writing an assigned essay might feel. It was just a number of work related things that added a bit of context to what I was doing, giving my work meaning. It also provides the links to all the adjacent topics in a field, giving you the keywords/hooks for further learning.

There are of course jobs where you literally are working, doing the same things that you do during the week, in the same office. That kid of thing leads to burnout, and if you're thinking about that perhaps gather some more experiences before you decide.

> Just keep in mind the cost you’re paying, and be extremely cautious if you ever find yourself resenting your downtime.

Currently this is happening to me. Downtime is not an enjoyable experience anymore, the pandemic has just made it worse since I am not even forced to have social interactions. I have feelings of guilt whenever I am not working. And just like the author mentions, it is a hard habit to break. What is worse, I am in my mid twenties; I cannot imagine how hard/impossible it is to break that habit when you have been at it for 30 years.

The situation is much more complicated when you are working for someone else. Then you'll need to make a careful assessment of whether working harder is a net economic benefit for your (vs. doing other things in the time that would be freed up and the cost of any long term damage you might do to your health if you worked too hard.) For example it would entirely consistent for you to put in a 40 hr week for your employer, and spend all other discretionary time on your own project. It is also okay if you make the finding that your employer sponsored work is your primary long term goal and work on that even during weekends. E.g. this how many academics see their work. For most startups, as an employee, you need to be very careful with your calculation. Much of the value you create in a startup or a large tech company will not be captured by you! You need to make the calculation as to whether or working harder has a strategic benefit for you. It might or it might not. So the real issue is not 'working hard' but working hard on what?

Most successful people I've observed at close quarters box clever and definitely never fully switch off with respect to their interests. But work hard as in slogging on something where there is no proportional reward? Never seen that.

Of course they all say they work so hard, or that they once in the mists of time worked very hard. But what evidence is there? Usually none.

As someone who runs a business, I can tell you that I don't particularly like working on weekends that much but I do find some time (3-4 hours ) to work weekends and catch up on few things that are harder for me on weekdays. So I couldn't care less how many hours I put in. Sometimes it's an entire Saturday. It is my choice and I am doing it because I want to.

So find your balance on whatever works for you. I do however think that it is not easy to build a business just working 40 hour weeks but if you want to be an employee, that can work well.

Heck this still happens, and I've been tecching for decades.

I am not a fan of "This one thing applies to everyone" statements.

Also, I think that we develop a blind evaluation of success factors.

For example, a person, hailed as a genius, always writes his/her notes in pencil, on a small pad, they take with them, because inspiration may strike at any time.

They use a pencil, because they may need to add corrections.

So everyone assumes that having a pad and a pencil with them at all times will give them the same success as said genius.

So...how's that working out? Solved FTL yet?

I have also met people that fit the whole "genius" description that are absolutely rigorous about stopping work at certain times, getting sleep, and taking long sabbaticals with no tech nearby. They won't even think about stuff, until they are back on the clock.

Myself, I ain't no gienieyouss, but I manage to get stuff done. I tend to work all the time; mostly because I really like to. I don't need to do it, anymore, but I do.

I work with folks that can't work the same way that I do, but deliver great results. I've learned not to project my own workflows onto others.

I don't have anything against workers, but I really resent that some people believe I deserve to die alone and poor while they consent to overtime without taking a step back.

Some people want to participate in society not for money, status or because they like to work, but just to exist for 5min.

Competition becomes an horrible side of society.

People should spend their time working for themselves. That could be building new skills, developing your personal brand, starting projects/businesses, etc.

Bonus points for aligning personal benefit projects with your career, so you can develop yourself while being a team player and an esteemed colleague.

I'm in the same boat as the author as far as working too hard, but I've never done it on my salaried work, only on my own projects. Most of them went nowhere and a few gave something useful, but in the end I learned a lot. And it's easy to just drop whatever you're working on when it's just for you.

I can't say if it's out of principe or out of spite, but I actually despise the very idea of doing unpaid work for my employer. If they want more work they can pay me for it, or more likely hire someone else to soak the extra efforts. I work as hard as anyone else during my work hours, and I stay up to date so what more do they want of me. I've actually had managers, who were good managers otherwise, subtly told me I was not doing much (unpaid) overtime compared to other people during my annual review. Funny how things work out, I found another job right after that paid me 50% more and didn't care about my after hours work.

Someone said we should enjoy our wealth and health while we can.

Someone said we shouldn't store all our wealth for a later date which we may not see.

I think the availability of technology has confused us. It has blurred the lines between work and constant activity. There is a big world out there beyond the pixels we should be enjoying beyond work.

There is no sense working that many hours to fulfill someone else's dream.

If you follow PGs logic, it shouldn't matter because 1 cappuccino is the same amount of liquid than 4 espressos, but we all know it does, right?

Same goes for working on weekends. If all you need to do is solving a super-interesting engineering problem then go for it. If you are firefighting customer escalations in four failed IT projects at the same time, then I'd recommend to take a break.

> Paul advocates cultivating a sense of “discomfort” when you’re not working. I’m not going to question it’s efficacy- this is an extremely effective way of compelling yourself into a variety of habits- but this advice extends beyond that.

>

> Doing this might help you work more, but it may permanently impact your ability to enjoy yourself outside of work. This type of mental trick is addictive, and it alters your perception of normal, developing a need to work that is disconnected from your personal goals.

To finish even my boring or tough studies, I oriented myself in such a way that every problem or sub-problem is a puzzle, and every solution is an endorphin hit.

Now I'm so addicted to this hit that my work can reliably give me, that it's extremely hard to stop work and be in the moment in the rest of my life.

Now I've had 15 years and running of family life and being the home maker and that's great too. I wish I had some of the physical fortitude I spent earlier but I'm sure that'd be the case regardless.

Have I achieved "work-life balance"? I didn't get rich when I was working, but I got to do things that made me happy and I can argue made the world better, in some small way. Since then, pretty much the same.

Apart from the salary, this is the thing I enjoy the most about having a job as opposed to being a University student. When I was a student I wasn't all that organized, so I often felt guilty about spending time on other activities than studying. But now that I have a job, I can get my 8 hours of work done during the day and then feel guilt-free about spending my evenings and weekends on whatever I want.

Why? Because my best ideas for work(!) typically appears at these ‘non-working’ times.

How to balance this - I don’t know… The ideas ‘just’ arrive at that time, likely because the mind is relaxed and ‘subconsciously’ is working harder than while ‘actively’ working.

The ideas are then refined and implemented during normal business hours.

PS.: There’s a lot of positive talk about the so-called ‘four day work week’.

I have tried burning the midnight oil, it’s only feasible for short periods of time, so I do not believe that hard work === many hours!

If I'm driven intrinsically by what I'm doing, leave me alone already. I'll naturally take breaks as my intrinsic motivation waxes and wanes.

If I'm driven extrinsically to do something not fun, and I keep pushing on it, I'll burn out rather easily. In this case, tell me something is important/useful, but also let up to give me the encouragement to take breaks.

All jobs have a mix of both. But my preferred job has more intrinsically motivating work. If I'm gate kept from it, its only annoying to me...

There was a period when I was at a startup and I put aside my social life for work and that's when I burnt out.

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" really is true.

This is a polarising topic, and I won't be surprised if a lot of people disagree. These opinions are shaped by my experience, my context, and I'd be shocked if everyone found them equally applicable.

New college grads can really struggle with finding balance after transitioning out of college. The undergrad environment has well defined start and end points for each class and everyone gets the same or similar workloads, so it's possible to calibrate off of peers and consult with advisors or mentors who have gone through the same system.

Not so with the working world, where there are always more objectives than time and you can't always look to peers to calibrate your progress. Ambitious juniors often see this and decide to go all-in, working as hard as possible on as much as possible for as long as possible.

This leads to burnout in some, though not all, of the people who get swept away in it. We read so many articles about burnout and recovery from burnout that the topic of hard work evokes strong reactions online, as evidenced by this article and the comments section. However, as the author points out there are multiple sides to this story. Hard work isn't always bad, especially if you find yourself enjoying it and learning a lot.

If I'm being totally honest, working hard in my early career paid off significantly down the road. Not necessarily in immediate dollars paid out by my employers at the time, but the network, reputation, and skillset I built along the way are extremely valuable to this day. I didn't even hate the hard work or long hours at the time, because I made a point to surround myself with peers I liked and work I enjoyed. I also made an effort to get plenty of exercise and social activity, which can't be neglected.

In my opinion, too many online discussions around burnout are centered on the idea that work is inherently bad and something that should be minimized as much as possible. An understandable reaction from authors who might be burned out, but framing everything this way has an unintended side effect: It normalizes the idea that work is inherently bad, and that hating your work is natural. This mindset tends to trap people in jobs they hate at companies they dislike with peers they can't stand, all because they've been led to believe that this is the normal state of affairs. They focus too much on trying to tolerate it and manage their borderline burnout instead of trying to move their career in a direction where they can find a job they like.

In my opinion, we need to stop framing this as a debate about whether work is good or work is bad, and start talking more about finding a healthy balance and working toward jobs we like. No job is going to be fun all of the time, but if you're hating every hour of work and counting down the hours to the end of the day every day then you're probably in a below average job.

Me in reality: in the pool with my daughter, will get to it soon.