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Comment by jack_pp | Hacker News Reader

> he has insane hours and has never burnt out

I think there's two major things you need in order to do that. Work on what you love/want and have no/little need for socializing.

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I think the point he made was rather the opposite. He works 10-12 hours a day, 60 hours a week, 6 days a week. He needs seven to eight hours of sleep, like a normal person. He specifically mentioned that he never was much into doing all-nighters and that he experimented with working different times of the day. So he'd start in the afternoon and then continue until deep in the night when he was younger whereas having kids and a family caused him to shift to having an early start instead and run a more normal schedule.

That sounds like an intense schedule for sure but not really that insane. He's not super human and just staying in shape, and well rested is what has allowed him to do this for decades on end. Work life balance and taking care of his family is just part of that deal as well.

I notice that the quality of my own work is simply much better when I'm well rested and that beyond a certain point, the most productive thing is for me to simply take some rest or do something non work related. The rare case that I need to work on something late, I pay the price the next few days. It all averages out in the end in terms of productivity.

Grinding away at a problem for hours is simply draining. Often those problems melt away the next morning after I sleep a bit. Your brain doesn't stop working when you do. The hard work is immersing yourself in the problem and absorbing all its facets and then calmly reflecting on all the assumptions you are making. Generally, if you are stuck you need to find out which of your assumptions it is that is wrong. I've woken up with fully formed solutions in my head for seemingly unsolvable issues or bugs that I fought with the previous day so often that I actually rely on this happening a lot these days. So, I generally stop working around 6-7 pm and I'll park harder issues until I'm well rested in the morning or after a weekend.

I don't work on the weekend. The weekend is for resetting my brain. Just as important as sleep is. The most productive use of that time is allowing that brain reset to happen. Getting frustrated and stressed is counter productive. It leads to poor sleeping patterns and stuff just piles up. Take a break, relax.

> That sounds like an intense schedule for sure but not really that insane

I'm not sure what disqualifies that as insane, but it pretty much precludes any social life. I'm on-and-off doing these kind of hours (sometimes work takes over life, sometimes life takes over work), but when I do these kind of hours even when I'm not working my brain is still thinking about work. I can't imagine doing this for decades at a time, this is truly a life dedicated to work. But I agree that you can't achieve great things without sacrificing your life.

> He works 10-12 hours a day, 60 hours a week, 6 days a week

> Work life balance and taking care of his family is just part of that deal as well.

I don't judge anyone for how they like to spend their time (and certainly admire Carmack), but what work/life balance? There isn't much except work there.

100 hours a week is no life.

If you can eliminate the average 90 minutes a day commuting Americans do, along with the average 20 hours a week spent cooking and cleaning et cetera by hiring people to do that for you, a rich person can have more life working 60 hours a week than a poor person has working 40.

Carmack is a high level martial artist. That would have required a significant time commitment.

> Carmack is a high level martial artist. That would have required a significant time commitment.

Interestingly, it might not be the that significant of a commitment in terms of raw hours although it certainly is in terms of consistency and persistence. Quick googling reveals that it might take around 2500 training hours to get to BJJ black belt (I guess if you're pretty talented). Over 10-year period, that's just under 5 hours/week. And BJJ black belt is a pretty big deal.

I think I got my jiu jitsu black belt with about 2,500 hours on the mat, say 5 hours a week on average for 52 weeks for 10 years.

With a more effective teaching model, I believe one could achieve the proficiency needed for a black belt in 2/3 of the time. However, this does not mean becoming a name on the world stage, for which much more talent and possibly more hours of practice are needed: talent saves many hours of practice that are instead needed by less talented practitioners, assuming that the latter can reach the level of talented people even in the limit of infinite time and youth.

Congratulations on your black belt! I'm a white, but won't be even advancing to blue with my training (in)consistency, haha.

Yeah, competitive scene is a whole different beast.

Work/life balance applies to people who would ordinarily not do their work if they did not have to.

That binary classification doesn't make much sense. What amount of work? I'm pretty sure many people would willingly work 10-15 hours/week (or 24/32/whatever) even if they didn't have to, but not necessarily 40.

I assure you, I will never stock shelves, deal with abuse at a register, drive a hilo, work in a factory, touch Windows, etc. if I don't get paid to.

Well he did have enough spare time to build a working rocket, or did that count as work also?

How is it possible that Alexander Grothendieck was able to work for 12 hours everyday for many years, same with Nikola Tesla studying for almost 20 hours while in the University and also Newton Comes to mind ..how did these men do it if I may ask?

I read Carmack post in Hackernews before. He mentioned that he didn't perform deep work for 12 hours. Within that 12 hours, he will perform maintenance work as well

Many if not most productive academics have such insane schedules. They’re not necessarily asocial. I think the important distinction is in what I’d call “bullshit socializing.” A lot of what regular people do in the name of socializing is probably not helping them in any way. Academics get trained to not need this to relax necessarily.

I did my PhD in a lab that demanded it: we were expected to put 6 days, 12 hours a day. It’s possible for maybe 30% of population maybe? Especially if you’re privileged and don’t have to worry about other things in life (like kids, parents, money, physical health, chronic issues, mental health, etc). So in some ways the ability to train and be able to adopt this more “productive” life is a bit exclusionary and even discriminatory. In the end I chose not to continue in academia primarily because of this demand, I just didn’t feel like it was worth it.

Now I’m in tech and I do get bored, but happy that I have the choice to set my hours.

> bullshit socializing

damn, I can only feel bad for people who use that term :( it seems like simple human interaction are being optimized out.

You say it but I argue otherwise. I am not saying don’t socialize, but think hard about what you get from many of those events. You’re drunk off your mind, you meet and hang out with people you really don’t care that much about, and often you are left with a hangover or worse, a sense of not having had a good time. Just those types of events.

I think everyone learns to outgrow these events

Carmack mentions not being the kind of person who can go on long work binges. I love sloppy socializing and I also love to zone in on work and get immersed for 20 hours at a time then crash. Everyone has different habits.

And a very good health. Doing this sedentary job for long hours and not getting issues is very difficult, unless you use most of your free time doing some sports or other intense physical activity or you have very good genetics.

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