Startup work-life balance
hippoland.tumblr.com
hippoland.tumblr.com
Then I went to college, met all sorts of people, had lots of experiences, and realized how narrow my life, and concept of happiness was.
So when I hear people talk about how much they love their work, that's their own balance... I can't help but wonder if they just haven't learned how great the other parts of life are. And how much a wider range of experiences can make their work part better as well.
So when I hear people talk about how much they love their friends, that's their own balance... I can't help but wonder if they just haven't learned how to take care of themselves without external validation. And how working to accomplish something can lead to more meaningful relationships as well.
Many people are concerned with how they appear to their friends and behave differently in the college/young professional scene you allude to. It's easy to fool yourself into thinking what you're working on is so important to YOU and that you don't need external validation. In some cases though, we assume we're already validated because WE know that our work is important. You're still relying on validation possibly; you're just getting it from made up people instead of real ones.
But as long as you truly believe in your work and aren't doing it to keep your head above everyone, props to you :-). I struggle to objectively examine where I'm at in my life at times and I think it's something we all need to do more of.
You espouse a false dichotomy.
There's more to loving friends than loving the external validation they may (or may not!) provide.
Go get some really extraordinary friends and try again.
With that said, that is all some people have. And for those people, the OP is probably right and they will probably not be happy for long.
Sure then they may not be the happy at a maximum, but since they haven't found such a maximum yet their hapiness on a relative scale is 100%.
In other words, ignorance is bliss, and if you don't have "other experiences", it doesn't matter, you could still be just as happy - or even more!!
Considering I felt like the author, happier in the most work intensive years, and less happy afterwards, I have come to this theory of my own. It's not substantiated by anything but the famous "ignorance is bliss".
It has had one effect - stopped me from seeking "experiences" - because I want to maximize my relative happiness level. I noticed that when I did stopped that (buddihsm like), happiness happened (but didn't last - maybe there are disminishing marginal returns of staying at one level of "experience" - and we should gain experience, but little by little, to keep happiness maxed out.
Interesting concept. That may have been true 50 years ago when it was not really possible to discover if other people were happier than your personal 100% level. Unfortunately, due to the internet, TV and Hollywood, it's extremely easy to discover there are tons of people out there happier than you.
After traveling the back roads of Central and South America for 2 years, it was amazing to show up in a dirt-street town where people were struggling to get food and potable water, and see them crowd around a TV and watch a blonde hair, blue eyed Jennifer Anniston complain about some trivial issue like her sofa not matching the carpet. Hollywood is an excellent marketing department, and purveyor of a "You are not as happy as you could be" mentality.
Still I believe there's some interest in doing that. If you are interested in maximizing your happiness, refusing the "You are not as happy as you could be" is required. It can be hard, especially if you know the fakeness of your action and that people do differently.
I wouldn't say they are happier than you : they seem to be, but they have their own problems. And if you watch them too much or try to emulate them too much, they make you less happy (following my own theory)
IMHO, the answer is still to join the rat race, but at your own pace, and for your own gain in happiness.
For sure. I don't have a TV personally, but it's interesting to go to a developing country where they are desperately trying to get things like TVs, iPhones and shiny cars. By definition that's an increase in standard of living, so of course they want it.
> I wouldn't say they are happier than you : they seem to be, but they have their own problems.
That's the big one. Hollywood is an excellent marketing dept., but it's not even close to the truth. Funny how you never see a blockbuster movie about the millions living in America below the poverty line, or those that have lost their houses etc.
Once again, when you're on the other side of the world watching Jennifer Anniston, how can you know it's not reality?
But I guess the majority will fall in the trap and be miserable since they can't know it's not reality.
[I also made the choice of cutting TV a long time ago, only recently introducing a fraction of old series I watched before and new shows that enjoy high rating, watched on the computer - it was an experiment that I started when BSG was first airing.]
At the moment, I believe "standard of living" in a low amount can raise happiness, but that it's highly addictive and suffers from hugely decreasing marginal returns - so you have to control the increase very carefully.
I'm very thankful that my experiences have allowed me to put my professional life in perspective.
The point I was trying to make is that the lifestyle I led through college in some ways fed in to my willingness to do the same thing professionally. I never knew any better.
If things had gone differently, I could still be killing myself on a daily basis. And for what? The possibility of making a few more bucks?
I left a bad job once, and for months interviewed in loads of places and didn't get any job. I'm fairly sure it was because I truly sucked at explaining away the bad job time and why I left without "sounding like he doesn't want to work."
There should be nothing wrong, in "True Scotsman capitalism" or "True Scotsman career development", with leaving a bad job if it just can't work out for you -- particularly when you're young, unmarried, and not in debt. But somehow there is. Every bad job is a black mark on you. If interviewers don't view it that way, you've often trained yourself to view it that way. I certainly did. Haven't quite gotten over it yet.
(Admittedly, after a few months I started finding different crowds of people and eventually got a contract position that could have become full-time if I was still looking for full-time work by then.)
TL;DR
Lasting happiness is having social skills and quality relationships; not an advanced software developer skill set.
Digging into his personal life is widely considered off limits. Reporting is not done on it. If I were, for example, to assert that Musk has had two divorces in 2.5 years and that this may in fact reflect that his personal life is a mess, I'd probably get voted down. And maybe that would be fair, because who knows, maybe in that scenario both he and his ex wives are happy to end the lifetime marriage vows early. My point isn't that Elon Musk's life is a mess, my point is we don't know, so we shouldn't be using him as evidence of not needing to "balance" work life, unless we're ready to have an in-depth conversation about what most people consider (rightly or wrongly) to be off limits private matters.
What do you mean by "balance" if you don't mean the normal definition of "engages in activities/pursuits from all aspects of life"? By the normal definition of balance Elon Musk is not leading a balanced life at all, but a dedicated and focused life. This is not a value judgement, it's perfectly reasonable to make that choice.
This idea that balance is different for everyone makes me think you are using balance to mean "fulfilling" or "happy"?
I think that it's important to set expectations with your team: co-founders, investors, etc. If everyone on the team needs to play golf every afternoon at 3pm to stay balanced, then that's right for them. There isn't anything wrong with this as long as everyone is onboard with this plan.
As for joining a startup, finding the right company culture is super important, and there are definitely startups that don't have pressure-cooker environments with long hours and work weeks. It's just a matter of taking the time to find the right fit.
But if you're ahead of the game on a Monday morning at 9am, then sleep in, or go to a movie, or whatever. Because the best way to go fast is to be enthusiastic about what you're doing.
I have several people on my team that arrange their day like that, and if I had a family, I would probably do it too. Actually, I often do it anyway, ducking out of work for a late afternoon or evening social activity and then putting in a couple hours from home around midnight. I find that taking a break often makes that late-night work session a lot more productive than if I'd just worked straight through.
I always imagined that work life balance meant you had things that you wanted to do in your personal time, and you had the time to do them.
Not 'I love working so much that my balance is all work and little / no life'.
My situation these days is that I have a spouse, no kids. I didn't realize it at the time, but choosing a spouse to share a lot of the work-life with you is really important. We probably don't spend as much time together as other couples, but it works well, because we share the same kind of life. He works at a startup, and I have LaunchBit. So on a given weekend, we might spend time "together" by working on our respective work at his office. And our hours are roughly the same, which makes it easy to work a 10-12 hour day, because no one is sitting around waiting for the other to come home. I think most people would say that this isn't very balanced at all -- we're mostly working. But, it is balanced because expectations are set and met on both sides.
Now, to your question about wishing that you had more time to pursue other hobbies and whatnot. If that's what you need, then I think that's perfectly fine too as long as everyone else on your startup team is onboard with that: co-founders, employees, investors.
The main point of balance is that you are a more complete human being when you participate in a wider range of activities. Even if that just means you're a better developer because you stepped away for an hour or a week and got a new perspective. Just because you're not miserable only doing primarily one thing doesn't mean you wouldn't be happier if you forced yourself to learn or see or try new things at regular intervals. You'd most likely be much more interesting to those around you too.
You can argue that balance isn't necessary for everyone or that the "balanced life" dogma is wrong. That's an interesting conversation. Better than trying to redefine balanced to mean "either balanced or the opposite, whatever you feel like", that seems rather silly.
A balanced life means you split your life among all different areas of life. That's what that phrase means.
Elon Musk has rejected the idea that work/life balance is necessary and that's just fine. That's how he feels happiest. It seems to be working pretty damn well for him.
I'm not saying there's any kind of standard set of rules, I'm saying that if you reject the dogma of balance then say so, don't try and redefine what it means because people are dogmatic about "balance = good, not balanced = bad"
You don't seem to understand that this is how language drift works. When "people are dogmatic" about how certain words are used, those connotations leak into the definition itself.
I'm not convinced anyone but two people here feel that "balance" is now used to also mean single minded focus.
Maybe it's not technically 'balance', but do you really think when someone says 'work-life balance' that they mean 50-50 split between work and life? When I hear it used it usually means 'spend less time on work and more on life', and I think hippo33's is correct: not everyone needs to (or should) spend less time doing work because that's where they may find the most happiness.
We both (along with hippo33) agree that everyone does not need to lead a balanced life. There are other valid choices like a life of dedication to a specific cause or pursuit. Or anywhere in between that makes you happy.
We disagree on whether you should use the word balance when you "technically" mean the exact opposite. That's poor communication in my opinion.
You mean "fulfilling". Not balanced, balanced means something else. You seem to think I'm trying to tell people how to live when I am actually trying to tell you that you are using the wrong word to express your idea.
I agree with your point wholeheartedly by the way, I was just confused by your use of the word balanced to mean fulfilled.
Each one of us has its own indifference curve. And when we age and add new things, the indifference curve change and therefore the repartition of time.
I for one loved videogames and invested most of my time in it. Now that I have other options (other "things" to do), even if videogames are still fun, they represent a lower proportion of my time because other things are just bringing more satisfaction.
Maybe if I added kids to the "things", they would take a bigger chunk of time - most people say they bring more satisfaction than most other things.
What are your goals? What is it going to take for you to achieve those goals? Will you be happy working towards those goals? Is the misery that you're going to have to endure to achieve those goals worth it? Can you sustain that level of misery and still accomplish your goals?
But, it could also mean that you’re just a lot dumber and less efficient than your peers who could do the same thing without pulling an all-nighter.
You may well be dumber than someone who doesn't need an all-nighter to do what you're doing, but you may want the prize you're working towards more than the person getting 8 hours of sleep - so go for it.
Of course, many jobs actually want brute-force code versus library-laden, clever hacks. This is why I struggled to become a researcher again.
If you don't work, you don't have to worry about work-life balance.
The author talks about his teenage days when he would rather do math and not watch x files. That's fine. But what about ppl who have kids and want to go home and spend time with them instead of working which btw they love.
And that's my point. Just because u love your work, doesn't mean u have a balance. I will rather call it obsession.
People do not want a good "work life balance" because it's the "right thing to do." They're seeking to optimize their productivity and happiness. They don't want to wake up one day and have no friends, but they also don't want to wake up and have done too little.
The author's point is that there is no canonical answer. If your friend works 12 hour days (as I'm sure many of our friends do) you shouldn't just say, "Oh, well, you should work less." Everyone has their own happy zone.
Sometimes all people want to do is work 14 hours a day, and they love it. We shouldn't say that they're wrong for loving it. We should instead understand that what is balanced for us is not what will be balanced for someone else.
Agreed. But I got the feeling that the author was also advocating a zero sum game here for work life balance
Think ahead a little.
If most people were given a chance, they wouldn't elect to work. For most people, work is an obligation that they except reluctantly. Given this, "work-life balance" then becomes a unidirectional effort to drive down the amount of work and the number of hours down to zero, not to achieve any kind of real equilibrium.
Additionally, because hours worked is the most common and widely used method used to determine the amount of work one has done, any attempt to reduce that amount of work is most likely going to be done by reducing hours works. Hours are the quintessential "work measurement": if you want more "balance," you're going to try to work less hours.
I'm sorry, but most people don't like working, and they expend effort attempting to work less. Because of the widely accepted idea that hours worked equates to amount worked, the way that they do so is by trying to reduce their hours.
In the words of Micael Scott, "I would rather live jobless, on a beach somewhere, off the money from a large inheritance, than have to work in any one of these crapholes."
That's the mentality that most people have, and that's why they want to work fewer hours.
"I didn't have a happy high school years so how can she?"
I'm projecting projecting high school sucking?
Au contraire - That would require me to doubt everyone making claims that high school was awesome, which I am not doing.
For reference, my own high school experience was mixed to be sure. Parts were amazing, other parts sucked. I don't know anyone whose high school experience was 100% awesome. But I do know a lot whose experience sucked 100%. And those people often broadcast statements to the contrary.
He never made a claim that he had an awesome high school experience, and I'm not doubting that claim.
If you had a fulfilling life, you wouldn't feel the need to accuse other people of being secretly unhappy.
Imagine: You have a different notion of happiness than most others, so people constantly tell you that you're not happy — even though you are. Naturally, you'll get defensive over time, but then those same people will see that as a sign that you're in fact not happy. Catch 22.
In other words: stop being condescending.
The real reason for this is that we take such large jumps in maturity after school stops holding us back that, in retrospect, we realize that if we hadn't been such fucking idiots in high school, we could have had it all.
I found out that it wasn't really school that was holding me back, it was me. I'd thought that it was really technical skills that were key to doing world-changing things with technology. But it turns out it's not: it's character traits like determination, perseverance, curiosity, observational skills, patience, listening, social skills, respect for others, and the ability to accept help that matter most. There's no way to develop these skills other than time and practice, and I found out that that was what my mostly-liberal-arts education had been trying to teach me, except I hadn't been listening all that much because I was so consumed with the technology aspect.
Somewhat less pretentiously, I wonder about contrasting life and work, because it's not unusual to have a pretty active social life at work. The absence of any social stimulation there would at least make me unhappy.
I can spend a couple of hours programming and be hugely energized by it, and I can spend a couple of hours watching TV and be drained by it. The reverse is also true.
Be aware of your energy flow and balance it.
I also think humans on an individual basis are inherently unbalanced; that's why we're social creatures.
That's a seriously mixed metaphor...