Work Hard and Play Just Enough
andrewcross.ca
andrewcross.ca
I guess the important question to answer is: why are you going for a "home run"?
Is it because your life-consuming ambition, the only way you'll ever feel accomplished, is by having a bank account with a LOT of digits in it?
Is it because you have a burning ambition to change the world in a massive way via technology, like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, and you just don't see any way to do it other than building a mega-company?
Or is it because you're letting your environment and peer pressure dictate that a home run is what you should want, even though what you really want is financial independence so you can spend more time reading books, travelling, and painting watercolours?
Article below is a nice piece on why happiness = success:
http://hermannk.com/happiness-success/
I love the quote from Dave Greiner - " These days, my idea of success is a well-managed balance between time with people I love and a project I’m deeply passionate about. Right now, that’s Campaign Monitor. Time spent with each one of these has a huge impact on how much I enjoy the other. When I get that balance right, I’m at my happiest. And in the end, isn’t that what success is all about?"
For me, I'm going for a home run because I think it will allow me to have the biggest impact on the world. I was living in Chile for 6 months last year and have seen what my company (a p2p marketplace for trips planned by locals) could do globally. That worldwide impact is the driving force.
What it isn't is a money or peer pressure play. My first startup is actually set to double in revenue this year (to low-mid 6 figures) and I barely touch it. The money thing will come, whether I go for a home run or not.
Mode 1: Unproductive. Like many corporate people. Busy, even completing transactions, but when you get right down to it, not producing much product.
Mode 2: Productive. Writing software. Testing. Talking to users. Crossing stuff off to-do lists. Making progress and feeling good about it.
Mode 3: Transcendence. Being "in the zone". "Seeing" things I hadn't seen before. Making discoveries that leapfrog previous struggles and implementing them quickly. Being ecstatic understanding new possibilities from the things I'm building right now.
I'm usually in Mode 2 (I've discovered tricks to quickly identify and get out of Mode 1.) I LOVE to be in Mode 3, but often don't have as much control getting there when I'd like.
For me, Mode 3 is usually very early in the morning or late at night. I often lose all awareness of time and space and don't leave Mode 3 until I'm spent.
I'd guess I am: Mode 1, 10%. Mode 2, 80%. Mode 3, 10%.
When you're in Modes 1 or 2, you think about things like Work/Life Balance, work hours & conditions, and work habits. When you're in Mode 3, you don't think about much of anything except what you're working on.
If you're building a startup, you should expect to be in Mode 3 quite a bit (certainly more than my 10%). Sure, there's lots of transactions to conduct, but if you want to disrupt, you have to pay your dues in Mode 3.
In Mode 3, expect to miss meals, family, friends, maybe even baths. You can worry about those things when you return to the real world.
As for mode 3 - it can be tough to get to Mode 3 in a corporate setting because often you've not been given the freedom to think in a way that can lead to Mode 3, but it does happen. For me I just need some runway of time to settle in.
Some of this stuff is beyond parody...
Trivializing the amount of effort and energy this fellow put in to producing/developing this cross-platform mobile app because you disagree with...well, I still don't know what your issue is with the quotes you pulled, care to share?
Read the last line of pg's comment from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5521286
You might have felt better after posting your comment but you also gave up your chance to add something constructive to the discussion. To paraphrase pg's reaction, it makes me embarrassed for HN when people include projects in their blog profile and this is the sort of response they get.
Two tips for life:
Never ever let anyone else define what success means to you.
Never be arrogant enough to attempt to define what success means for other people.
When it's all said and done, and you're ready to leave this world, what are you going to think about? Who are you going to want by your side? What are you going to care about?
If it's all the amazing startups you created, or the enormous sums of money you made, or the years of never making it home for dinner to see your wife/husband/kids/dog/whoever, then you're on the right track.
But if at the end of the day, life means more to you than ferociously competing to see who can work more hours in a week, why the hell are you doing this?
"...What it amounts to, economically, is compressing your working life into the smallest possible space. Instead of working at an ordinary rate for 40 years, you work like hell for four. And maybe end up with nothing-- though in that case it probably won't take four years."
I think it's also key to hit that if you enjoy it, then hell, why wouldn't you want to reminisce about it?
A 70 hour work week is not actually that unreasonable. You wake up at 8AM, get to work by 9AM, work until 7PM, and then head out with another 5 hours still before you need to go to sleep and still get a solid 8 hours of rest. Do that 7 days a week and you have 70 hours. As long as you're actively fighting burnout by using those 5 hours to exercise, hang out with friends, or otherwise get your head out of your startup, it can be a healthy lifestyle.
I think it's important that we get rid of this false dichotomy between working hard and having a work/life balance. I think the author is right that the only way you can increase your odds of success is to consistently work harder, that formula has never failed me my entire life. But burnout prevents you from doing that consistently so balance is needed even in a 70 hour work week, and if you sanitize the hyperbole you'll find that's pretty doable.
Straightaway center field at the polo grounds was 483 ft.
Wrigley is 353 down the right field line.
Then show us some data. I see two successes mentioned that fit this "trend". Treehouse is mentioned as an outlier - but that's 1/3 of the examples. This is not how "data" works.
I don't know how people can still write coherent code at that point. My mind starts tripping under its own weight at the four-five hour mark. I usually can't make it past 2 or 3 hours without a break. Those times when I was hacking away like I was doing something so important that the world just couldn't wait for it... well I'm pretty sure I was at that office so late simply fixing the stupid mistakes I was making just hours before because I was too bleary-eyed, tired, uncomfortable, and frustrated to be effectively working.
In a few years you may or may not realize that there's more to life and that you won't get your youth back.
From what I've seen*, "data" are usually blog posts like this one. I would love for someone to also include "here are these 20 other startups I knew, everyone worked their butts off. They still failed". Anyone?
- yes, this too is an anecdote
-- there are data
Plus, sitting at a desk typing away for extended periods of time is actually pretty easy -- what's harder is making sure quality stuff is being generated for that entire time.
I found myself disagreeing with the article until I read this. 70 hours a week seems like a decent number for an early-days startup. That's probably somewhere around my upper bound as well (maybe just a bit above it).
If you want the home run, if you want to make it to the big leagues, you have to sacrifice (unless you just plain get lucky). And even on the "luck" front, I'm reminded of the old saw "the harder I work, the luckier I get".
Now it is a fair question to ask "why is it so important to you to hit the metaphorical home run"? To which I can only say "it's complicated". And, ultimately, my reasons and my motivations are very personal, and I don't see why I (or any other entrepreneur) should have to justify our drive and ambition to anybody else.
That said, for me personally, it comes down to a combination of factors, including:
1. Desire for financial independence (aka "fuck you money"). I don't need to be Larry Ellison rich, but I'd like to have enough money in the bank to where I don't have to worry about money anymore. I'd like to be able to buy a nice house, a nice car, do some things for some family and friends, and have enough money left to where I can spend my time traveling, reading, playing with geeky shit and never have to worry about "what happens if my car breaks down" or whatever.
2. General sense of accomplishment. I'll admit it, I grew up pretty much dirt poor in the rural South, and I have a chip on my shoulder about people who seem to think that they are better than me because they have more money. I want to prove to (myself|the world|those assholes|whoever) that I am just as capable as anybody. The digits in the bank account don't really matter (other than as in (1) above), but they are a means of keeping score. I want a high-score just to prove a point and because I'm very competitive. It also involves both proving the people wrong who have ever doubted me, AND justifying the faith of the people who believed in me. I have friends, family, etc., that I want to prove something to, so I can feel like I justified their support and belief.
3. Causes / Philanthropy. There are causes and initiatives I believe in very strongly, and I'd like to be in a position to do more to advance those causes. I want to be able to do things like: donate money to libertarian advocacy groups, support libertarian candidates for office, etc.; donate money to support education (especially STEM education) for underprivileged people in areas like where I grew up; donate money to groups like the EFF, FSF, etc.
4. Creating something I always wished existed. I have a vision in my head of the kind of company I want to work for, and that I think (some) other hackers would want to work for. No company seems to exist exactly like what I envision, so my plan is to create it. Being large, profitable and sustainable would give us access to resources to do cool things. It sucks to have all sorts of ideas, but to lack the resources to try to act on them. Ideally I'd like to run a company that can support intrapreneurship, identify employees with really awesome ideas, nurture and incubate those initiatives, and - if they succeed - spin them out as separate companies or whatever.
5. Angel investing. If I make it big, I'd definitely want to help the next round of entrepreneurs by doing some angel investing.
There are other reasons as well, but that starts to get more personal, and I'm not going to go into that here. But I think that is the basic gist of the thing.
I had a chip on my shoulder when I was your age too. I came from a poor rural Canadian town, raised by a single disabled mother, and spent most of my time out of school because I was being bullied and nothing could be done about it. The problem with 2 is that there is too much luck involved hitting home-runs. If you base your sense of accomplishment on that chip in your shoulder you will only be greatly disappointed later in life. There's nothing to prove.
You only have yourself to compete with.
Do you know how old I am? :-)
> The problem with 2 is that there is too much luck involved hitting home-runs. If you base your sense of accomplishment on that chip in your shoulder you will only be greatly disappointed later in life.
That's a fair point, but it's more than just the "chip on the shoulder" effect. It's also, as I said, about demonstrating - to the people who have supported me, and shown belief in me - that their belief was justified. And that's something that matters to me. Sadly, some of those people are getting older (my parents, for example) which contributes to my desire to work harder, since I want to accomplish something in their lifetimes.
> You only have yourself to compete with.
I agree with that to a point. But combined with
> There's nothing to prove.
I would argue that I do have something to prove... to myself. I need to know what I'm capable of achieving, and if I give less than 100% effort, I'll always have to look back and ask "what could I have done if I'd really given my all"?
Anybody can 'sit' at their desk for 10 hours that says absolutely nothing about you or your job performance but hey you can brag about how many hours you worked for.
I will come in focused, do all the work I have to do while you bullshit with co-workers or talk about doing something for the 10th time without doing anything and leave on time.
That what sucks about engineering/start-ups, if person is mediocre all they have to do is stay in the office the longest and even if they can't beat the quality and output of an engineer who does 9-5 that's overlooked by 'hey I 'worked' for 10 hours!'
If you need 10 hours to do something that somebody does in 6. Maybe, just maybe you should focus on your work instead of 'culture' especially if the goal of a start up to succeed.
I have never heard of a single case where something got acquired for it's culture. Have you?
But let me be clear. My point is that measuring somebody by the time they spend in the office only rewards people who sit in the office the most.
That's not really what their job is right? Because if that's the case I can hire few people to sit in the office for really cheap.
Me spending more time on office politics would unload some of the office politics from your shoulders and let you focus more on software development which you do the best.
That way it would be a win-win.