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>> The average tech CEO does not work 11.5 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. There might be a few tech CEOs who work that long, but I am guessing for most of them it isn't a sustainable workload.

Articles often get to this by counting stuff that you and I would consider not-work time. I read an article about a banking CEO who claimed to work 65+ hours per week. His daily schedule went from 6:00 am to 7:00 pm each weekday. That included taking calls as he commutes for an hour, a breakfast meeting, an hour at the gym with a couple VP's, and an hour networking at lunch. His actual desk-and-meeting time was about 9 hours.

It's still a large time commitment, but it's not that different from what the rest of us do.

Similarly, very hard to measure the amount of time that we spend actively thinking about our work outside of the office. My first job was in investment banking, where I was physically in the office or meetings far more than my bosses; when I was outside of the office (what little time that was), I was rarely thinking about my job. It was clear, however, that the best mid-level and senior men/women were thinking about their clients and brainstorming even while they might not technically be working.

We should never judge someone's productivity by how many hours of "work" they do. Especially not for CEOs. They have all the resources at their finger tips to delegate and automate the tasks. If they are busy frantically responding to emails there is something wrong with their approach.

I used to think I was not the "80 hour a week" kind of person, because I typically only sit at my desk from 7-5, Monday-Friday. But once you start counting the time you check and respond to emails (which I do constantly), take calls outside of hours, have meetings with people outside of working hours, etc... it's really not hard to imagine 11.5 hour days being average.

Anyone else find the last hour of their evening is taken up by emails/cleaning up their last tasks. Since my first son was born, I have tried to get out of the office earlier, only to find I do MORE work at home after he goes to bed ...

I'm just the opposite. Work doesn't even cross my mind after I run out of the office shouting "Freedom!" My manager once asked why I didn't see a change to a meeting time he made late the night before; I just laughed. Why on earth would I have seen it?

We need more people like you. Some how we are lead to believe that its normal to get a fixed pay check while working uncountable number of hours while giving loyalty for free.

No.

We need more people who cannot stop thinking about their work, because of how much they love it.

When my daughter was pretty new, couple of months, she'd only go to sleep if I held her. I got pretty good at typing lying down with her stretched across my forearms.

I am sure you have some great photos of this (or at least I hope you do)

My wife and I keep on having [hand|head] moments when we miss these photo ops