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If you're really enjoying working 80 hours a week, and everyone else on the team is too, I don't see a huge problem with it - provided, and this is a big "provided", that if anyone doing that wants to stop working 80 hours, or indeed take a bloody long holiday to recover, they can do so.

I know several extremely successful, productive people in different fields who work on the "work as long as you like when you feel like it, rest when you don't" principle.

My take away was that when your work is the same thing you would personally want to do with your free time (something you are passionate about) that doing 80 hours of work for your employer isn't really any different than 30 hours of work and 50 hours of leisure time.

80 hours still leaves over half his time for eating, sleeping, the small amounts of physical activity which are realistic, and small amounts of human interaction. It simply does not leave time for leisure or to unwind, but as I said previously if your work is what you would do with your leisure time then that's not an issue, as there is nothing to unwind from.

Now I have only encountered this situation for a brief 3 month project which I wish had never been finished. But this type of dream job type situation does exist, and I don not believe is unhealthy, unless you have some sort of family to maintain also (it doesn't really leave enough time for a healthy family life).

> It simply does not leave time for leisure or to unwind, but as I said previously if your work is what you would do with your leisure time then that's not an issue, as there is nothing to unwind from.

I don't qualify continuing to work as leisure time just because you happen to like your work. Work is work, regardless of whether or not you like it.

Also I don't believe that simply increasing the amount of hours you work on a startup will directly impact its success. Cutting the scope is almost always a better way to improve a startup's chances.

I have to agree that work is work regardless of whether one likes it or not. Work and leisure are essential. Personally I work in sprints where I work like crazy and then make sure to take time off to recover. I also use recovery time for reflection, both structured and unstructured. I would class the structured reflection as work but naturally my mind processes automatically in down time also when I'm out riding my bike or whatever. This is where all the best ideas and plans come from.

Take the analogy of an athlete. Any athlete knows that recovery is an important part of training. Too much work and they over train. This can be applied to any area of life but is usually called burn out in business. Burn out happens regardless of how much one enjoys the work.

Now what if riding your bike, structured and unstructured reflection, and everything you do in your free time were also part of your job?

And with the example of the athlete a portion of their job is to have down time, and not be out doing strenuous physical activities the night before the big game.

When I encountered the situation where my leisure became my job, I simply didn't have anything I wanted to do to fill the free time anymore. Sure I could of done push ups or gone on dates or something else which I personally hate doing, but making myself miserable in my free time isn't my idea of healthy.

If taking a holiday is part of a job then everything is work. It's not. Burn out happens to the best of us when we deny the need for variety and rhythm in our lives.

When we work 80 hours per week - we do it out of interest for the things we are doing. Like another person said, that we work 80 hours feels like working 30 hours. There is nothing we would rather do than be at our office. The energy in an early startup is just one of the most addicting things in the world.

Think of it this way - do you think it'd be healthy for a person to play World of Warcraft for 80 hours a week? What if they were having fun and it felt like they were only playing 30 hours a week? Just because you're building a startup instead of playing WoW doesn't mean it's any less unhealthy.

What I'm suggesting is that working 80 hours per week is by its very nature harmful to you, your coworkers, and the company, regardless of whether it sout of interested for the things you're doing. It leads to scope creep, burnout, and other unhealthy outcomes. Everything should be done in moderation, including (especially?) work. I can foresee a situation where you or somebody on your team will ignore the obvious signs of burnout and power through until its too late.

If you feel like you need to work that much I would suggest you re-evaluate your scope or find more coworkers. Look to other companies who have built fantastic products without sacrificing a good work/life balance (37 Signals comes to mind).

Hi Mark - You're completely right. It's not healthy to do anything for 80 hours + I would hate to sit through 80 hours of WoW :) Too much of anything can become a bad thing, and you're completely right that we need to make sure we don't burn ourselves out.

We, of course, hope that we will not have to work 80 hours every week down forever - but at an early stage we can't help ourselves. The extreme motivation, energy and drive in the team keeps us running.

Well, I wish you luck, but the likelihood that you will become successful before one of you burns out is low. Plan for the long term and establish a sane culture now before it's too late.

Doing 80 hours a week, pulling all-nighters. This sounds to me as they are putting out fires instead of building a product the pro-active way. If an all-nighter is unavoidable, you should definitely ask yourself what you're doing wrong, and how to prevent it.

And to be fair WhatsApp has been around for years...most of these "rocketship" companies aren't in fact rocket ships and take years before they become famous, and then once they're famous gain traction seemingly very quickly.

But sometimes, there's just that much work to do, and in a 5 or 6 person company, the work load is just that much greater while they're bootstrapping their way to a product.

Exactly. AT an early stage, the product goes through a ton of changes and when they happen the team often needs to work even more to catch up. Having a team that's willing to go through that kind of pressure and still keep truckin' improves the odds of success.