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Comment by genericuser | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

> 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.

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