Things that aren't work | Hacker News Reader

Things that aren't work

aaronkharris.com

136 pointsjordanmessina31 comments

Things that you might be tempted into cutting out because they don't look like work but actually are:

- Participating in your professional community. Looking at you, HN.

- Going out for drinks with friends. Actually having friends.

- Spending time with loved ones. Actually having loved ones.

- Spinning your wheels for awhile when working in your business stops feeling productive and your subconscious is prodding you to look for strategy refinements by killing your enjoyment of the work. Yes, it's work finding out what's not moving the needle, and the way you do that work is to stop doing stuff, and the way you know to stop doing it is that you don't like doing it anymore.

- Spinning your wheels doing new stuff that you're not sure whether it will ever contribute to the bottom line or not. Eventually you'll have to make a decision, but if you're not sure yet, that time isn't now. Keep doing it until you know exactly why you're stopping.

I originally thought this post was going to be about coming home to loved ones after YC and gaining some perspective on work as only part of the game of life, and how even winning can leave you lonely. But maybe that is implied by telling people that writing blog posts that lots of people click an up arrow on is not the same as growing your company (or having someone to love you).

Having loved ones outside of work and understanding where work fits into your life overall is a whole different thing. Super important think about and understand, but out of the scope of what I was trying to say in this post.

It is related for two reasons: 1) Doing work that is not work is a sneaky way to edge out loved ones outside of work because time is finite and 2) Many people have now commented that something about work-life balance is what they expected from the title, but judgement about work is one of the ways you create work-life balance.

Thanks for the article. The most helpful part for me was the way you binned actions and then acknowledged that some can be tricky to quantify right away, because relationships are important, but sometimes it is hard to tell which ones. Networking for ego is not work, but team building is. I would summarize it as: if it doesn't go in your investor updates now or support something that would be in them in the future, it might not be work.

Instead of saying "these things [friends, loved ones] actually are work, in the sense of sustaining your business productivity, and are therefore valuable", I would prefer to say "these things aren't part of work (in the business sense), but are nonetheless valuable". (Indeed, for many of us, more valuable; business is a means to other goals, not vice versa)

They are work because you have to invest time into them to get the rewards. You have to find the time, in order to find the time, you have to claw back on the time you spend working on/in your business. So it becomes 'work' even though it's not, really.

By this definition, just about everything is work, and the term "work" itself becomes meaningless.

That's what generally happens to people as their flywheel gains momentum. It gets harder to tell where one's contribution to society ends and one's contribution to self begins.

> Talking to your cofounders and team - Sometimes, this looks like having coffee or grabbing a beer. Invariably, you'll be talking about work and how things are going. This is work because you need to know what's going on, and need to care about how your team is feeling and doing.

I can't stress the importance of that enough. I think one of my best decisions on GrantTree was, until recently, to have 121s with almost everyone in the company on a biweekly basis. This scaled up to about 20 people. Yes, it took a chunk of time out, but it was extremely well invested time, imho. I think it was instrumental in pushing through some very complex cultural shifts and getting to where we are now, which is that the company is basically self-managing and I no longer need to steer people in this hands on manner at all.

I strongly recommend this type of work. Someone may occasionally criticise you and say "but you're wasting a quarter of your time each week!" - you're not wasting it, you're investing it in the most valuable resource of your startup: its people.

I guess the reason many people might not do it is that it takes a certain humility to realise that your work output is actually worth less than investing that time in growing and developing the people who work in your business.

Did you have any structure to these 1on1s?

My old manager used to do these with the entire team, but he would literally sit with us, as 'how are things?' and then end the conversation if they said not bad

From the management perspective, I want to know about personal development goals, team member interactions (and problems), and generally just "how you are doing" with a focus not on work product/tasks but on human health.

I block off an hour for each, but want a minimum of 30 minutes of conversation and I can't imagine leaving before then.

When I have mine with my manager, I tend to break it down into four categories: personal, team, department, company.

Whilst I've had some 121s that were cut short if the person was very busy and just wanted to focus on something else, most took the full hour and some overran.

The structure was very fluid, but I generally did start with a fairly straightforward open question: "So, how are you doing?"

Then I generally let the person take it from there. In my experience there are three major kinds of conversation that emerge:

1) The phatic conversation: the other person wants to get stuff off their chest, wants to express it and to feel listened to. This may seem like a waste of time to people who don't understand human beings, but this is actually a hugely important part of 121s and probably the one people get wrong the most, as they tend to confuse this with the second and third kind. Offering advice or suggesting a conflict-resolution approach when the person just wants to be heard is not helpful. Listen to them, hear them, acknowledge how they feel, etc. That's the goal here.

2) The problem-solving conversation: the other person wants advice on a problem they're facing. I often fall into that mode because it's my natural mode... Basically, you help the other person figure out what the solution is to their problem. Sometimes, if they're explicitly asking, maybe you directly suggest the solution. Often, you help the person work out the solution for themselves (much more powerful).

3) The conflict resolution conversation: the other person has a conflict, which they may or may not be aware of, and needs external help to be able to resolve that conflict. This has become much less frequent since our conflict resolution skills have improved across the company, but often there are natural frictions when smart people work hard together, and this conversation is about identifying this friction, making sure the person feels their point of view is understood (so kind of like type #1), and then going and speaking to the other person in the conflict, fully understanding their position as well, and then helping both people see each other's viewpoints so they can come to a joint understanding. Ideally, once people learn good conflict resolution skills, they can do this for themselves.

I don't impose either structure on the person I'm having a 121 with. It's their time, a bit like a therapy session, and they can take it wherever they want it. My job is to spend some time talking to them and genuinely care about them. This one element is the most important: you have to actually give a shit about people. If you don't, if you're just doing this for some utilitarian purpose, it will be felt and will not have the desired effect.

> Writing blog posts about running startups

Glad this is first. It is ironic because the founders writing the blog posts and giving advice have proved that they actually don't know what they are doing by the very act of wasting their time writing blog posts.

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I feel one of the luckiest things that happened to Thumbtack was that for the first 3 years or so the company got basically no press, raising money was difficult and we got a lot of negative feedback from a lot of people. This meant not only did we not have any opportunities for the time wasting things listed (giving advice to others, talking on panels, etc), but we didn't get any validation from anybody for pretending to be successful.

For a lot of people, me included, writing about things is the same as thinking about things. I need that written output to be able to work through things and inspect them deeply.

And if I've spent all that time distilling my thoughts into a readable form, I might as well post it.

Re investor updates - a thousand times yes. A huge chunk of the companies I invested in never send updates unless I push them. YC companies are especially guilty (a few never even told me when/if they shut down.)

>>> Writing blog posts about running startups - This feels good. If it gets onto Hacker News and gets a lot of views, you'll feel really flattered and proud. But don't confuse people reading your post with people knowing and caring about your company.

Not sure I agree with this one.

I've worked at two startups and both made major inroads in industries they wanted to break into by doing this. They wrote several posts that were published in various magazines and "{trade rags" for their industry.

It gave them exposure and explained what their application did and how it could solve an industry wide problem. Doing this actually landed both companies a major corporate client.

Blogging about general stuff isn't work, and if you're trying to get it on HN or some other "technical" site that is not related to your business, then yes, not work. If, however, you get it published in an industry specific newsletter, magazine or trade paper, I would say it will worth it.

I think you're absolutely right. Same rule for blogging as for conferences - if you're writing for your customers or users, then that's good.

I've yet to see a case where writing posts about running a startup falls into that category.

37 Signals blogged about running a startup to good effect. Although worth noting that I believe they stopped doing conferences and lightened up on blogging considerably in the past few years.

Wait a minute... This "isn't work":

> Having coffee with investors - This can be confusing, because sometimes you need to meet with investors. If you're gearing up to raise money or need specific advice, this is work. Most of the time, though, this isn't work

But this is:

> Writing updates for your investors and meeting with them one on one - I've written about investor updates. These relationships are important, and can be incredibly helpful as you grow. Maintain them.

Notice the "meeting with them one on one" in the last quote. Wouldn't having coffee with them qualify as meeting with them one on one and "maintaining" the relationship?

I believe the first point is referring to investors who haven't put money into your company. If you aren't currently raising money, you shouldn't waste your time talking to investors. Raising money is a long process, and can't be done part time. Some might argue that meeting for coffee can help build a relationship with an investor, which would result in making raising easier in the future. However, if your company is worth investing in, these relationships shouldn't matter when it comes time to raise.

The second point is referring to your company's current investors. A monthly update let's those who have a vested interest know where you're at currently, and what you may need help with. Investors should be doing everything they can to help a company. That's why this relationship is important.

> If you're gearing up to raise money or need specific advice

(emphasis mine)

That part makes it seem like they are talking about current investors. How many random investors (that are not currently vested in your company) meet you for coffee and give you specific advice? Maybe this is just a Valley-specific thing?

Here I was thinking this was going to be a blog post advocating a work-life balance...

Ha! Me too. Then I saw "Co-founded Tutorspree. Partner at Y Combinator.", and realized it was going to be the opposite.

Why? I actually think I have a pretty good work-life balance, though admittedly I've had times where that wasn't true.

You're a partner at Y Combinator, I'm sure you have a great work-life balance.

But, being a partner at Y Combinator, it's in your interest for the founders of the companies you're invested in (especially the newbies who would need this advice) to not have a very great work-life balance, and that's who your article was targeted to.

Maybe I read too much into it, but some of the points are so obviously not work that I have a hard time believing anybody would think they are. It made the whole article come off as, "You shouldn't be screwing around, you should be toiling away at your startup."

I think you're bringing a lot of false assumptions into your argument.

It's definitely not in my interest for the founders I've invested in to have bad work-life balances. It's not in my interest because I like them and care about them as humans.

Even if you were to assume that I was motivated exclusively by profit (which I'm not), then it would still be in my best interest to help founders find good balances. In that world, I wouldn't want them burning out, which is what happens when there's no balance.

I've seen founders and friends do everything on this list and call it/justify it as work. That's why I wrote the piece.

It would be hard to overemphasize the importance of work-life balance. It's equally hard, though, to say what it is, because it's different for every person. I think you just need to keep it in mind and make sure you're doing things that make you happy.

Maybe these responses are unfair. I do think the tone of your article -- and many similar articles -- imply a sort of single-minded focus on building your business that a lot of people associate with poor work-life balance.

> Things that look like work but aren't: > Writing blog posts about running startups

Anyone else see the hypocrisy here?

Talking about work != Work

Depends.

If your partner asks you how work went and you answer, it's not work.

If you're out for beers "after work" with your coworkers and you end up discussing outstanding bugs, planned refactorings, or anything else that you would normally be paid to make decisions on, it most certainly is.

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