Step one is admitting you have a problem
37signals.com
37signals.com
Lately, I've been feeling socially isolated big time. I've been neglecting a lot of friendships over the past few years, always feeling guilty when I'm not working, not being able to enjoy the more important things in life, always using the excuse that I have more important things to deal with my life right now. "When my company gets going, I'll start spending things on the finer things in life", I would say. I guess for me, part of it was a bit of a dream, a fantasy image I would hold on to: this dream will either become reality or fail in the next few months, and with this chance of failure coming closer and closer, I guess something snapped with me -- too much stress, and putting way too much pressure on myself.
Failure is not an option, because otherwise I completely blew it with a huge part of my social life, and will have nothing left.
I'm not sure why I'm sharing this, and it's not really a cohesive story, but I I guess I needed to vent with people who kind of can relate. I guess this is one of those phases in life I need to get through to realize what's more important in life.
I have a problem.
I wouldn't worry too much about "blowing it" with your social life. Ive lost countless friends to new relationships, but I take them back once they've stabilized (or broken up...). It's part of life. Your friends will understand.
This I can relate to as a big problem when you start working on your own company. It took me a long time to realise how counter-productive this is, and to free myself to start saying "yes" more often to invitations/ideas. Now if I have the opportunity to do something outside of normal business hours I just weight it on its merits, and not against what work I could do. If I happen to be free on the weekend I might do some work, but I have no such expectation of myself.
For me this means I can sustain a lot higher productivity during the week, and overall.
That's the same logic that compulsive gamblers use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion_and_the...
No matter how many friends you may have lost, there's lots of people in this world. And the internet makes it easier than ever to find people to 'socialize' with (though not necessarily 'hanging out' in the physical sense) outside of your immediate area.
There have been numerous times where I have basically cut all ties with everyone I knew (even family) because I felt I was in a bad position (failing classes, not 'making progress' towards 'success', etc). But I still have friends and family that I'm in contact with now that I've 'cut off' before. Unless you've really cut people off in the sense that you've pissed them off to the point that they no longer want to be friends with you, you may be surprised. Just reconnect with people, it's not as difficult as you might think. (I just suggest against reconnecting with old girlfriends/boyfriends unless you keep your expectations low though)
Yes, but friends and family are not fungible. You can't just replace them with new friends and family without consequence.
You're missing the point. New friends don't "replace" old friends the way a new dollar bill can replace one you lost gambling. As I said, friends and family are not fungible.
You can't say, "good/old friends are irreplaceable so why bother to make new friends once I've lost them."
I'm not saying that; that's as extreme as what I'm arguing against. Obviously you've gotta move forward ... you can't just give up on life if there's a setback. And I generally agree with you that more often than not relationships can be repaired.
But people shouldn't believe that they can just get all of these relationships and lost time back: at best, they can do better moving forward. You can't get your twenties back if you burn them in an office somewhere and you can't get time with your parents back if they, for instance, pass away while you're all wrapped up in your startup.
Pay attention to your life, you only live once, as far as we know. If you wake up one morning to realize you've made mistakes, don't wallow in regret, change your course for the better.
It reads to me that you've overloaded 'success' at business with the concept of 'escape' from your life. You're in for a breakdown unless you can undo this thinking.
Success at your startup won't give you friends or a social life. It won't help you escape from the stress. It'll do the opposite, unfortunately. Success puts even more pressure on you. If you land that $1M customer, you'll have to deliver $2M of value back to them.
What you get out of success is more opportunity, more resources, more freedom. All of these you can use to enrich and expand your own life. If you don't have your own life going though, you'll have no outlet to enjoy your success. Then the stress will turn into a death spiral.
Add yourself to your plans. Make a plan to enjoy your success. Do something to enrich your life like joining a club or taking lessons. If you land the big customer, reward yourself (not with things, with an improvement in your life).
Advanced tip: If you don't land the customer, do something for yourself anyway. The company may fold, but you're still stuck with you for a while yet, so you might as well get along with yourself. :)
Right now it all comes down to changing perspective: take distance from work and realize it's far from everything. I might even enjoy it again if I do. And the Christmas season is probably a good time to call a few lost friends.
Once again, thanks for all the kind replies. This hacker is just going through a rough time, but will definitely come out stronger. It just sucks when you're in the middle of it. :-)
What happens more often than we suspect is that since we enjoy what we do so much, the lines become blurred. How much of those 14 hours of "work" were really aligned with a goal for your business vs. working on something that you just enjoy working on. If you framed that activity with the idea that this is "work" and that it needs to accomplish a goal and it needs to be of a certain quality, would you take it on at 9pm with your tired eyes? Probably not.
His colleague Alfréd Rényi said, "a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems", and Erdős drank copious quantities. (This quotation is often attributed incorrectly to Erdős himself.)[6] After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month.[7] Erdős won the bet, but complained during his abstinence that mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine habit.
It's almost as though taking amphetamines doesn't make you as smart, productive, and famous as Paul Erdős. Weird, huh? What's weirder is that this seems to be true of all vices and all famous people!
For the first year I was working late into the night while I had a day job and it paid off. I didn't tell myself I need to work long hours to get this thing done - it just happened that way. It took me that long to get everything done and ready for release.
The real debate going on here sounds something more like this:
Camp Zen: Balance your life, family, and work and put it in perfect harmony. After all - my team and I developed Google in just 1 hour per day in 5 weeks. Either we have the right philosophy or you're just not smart enough to keep pace.
Camp Starbucks: All else be damned. Stay up til 5am, get up at 6am to goto your paying job - then start working on the project again when you get back home at 5pm.. The project is the last thing on your mind before going to bed and the first thing on your mind when waking up.. Health failing? Not to worry - I'll be eating sushi and drinking green tea for the rest of life when I cash out at the end of all this..
I think Camp Zen likes to think they have the superior philo.. They like to point out that you shouldn't work just for the sake of work.. I completely agree.. However, if your idea and project are of any real value to society and have any chance going somewhere - then in most cases- you'll have plenty of work to do and plenty of health to exchange for that payoff later. The work is obviously cyclical in that sometimes you'll just happen to have a lot of downtime and other times you'll be wishing you were dead but in general you'll be putting your heart and soul into it..
There are always going to be periodic crunch times when you need to pull out all the stops to hit a deadline. However, if this is the norm rather than the exception, I think you're doing it wrong. Note that I still agree that you shouldn't be expecting to take vacations and enjoy lazy weekends, its just that 8 hours of sleep a night and regular exercise should be non-negotiable.
Is hard work an addiction? It probably is, but not like a cocaine addiction, but more like a become-good-at-golf addiction.
Hard work and becoming really good at something requires sacrifices, no matter if it's for sports or startups. And becoming really good at something isn't for everyone.
I want to become really good at what I do, I love my work and I spend a lot of time "working" (or at least practicing). I don't think hard work is a problem and I don't think DHH should tell us that it's a problem. We all have different values in life and we have different ways of achieving success. I mostly work hard because I enjoy it and because I want to become better.
At the very least, sacrificing sleep, nutrition and exercise for "work" is obviously counter-productive, regardless of your personal values.
You always have to try and get a good balance between work and family, but I don't think the article really considers the instance where people choose to work long hours because they enjoy what they do.
'Doing a startup' is surely enjoyable work. That's why people enjoy working more, and why they put in more hours.
I keep saying I'll get an early night, then at 1am or 2am there I am just finishing off some detail. That doesn't mean I'm addicted or have a problem, it means I'm enjoying myself and loose track of time.
Was Mozart 'addicted' to writing music? Or was he just a prolific composer?
We've heard this same blog post 100 times before from 37signals though :/ - "Listen to us and we'll show you our special system to allow you to work less!"
Sure, everything in moderation, but if you enjoy something, do it. If you suddenly realize that you had neglected something/someone else, then that's another matter.
Burnout from work is a real thing, and working "because you love it" does not inoculate you from it.
What if you were so excited about painting that you spent 16 hours a day painting. You produce the greatest masterpieces man has ever seen, you change the world of art forever... but yeah, you're an addict.
So what? What's so bad about being addicted to something worthwhile? It's pretty usual to hear about musicians who will spend 20 hours a day in the studio getting their songs just right. Artists of all types do the whole obsessive addiction thing all the time, but we don't point at them and say "hey, you better chill out, don't worry about trying to achieve Artistic Nirvana, just chill out and have a beer with some friends instead".
Being an alcoholic or a coke addict is bad because it's an empty addiction that produces nothing of worth and destroys you along the way.
Being an art or business addict is a different thing altogether. There's a good reason why there's no "artaholics anonymous" group. Art is worth getting addicted to. Arguably, so is business.
The cultural bias is staring at us right here: You've implicitly assumed that working 16 hours per day is the way to produce great work. Not necessarily true.
There are, of course, artists who do their work in intense sleepless binges, because when the spirit moves them they forget everything else, even food and sleep. There are also artists who can't work unless they're drunk or stoned. But consider the possibility that this is not the source of their power. This is a handicap that they must overcome.
I know it's difficult to imagine a twenty-year-old version of Steve Wozniak that was even more productive. But everything we know about sleep suggests that if Steve had been able to convince himself to get more rest in the middle of his legendary weekend-long hacking binges, he would indeed have been even more productive. Woz got through that, of course, because he had the brain cycles to waste.
As for this:
Artists of all types do the whole obsessive addiction thing all the time, but we don't point at them and say "hey, you better chill out, don't worry about trying to achieve Artistic Nirvana...
No, we don't, but that's a flaw in our culture. Are you suggesting that it would have been a bad idea to try and get, say, Ramanujan to take some time out to rest and feed himself, rather than letting him remain so addicted to short-term mathematical highs that he let his health decline and died at an early age?
Our romantic artistic culture idolizes burnouts and addicts: Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis. This leads to the illusion that acting like a burnout and acting like an artist are aspects of the same thing. But being a great artist is more about persistence than intensity. It is actually far better for your development as a musician, for example, to practice a few hours a day for a long series of days than to try to pack more practice into each day. Your mind needs rest to assimilate and organize what it learns.
Another point: Many of the musicians who spend 20 hours a day in the studio do so for economic reasons. Every hour of studio time costs money, lots of money, and getting set up in the studio takes hours and hours of work, so once you get set up you have to use the studio as intensely as possible before you have to break down the instruments and pack them up. It makes one wonder how much of the I-don't-need-sleep-I'm-a-superhacker culture derives from the days when hacking took place in night-long binges because the computer's time was cheaper late at night. That was a rational reason to stay up all night. But now computers are cheaper than furniture and there's no reason for a tech worker not to get some sleep. You'll think better.
The reality of the universe we exist in is that genius and insanity are not very far apart (and sometimes hard to tell apart). There are no doubt exceptions, but for most geniuses, insanity is part of the deal.
Your bias in this is also enormous, whether or not you're aware of it. You're assuming that your chosen life goals (to have a healthy balanced life) is valid for everyone. Perhaps Ramanujan didn't give a toss about having a healthy balanced life, he wanted to solve mathematical problems, and fuck the rest.
Do you honestly have the arrogance to walk up to a five-year-old Mozart and tell him he needs to chill out and go play in the kindergarten rather than compose symphonies? That he'll produce better work if he takes it easy?
You say:
But being a great artist is more about persistence than intensity. It is actually far better for your development as a musician, for example, to practice a few hours a day for a long series of days than to try to pack more practice into each day.
But being a genius artist is not about "developing as a musician". It's about something else - music is just the medium via which you convey it. Developing as a musician is just one of the early steps along the way. And being a great artist is not about craft, it's about that other thing - the intensity, the passion, the flame burning bright. Craft is necessary like the wick of a candle, but it's not the wick you look at, it's the flame.
Now, of course, most entrepreneurs (and artists) are hardly geniuses, let alone world-changing geniuses, and I can only agree that working yourself to the bone doesn't lead to a healthy life, but to then turn around and tell those who choose to live their life in a certain way that they've missed the point is incredibly arrogant. Not that that's very surprising coming from 37-signals. People (especially driven, passionate people) choose how they live their own life, and they don't need a DHH on a soap-box to lecture them.
It's just like our collective demand for "tips" and "hacks", except instead of focusing on the trivial details, we focus on glorifying vices and unusual habits as secrets of success rather than ways of coping with personality and mood disorders. Ways which were often not conscious or willful choices at all. Ways which were often sources of misery. Ways which were often ultimately failures. We forget these things and we forget that we are not so different from our fellow man that we are immune to the same fates.
Psycho-active drugs do not. They provide an external stimulus to those receptors in the body that make you feel like you are being fulfilled. Over time, those receptors get burnt out and the spurious feeling of fulfillment can only be maintained with the substance.
Narcotics are and are not a big deal; I dabbled with them for a short period of time and can safely say that there are far more users than many people think exists. Users that go to work everyday, have kids, and generally seem to be square. They are a big deal in the sense that you are replacing self-empowered fulfillment with a drug; they aren't a big deal in the sense that everything in our environment produces altered states of consciousness. Food (especially), a beautiful sunset, the aroma of baking bread, &c...
My rule of thumb: if it makes you feel genuinely good, then do it! Psycho-active drugs have never made me feel genuinely good; to some people though, it may. Writing, programming, hiking, swimming, sailing, dancing, &c... have all been things that make me feel genuinely good.
If you're spending 16 hours a day painting, then you might change the world of art. If you're spending 16 hours a day working on your business, you might change the world of business. Or at least your business. But you sure as hell aren't going to have a happy spouse. You're going to lose connections to friends.
This is especially relevant at this time of year. As any Christmas movie will tell you, thinking only of yourself and your work is not going to make you fulfilled.
Oh well, if the Xmas movies, those eternal repositories of human wisdom, say it is so, the it must be! It couldn't possibly be that life is more complicated than Xmas movies would have you believe, and that some people are perfectly fulfilled without the relationships that you and I feel are important.
Some people value their relationship with their 'dealer' above all else, that doesn't mean it's healthy.
Nobody will argue with being "addicted to art" because that sounds like fun compared to "living in poverty, becoming an alcoholic, dying in obscurity at your own hand", which is one way which being an art addict plays out with tragic frequency.
Consider for example that a substantial portion of those musicians spending 20 hours a day in the studio are high on cocaine. Does it make a difference whether it is the how or the why they do it? Does the quality of the end product make a difference?
Likewise, a "business addict" sounds like a swell guy, but if it means he has alienated his family, does that change whether it is worthwhile or not? What if he fails? Was it still worth it?
I suspect the difference between painting 16 hours a day, assuming this is what you really enjoy, and working 16 hours a day, trying to be profitable, is in stress. (But then I'm not a painter, so I wouldn't know)
Some data needed there me thinks.
40-50 66 (25.00%)
50-60 52 (19.70%)
30-40 42 (15.91%)
60-70 35 (13.26%)
80+ 21 (7.95%)
70-80 16 (6.06%)
5-20 14 (5.30%)
20-30 11 (4.17%)
0-4 7 (2.65%)
264 points over 9 options hours count percent
0-4 7 3
5-20 14 5
20-30 11 4
30-40 42 16
40-50 66 25
50-60 52 20
60-70 35 13
70-80 16 6
80+ 21 8There's no right or wrong answer. Maybe some people really can squeeze the extra productivity out of working 100 hours (I know I can't). But to truly answer the question requires brutal honesty with yourself. Are you running to your goals or away from your fears?
Instead, anybody want to get some data together? I track productivity. I can't be the only one. (PLEASE tell me I'm not the only one.) Poor sample sizes, self-selected reports, and non-comparable metrics aside, going from hoary old wives tales to actual numbers has to be an improvement at the margin. (Data collection on this topic at the day job convinced salarymen that overtime was overdoing it. You know why? Because the hours worked versus productivity graph was so unbelievably borked that climatologists couldn't coax an upward trend out of it, that's why.)
It was (very lightly) discussed on HN six days ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=971708 (I posted clickable links to the references, so you don't have to retype them).
I wish I knew which tasks were the most important, every day I try and guess and follow my instincts.
If I hated my job though, I would just be biding the time until I could clock out and leave it at that.
Take the four stages of creativity, for example: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Work habits like those discussed here all but destroy any potential for unconscious incubation of creative solutions.
Another oddity about this industry: perks like ping-pong tables, free food, and Rock Band tournaments. These seem to be attempts to lessen the psychological load, with the ulterior motive of getting longer hours from workers. If you believe in the psychological theories of creativity, such benefits should have no great effect.
But then again, maybe you do. Saying "I don't have a problem because I don't believe I do" is begging the question. Many drug addicts don't believe that they have a problem, but they clearly do.
Take care of:
1 - Your health
2 - Your family / relationship with God
3 - Your work
The advice was given to me at a time when I was working 100 hour weeks. I was told that even a 40 hour work week is unacceptable if I don't take care of items 1 and 2 ahead of my work. As with most quality advice, it took years to sink in.
Edit: I see I've missed the point. The important part of the order is where work is placed on it, not where religion is placed. My bad.
That said, it's kind of weird to look back at code I've written in such a state. I usually don't recognize it. Sometimes it a good way, sometimes bad (i.e. sometimes I'm amazed that I wrote something that good, and sometimes I'm amazed that it works at all).