A point that's often missed is: some people don't perceive certain types of work as work. I know it's a cliche, and if this sentence doesn't immediate resonate with you, you're probably not a part of that group I am referring to - and that's ok. Don't feel like you somehow are not as cool or special, quite to the contrary - you're probably more balanced and overall healthier.
But that doesn't change the fact that the group I am referring to does exist. In the first 20 years of my life, I couldn't really be motivated to do much. And then my college roommate invited me to start a company together. On day 3 or 4 into this venture, I remember being so excited by what was happening that I literally couldn't sleep and instead stayed up all night. Once the sun went up in the morning, I was looking at the fruits of my labor and had the type of endorphins flowing through my body that I had never experienced before.
I was genuinely shocked that I loved this project as much as I did. I had never thought about starting a business before, had never stayed up before for work, and never looked up to people who seemed to work really hard. In hindsight, the only sign of some type of an inclination towards entrepreneurship that I had exhibited before was a strange admiration for the characters in Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. We read that book as a part of an English class, and most of the students were highly critical of the lifestyle described in the book. I too could tell that those characters were highly out of balance, but I couldn't shake off the feeling that I would have loved to be a part of that group.
20 years later, I am looking back on a successful entrepreneurial career, and can more accurately trace back that fascination with entrepreneurship to a personal trauma that I experienced as a child. As it turns out, that trauma caused a lot of discomfort in my development years, which led to this unhealthy obsession for entrepreneurship, which in turn gave me passion and motivation to push myself to the limit, and which somehow resulted in success that made the whole thing somehow... worthwhile. As I grew older, I did thankfully find a way to diversify my life and interests, and today you would describe me as fairly average in my work-life balance.
Just wanted to share this because PG's "How to work hard" essay caused a lot of discussion, and I think many people didn't take away from it one important bit: if that essay didn't resonate with you, it's ok - your life didn't include the same type of influences that shaped PG into becoming the person that he became. That might be a good or a bad thing, but it's a thing and let's all just realize that each one of us has to find a recipe that's authentic to us and fits the exact right formula of our individual lives.