Confucius said, "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." If you don't work, you don't have to worry about work-life balance.
Citation needed. Which book of the Analects is that found in?
Startup work-life balance
61–70 of 115 posts
Re: Startup work-life balance
#62How can I take this posting seriously with a significant grammar error in the title.
You have a punctuation error in your comment.
Re: Startup work-life balance
#63I agree that we shouldn't be looking at it in terms of hours, but I don't know if it can be measured in terms of happiness (as the author seems to be indicating) either.
What are your goals? What is it going to take for you to achieve those goals? Will you be happy working towards those goals? Is the misery that you're going to have to endure to achieve those goals worth it? Can you sustain that level of misery and still accomplish your goals?
But, it could also mean that you’re just a lot dumber and less efficient than your peers who could do the same thing without pulling an all-nighter.
You may well be dumber than someone who doesn't need an all-nighter to do what you're doing, but you may want the prize you're working towards more than the person getting 8 hours of sleep - so go for it.
Re: Startup work-life balance
#64I used to program all the time in high school. I thought I was happy. Then I went to college, met all sorts of people, had lots of experiences, and realized how narrow my life, and concept of happiness was. So when I hear people talk about how much they love their work, that's their own balance... I can't help but wonder if they just haven't learned how great the other parts of life are. And how much a wider range of…
To use an old phrase, I work hard and I party hard. I massively enjoy both aspects of my life, and whenever it gets "out of balance" (not enough working or not enough fun) I begin to feel bad. Everyone has their own balance to find, but I agree it's really important to experience both ends of that scale to work out where your own middle is. I've worked 9am - 3am before, which was too much work, and I took 6 months off work before starting at my current position, which was too little work.
Re: Startup work-life balance
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to go out all the time in college. I got puked on by all sorts of people, had lots of frustrating experiences, adn realized how peer-driven my life, and concept of happiness was. So when I hear people talk about how much they love their friends, that's their own balance... I can't help but wonder if they just haven't learned how to take care of themselves without external validation. And how working to accompl…
> So when I hear people talk about how much they love their friends, that's their own balance... I can't help but wonder if they just haven't learned how to take care of themselves without external validation. You espouse a false dichotomy. There's more to loving friends than loving the external validation they may (or may not!) provide. Go get some really extraordinary friends and try again.
Yes, but by the same token the original poster seemed to imply that there was nothing more to working than coding. Whether you're founding a start-up or working as a developer for some giant multi-national, I hope there's more to your job descriptions than typing code and check-ins (and hence a more balanced experience).
With that said, that is all some people have. And for those people, the OP is probably right and they will probably not be happy for long.
Re: Startup work-life balance
#66Wait, why is Elon Musk being used as example of someone who doesn't need vacations? We don't know what his personal life is like, in comparison to all we know about his professional life. There is no data. Digging into his personal life is widely considered off limits. Reporting is not done on it. If I were, for example, to assert that Musk has had two divorces in 2.5 years and that this may in fact reflect that his…
Two divorces in 2.5 years. And since divorces arent "same day service" type things I'm pretty sure the dude is "unhappy" with his private life.
Re: Startup work-life balance
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you need to make your life feel balanced is different from your peers. If you need to take more time off, then do it. But if you only need 1 week of vacation like Elon Musk, then that's his balance. That's the point -- let's not create one standard set of rules for what balance is because people operate differently.
What? No. A balanced life means you split your life among all different areas of life. That's what that phrase means. Elon Musk has rejected the idea that work/life balance is necessary and that's just fine . That's how he feels happiest. It seems to be working pretty damn well for him. I'm not saying there's any kind of standard set of rules, I'm saying that if you reject the dogma of balance then say so, don't try…
If the goal is to be happy and if some people find greater happiness doing 'work' while others find greater happiness devoting time to 'life', then surely there will be some people who will split their time accordingly.
Maybe it's not technically 'balance', but do you really think when someone says 'work-life balance' that they mean 50-50 split between work and life? When I hear it used it usually means 'spend less time on work and more on life', and I think hippo33's is correct: not everyone needs to (or should) spend less time doing work because that's where they may find the most happiness.
Re: Startup work-life balance
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? No. A balanced life means you split your life among all different areas of life. That's what that phrase means. Elon Musk has rejected the idea that work/life balance is necessary and that's just fine . That's how he feels happiest. It seems to be working pretty damn well for him. I'm not saying there's any kind of standard set of rules, I'm saying that if you reject the dogma of balance then say so, don't try…
> redefine what it means because people are dogmatic about "balance = good, not balanced = bad" You don't seem to understand that this is how language drift works. When "people are dogmatic" about how certain words are used, those connotations leak into the definition itself.
People are dogmatic about a variety of activities being the best way to live.
I'm not convinced anyone but two people here feel that "balance" is now used to also mean single minded focus.
Re: Startup work-life balance
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
You referenced and tried to refute the article, but how do you know Musk is happy? How do you know he has found his personal balance? From what little I know about his personal life -- and it may be unrepresentative, again -- you can argue his personal life is on the rocks. He might also be perfectly happy. But what's the evidence? I don't see any evidence his story supports you point at all.
You're right -- we don't know. My interpretation of the article was that the AUTHOR seemed to imply that that was unbalanced, and my point in bringing it up was that it didn't seem right for the author to critique what is a balanced/not-balanced life, since it's different for everyone.
You keep equating "balanced/not-balanced" with "good/bad".
What do you mean by "balance" if you don't mean the normal definition of "engages in activities/pursuits from all aspects of life"? By the normal definition of balance Elon Musk is not leading a balanced life at all, but a dedicated and focused life. This is not a value judgement, it's perfectly reasonable to make that choice.
This idea that balance is different for everyone makes me think you are using balance to mean "fulfilling" or "happy"?
Re: Startup work-life balance
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absoutely. I was similar to the author all the through college. Then I got a job, which was a brutal entry level programmer job. It killed what little social life I had at that point. But the upside was that I was pretty good at it and started making some decent money. Over time I was able to use my professional capital to switch to a company with much healthier expectations. I was able to go out and explore the worl…
Sounds like you had a bad job, not a bad time programming/sciencing.
Well yes, but that's precisely the problem: our career expectations have, as anyone who's done a job interview can tell you, gotten pretty extreme.
I left a bad job once, and for months interviewed in loads of places and didn't get any job. I'm fairly sure it was because I truly sucked at explaining away the bad job time and why I left without "sounding like he doesn't want to work."
There should be nothing wrong, in "True Scotsman capitalism" or "True Scotsman career development", with leaving a bad job if it just can't work out for you -- particularly when you're young, unmarried, and not in debt. But somehow there is. Every bad job is a black mark on you. If interviewers don't view it that way, you've often trained yourself to view it that way. I certainly did. Haven't quite gotten over it yet.
(Admittedly, after a few months I started finding different crowds of people and eventually got a contract position that could have become full-time if I was still looking for full-time work by then.)