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In Defense of the 60+ Hour Work Week

blog.lawnstarter.com

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Re: In Defense of the 60+ Hour Work Week

#21

Post by k-mcgrady »

mdmarra wrote: post #19
lostcolony wrote: post #3

So at 23 this person feels he has enough anecdotal experience to trump 100+ years of research. Let's see...he states he has no life outside of work, that he forced himself to pull those hours even when there wasn't work enough to demand it, that he was working those hours without remuneration of any kind, and while conflating 'working' with 'learning', leading me to question if he was really being productive, rather…

The HN crowd baffles me sometimes. It seems to move between "This person is too old. They are disconnected from today's generation," and "This person is too young. They don't have the experience to share meaningful anecdotes." At what age would this person's comments hold water? 25? 28? 30?

You don't have to be a certain age for your comments to matter - it's specific to the scenario you're commenting on. Someone with 30+ years in the workforce has much more knowledge to comment on it that someone with only a few years.

Re: In Defense of the 60+ Hour Work Week

#23

Post by yummyfajitas »

dkersten wrote: post #8

You Learn and Accomplish More This is what everyone else is arguing against and what the research is invalidating. You may feel you're getting more done, but are you really? Few high quality hours are much more productive than many low quality hours, especially if its work that requires your brain to actually work efficiently (anything creative, programming etc). I refuse to believe that this tipping point is exactly…

This is what everyone else is arguing against and what the research is invalidating.

Please cite the research, particularly research which applies to knowledge work or anything other than construction/manufacturing. I've searched for it but never found it, so I'd love to finally see something useful.

Re: In Defense of the 60+ Hour Work Week

#24

Post by rmrfrmrf »

I'm starting to think that lawnstarter is an experiment in content marketing rather than an actual business. At this point I've "learned" more about the founder than the business itself, but honestly, so many of these types of articles are paid for that I doubt it reflects anyone's real personality.

Re: In Defense of the 60+ Hour Work Week

#26

Post by brohoolio »

It's interesting reading these sorts of articles.

I'll just throw in my 2 cents about my experience.

A couple years ago I put in 3000 hours over the course of the year. Multiple 80 hour weeks, etc.

I was completely and absolutely burned out for about a year and a half after that. The massive amount of effort I put in really took a toll in every aspect of my life. I'd say I was about 50% as productive at work in my burn out period. Socially I was about 10% the person I was before, rarely hanging out with people and rarely wanted to do anything. Everyone on my team said essentially the same thing happened to them.

YMMV

Re: In Defense of the 60+ Hour Work Week

#27

Post by theorique »

jaimebuelta wrote: post #12

Me, I’m a 23 year old startup founder I think that people making the argument of 40 hours a week is not that is it impossible or not beneficial to work 60+ hours a week at a particular time. But that it's not sustainable. It's not the same living on ramen for two years than defending that living on ramen is actually great. Again, assuming that an exceptional situation (young startup founder with no commitments) is th…

Absolutely right.

Just because a few driven individuals can survive Navy SEAL selection (BUD/S) doesn't mean that BUD/S is the optimal practice for everyone to have a productive, balanced, or happy life.

Some people do fine on 60 hours a week. Some people burn out on 40 hours. Some people sleep 5 hours a night. Some people delude themselves into thinking that 5 hours a night is all they need and then sleep 14 hours on Saturday.

This article is good insofar as it's one man's exploration of the question. But everyone needs to figure it out individually - there's no one-size-fits-all answer.

Re: In Defense of the 60+ Hour Work Week

#28

Post by acd »

I think it is ok to work 60 hours+ when you are young, have only yourself to take care about and a skill set to build. As soon as you starting having a girl/boyfriend or family you are not taking care of your private life when you are working 60hours+. Then you are prioritizing work in front of your private life.

I will ask people, when you are in your death bed and thinking back about your life, how many people will wish they worked more or wished they travelled more and had more fun in life?

Done those kind of hours earlier in life and learnt by experience that if you work to much you do not have balance in your life. You have unreasonable expectation of professionalism of everyone around you and get easily annoyed by minor work misshappenings.

Re: In Defense of the 60+ Hour Work Week

#29

Post by tomswartz07 »

danso wrote: post #18

I can kind of see where the OP is coming from. My summer job out of high school was working as a roofer, where I had to get up at 5 am every morning to drive out into the small town where we were based. My boss was famously a jerk: the summer before he was hospitalized because apparently a worker "accidentally" pushed him off the roof. And the summer before that, the office workers who were employed on the managing s…

I think you hit the nail right on the head.

My take on it is this: You work for as much time as you need.

Different jobs, different positions, different work-styles all dictate different needs out of a typical work day. Who's to say that one is vastly superior to another. Further, who's to say that their workflow is so stupendous, that it should dictate the needs of others?

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