Seth Priebatsch: Get a life

So first off, as a #1 employee in a startup that had a baby right during the early stage, I'm living proof of the fallacy of your judgement. I pull off the work-life balance thing pretty well (stay-at-home mom helps a lot), and my effectiveness at work is not diminished. The fact is that commitments at home give me an ongoing sense of urgency that keeps my overall productivity up without inducing burnout the way 18-hour days do. And in any case, the variance between individuals is far greater than the variance between hours worked. You'd be a fool to hire lesser talent just because they're willing to work 80 hours a week.

More to the point about this last comment, you're absolutely right to think about future regrets. Having a family is a big sacrifice, and it will not necessarily make you happy. On the other hand, slaving away at startups, even if you find financial success may not make you happy either. Today's media culture (of which silicon valley porn is a significant part these days) programs our ego with all kinds of beliefs about happiness: if I'm rich I'll be happy, if I'm famous I'll be happy, if my talent is recognized I'll be happy, but the belief doesn't make them true. The sad truth may be that nothing will make you happy, and you are destined to be miserable, or vice-versa. It may be that the greatest accomplishments require a certain discontent, and in fact you care more about the accomplishment than the happiness. It's a mess that you have to sort out for yourself. Anyone preaching how others should live their life is invested in a particular belief system that may or may not apply to you. When you are making these kinds of decisions I think deep soul searching is the only way to go. I wouldn't place too much stock in other people's regrets, because there's no way you can sort out the baggage underlying someone's stated beliefs to really get a read on how it might apply to you. Instead your only recourse is to go with your gut. This is the ultimate gift and curse of living in a free society.

By your logic, anything someone does that is sufficiently abnormal qualifies as autistic. I guess I'd hope that you'd step away from this conversation and stop calling non-autistic people autistic. "Weird and frustrating" is probably more appropriate anyhow.

You claim you want frank discussion, but then you reduce the whole debate to a time equation. The problem is that it's only as simple if you measure success by hours worked. As someone who has pulled many many 100 hour weeks, I can tell you that I'm more effective in 40 hours now then I used to be in 80. This may not be true for everybody (I'm not trying to tell anyone how to live their lives), but for me, I draw energy and inspiration from the downtime. I'm in touch with real human beings outside the echo chamber, giving me insight into building products that normal people will buy. When I get to the office, most of the time I know I have only until 6pm to get my todo list done. When I was single and working 100 hour weeks, it was easy to get caught on tangents, or work when over-tired, because hey I have 12 hours on Saturday and 12 hours on Sunday to catch up.

Limiting your work hours can be constraint that leads to increased creativity and effectiveness. It also creates a buffer when you really do need to put in extra effort to make a critical deadline. Time spent away from work lets your subconscious process things and come to more optimal solutions.

I'm not denying that there is a correlation between highly successful entrepreneurs and long work hours, but it's a fallacy to treat it as a causal relationship. How many people work 24/7 in silicon valley and never get anywhere? A lot more than you think because no one is telling their stories. The focus should be on efficiency, creative thinking, intelligence and above all persistence. It's possible to jeopardize all of those by forsaking work-life balance.