Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?
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Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?
#2At the heart of it all is the amount of insecurity we have about our work, it's quality and relevance.
Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?
#3New success quickly becomes the new baseline and a personality that chases success will continue to pursue greater success.
Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?
#4Sometimes it helps if you think back to one year before you started with your current work, what things were important to you then.
Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?
#5What is success, really?
Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?
#6I wonder if organisations are getting the benefits they perceive, I suppose if you bill by the hour you are but I know from personal experience nothing kills my creativity like overwork.
Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?
#7Because I like to work.
People who don't like to work often misunderstand this when looking at the stories of successful people. They think successful people force themselves to work hard in order to be successful. In fact successful people often like their work so much that there's nothing else they'd rather do. I doubt for example that there's anything Jeff Bezos would rather do than run Amazon. I bet it seems to him the way a gigantic Lego creation seems to a 7 year old.
Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?
#8You can have meaning or you can have happiness. You cannot have both -- at least not all of the time. This conflict can be seen clearly in a movie like "Office Space", where both the male and female leads are working for happiness (and survival) whereas the work environment expects them to be working for meaning. (How many pieces of flair are you wearing?)
The trick to this discussion is that people on one side of the discussion frankly don't understand folks on the other side. The things they say and do don't make any sense. If you're a meaning person, you read the title of this essay -- "If You’re So Successful, Why Are You Still Working 70 Hours a Week?" and think if you're successful, why wouldn't you be working 70 hours a week? You're doing what you love, making a difference in the world! It's only those that are unsuccessful, those who work for meaning but aren't very effective, that would spend a lot of time doing nothing.
For both camps, it seems the world is full of people from the other camp, basically ruining things for the rest of us. It would be great if we could convey this critical piece of information to people early on in life. So much time and energy is spent in conflicts with other folks where it's not needed.
Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?
#9Because I like to work. People who don't like to work often misunderstand this when looking at the stories of successful people. They think successful people force themselves to work hard in order to be successful. In fact successful people often like their work so much that there's nothing else they'd rather do. I doubt for example that there's anything Jeff Bezos would rather do than run Amazon. I bet it seems to h…
Exactly. My father told me a story of when he was stuck in traffic with somebody who was then about the 10th richest person in the world. To make conversation, my father asked him what his plans for the coming year were. The guy listed all sorts of business goals. My father asked if he had anything personally that he was planning. The guy basically replied that those were his personal plans. He made no distinction between work and play.
Re: Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?
#10Because I like to work. People who don't like to work often misunderstand this when looking at the stories of successful people. They think successful people force themselves to work hard in order to be successful. In fact successful people often like their work so much that there's nothing else they'd rather do. I doubt for example that there's anything Jeff Bezos would rather do than run Amazon. I bet it seems to h…
Exactly. My father told me a story of when he was stuck in traffic with somebody who was then about the 10th richest person in the world. To make conversation, my father asked him what his plans for the coming year were. The guy listed all sorts of business goals. My father asked if he had anything personally that he was planning. The guy basically replied that those were his personal plans. He made no distinction be…
That's sad.