Work Hard and Play Just Enough

I guess the important question to answer is: why are you going for a "home run"?

Is it because your life-consuming ambition, the only way you'll ever feel accomplished, is by having a bank account with a LOT of digits in it?

Is it because you have a burning ambition to change the world in a massive way via technology, like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, and you just don't see any way to do it other than building a mega-company?

Or is it because you're letting your environment and peer pressure dictate that a home run is what you should want, even though what you really want is financial independence so you can spend more time reading books, travelling, and painting watercolours?

I don't know how people can still write coherent code at that point. My mind starts tripping under its own weight at the four-five hour mark. I usually can't make it past 2 or 3 hours without a break. Those times when I was hacking away like I was doing something so important that the world just couldn't wait for it... well I'm pretty sure I was at that office so late simply fixing the stupid mistakes I was making just hours before because I was too bleary-eyed, tired, uncomfortable, and frustrated to be effectively working.

In a few years you may or may not realize that there's more to life and that you won't get your youth back.

I found myself disagreeing with the article until I read this. 70 hours a week seems like a decent number for an early-days startup. That's probably somewhere around my upper bound as well (maybe just a bit above it).

A 70 hour work week is not actually that unreasonable. You wake up at 8AM, get to work by 9AM, work until 7PM, and then head out with another 5 hours still before you need to go to sleep and still get a solid 8 hours of rest. Do that 7 days a week and you have 70 hours. As long as you're actively fighting burnout by using those 5 hours to exercise, hang out with friends, or otherwise get your head out of your startup, it can be a healthy lifestyle.

I think it's important that we get rid of this false dichotomy between working hard and having a work/life balance. I think the author is right that the only way you can increase your odds of success is to consistently work harder, that formula has never failed me my entire life. But burnout prevents you from doing that consistently so balance is needed even in a 70 hour work week, and if you sanitize the hyperbole you'll find that's pretty doable.