

Work Hard and Play Just Enough - andrewcross
http://www.andrewcross.ca/2013/04/11/work-hard-and-play-just-enough/

======
swombat
_That’s my line. It isn’t a balanced life, but historically, it gives me the
best chance to succeed. And since I’m going for a home run, that’s the line I
need to walk._

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?

~~~
andrewcross
Fair question.

For me, I'm going for a home run because I think it will allow me to have the
biggest impact on the world. I was living in Chile for 6 months last year and
have seen what my company (a p2p marketplace for trips planned by locals)
could do globally. That worldwide impact is the driving force.

What it isn't is a money or peer pressure play. My first startup is actually
set to double in revenue this year (to low-mid 6 figures) and I barely touch
it. The money thing will come, whether I go for a home run or not.

~~~
eyko
So a glorified (and quite expensive) CouchSurfing?

~~~
andrewcross
Couchsurfing is fantastic. It's also very variable. Many people are willing to
pay for a consistent, high-quality experience.

~~~
erikpukinskis
In some ways it's like you're offering couchsurfing + bundled travel
insurance, which seems like a pretty awesome way to hedge the downsides of
crowdsourcing.

------
mindcrime
I think this article hits the nail on the head. Yes, you can build a business
and do the whole "only work 20 hours a week" or whatever thing. But can you
"hit a home run" doing that? I kinda doubt it.

If you want the home run, if you want to make it to the big leagues, you have
to sacrifice (unless you just plain get lucky). And even on the "luck" front,
I'm reminded of the old saw "the harder I work, the luckier I get".

Now it is a fair question to ask "why is it so important to you to hit the
metaphorical home run"? To which I can only say "it's complicated". And,
ultimately, my reasons and my motivations are very personal, and I don't see
why I (or any other entrepreneur) should have to justify our drive and
ambition to anybody else.

That said, for me personally, it comes down to a combination of factors,
including:

1\. Desire for financial independence (aka "fuck you money"). I don't need to
be Larry Ellison rich, but I'd like to have enough money in the bank to where
I don't have to _worry_ about money anymore. I'd like to be able to buy a nice
house, a nice car, do some things for some family and friends, and have enough
money left to where I can spend my time traveling, reading, playing with geeky
shit and never have to worry about "what happens if my car breaks down" or
whatever.

2\. General sense of accomplishment. I'll admit it, I grew up pretty much dirt
poor in the rural South, and I have a chip on my shoulder about people who
seem to think that they are better than me because they have more money. I
want to prove to (myself|the world|those assholes|whoever) that I am just as
capable as anybody. The digits in the bank account don't really _matter_
(other than as in (1) above), but they are a means of keeping score. I want a
high-score just to prove a point and because I'm very competitive. It also
involves both proving the people wrong who have ever doubted me, AND
justifying the faith of the people who believed in me. I have friends, family,
etc., that I want to prove something to, so I can feel like I justified their
support and belief.

3\. Causes / Philanthropy. There are causes and initiatives I believe in very
strongly, and I'd like to be in a position to do more to advance those causes.
I want to be able to do things like: donate money to libertarian advocacy
groups, support libertarian candidates for office, etc.; donate money to
support education (especially STEM education) for underprivileged people in
areas like where I grew up; donate money to groups like the EFF, FSF, etc.

4\. Creating something I always wished existed. I have a vision in my head of
the kind of company I want to work for, and that I think (some) other hackers
would want to work for. No company seems to exist exactly like what I
envision, so my plan is to create it. Being large, profitable and sustainable
would give us access to resources to do cool things. It sucks to have all
sorts of ideas, but to lack the resources to try to act on them. Ideally I'd
like to run a company that can support intrapreneurship, identify employees
with really awesome ideas, nurture and incubate those initiatives, and - if
they succeed - spin them out as separate companies or whatever.

5\. Angel investing. If I make it big, I'd definitely want to help the next
round of entrepreneurs by doing some angel investing.

There are other reasons as well, but that starts to get more personal, and I'm
not going to go into that here. But I think that is the basic gist of the
thing.

~~~
agentultra
I'd try to over-come 2.

I had a chip on my shoulder when I was your age too. I came from a poor rural
Canadian town, raised by a single disabled mother, and spent most of my time
out of school because I was being bullied and nothing could be done about it.
The problem with 2 is that there is too much luck involved hitting home-runs.
If you base your sense of accomplishment on that chip in your shoulder you
will only be greatly disappointed later in life. There's nothing to prove.

You only have yourself to compete with.

~~~
mindcrime
> I had a chip on my shoulder when I was your age too.

Do you know how old I am? :-)

> The problem with 2 is that there is too much luck involved hitting home-
> runs. If you base your sense of accomplishment on that chip in your shoulder
> you will only be greatly disappointed later in life.

That's a fair point, but it's more than just the "chip on the shoulder"
effect. It's also, as I said, about demonstrating - to the people who have
supported me, and shown belief in me - that their belief was justified. And
that's something that matters to me. Sadly, some of those people are getting
older (my parents, for example) which contributes to my desire to work harder,
since I want to accomplish something in their lifetimes.

> You only have yourself to compete with.

I agree with that to a point. But combined with

> There's nothing to prove.

I would argue that I do have something to prove... to myself. I need to know
what I'm capable of achieving, and if I give less than 100% effort, I'll
always have to look back and ask "what could I have done if I'd really given
my all"?

------
jaimzob
"I’m your typical “balls to the wall” founder that will sacrifice all for the
sake of the startup" ... "I founded and ran GooseChase, which makes running
scavenger hunts incredibly easy via iPhone & Android apps".

Some of this stuff is beyond parody...

~~~
route3
Your comment is unnecessary and I'm shocked that's sitting high on the
comments page.

Trivializing the amount of effort and energy this fellow put in to
producing/developing this cross-platform mobile app because you disagree
with...well, I still don't know what your issue is with the quotes you pulled,
care to share?

Read the last line of pg's comment from the other day:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5521286>

You might have felt better after posting your comment but you also gave up
your chance to add something constructive to the discussion. To paraphrase
pg's reaction, it makes me embarrassed for HN when people include projects in
their blog profile and this is the sort of response they get.

------
lutze
"But there’s different classes of success."

Two tips for life:

Never ever let anyone else define what success means to you.

Never be arrogant enough to attempt to define what success means for other
people.

------
timjahn
The people who advocate "balls to the wall" practices and "not making it home
for dinner every night" scare me.

When it's all said and done, and you're ready to leave this world, what are
you going to think about? Who are you going to want by your side? What are you
going to care about?

If it's all the amazing startups you created, or the enormous sums of money
you made, or the years of never making it home for dinner to see your
wife/husband/kids/dog/whoever, then you're on the right track.

But if at the end of the day, life means more to you than ferociously
competing to see who can work more hours in a week, why the hell are you doing
this?

~~~
ryandvm
Agreed. I suspect there are very few people that lie on their deathbeds and
wish they spent more time at work.

~~~
dingfeng_quek
why should desires just before death take precedence over desires during the
prime of life?

------
NDizzle
Do you have to make hundreds of millions of dollars to hit a home run? There
are different kinds of home runs, my young friends.

Straightaway center field at the polo grounds was 483 ft.

Wrigley is 353 down the right field line.

------
choxi
I appreciate the gesture of being a devil's advocate to the work-life balance
posts but the hyperbole of "9am-5am" is hurting your case, you're giving
others a straw man to argue against.

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.

~~~
cunac
what will increase your odds of success is to work smarter and have better
hourly output than your competition (whatever is appropriate measure of
'better' in your case). Working long hours should be your last resort not your
first how to succeed. Yes I do understand that longer hours compensate lower
hourly output but I would argue that you should find area where your talent
lies. If you are in top 5% in given field that is enough competitive advantage
without putting more then regular hours. IMNSHO Reason why most startups fail,
there are not enough hours in a day to compensate for a lack of innate ability
to do job.

------
thedufer
> The notion that you need to work like crazy doesn’t come out of the blue,
> there’s data to back it up.

Then show us some data. I see two successes mentioned that fit this "trend".
Treehouse is mentioned as an outlier - but that's 1/3 of the examples. This is
not how "data" works.

------
agentultra
I've been at the office until the wee hours of the morning.

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.

~~~
cunac
"I don't know how people can still write coherent code at that point." - they
don't and that is a problem

~~~
swampthing
So don't write code - do something that requires less focus and creativity,
but is still productive.

~~~
r0s
In my case, the reason I'm still at the office is because I need to write
code. This is dysfunctional.

------
kamakazizuru
I lost you when you started classifying success. There are no classes of
success - its defined purely by your own drive and identified purpose in life.
It maybe important for you to impact the world some how - but to someone else
- success (even of the home run variety) may simply be having a successful
marriage - happy kids and enough time for people they care about. Would you
say Gates, Jobs, Brin and Page hit home runs - or would you the kid who came
off the streets and made a decent life for himself - enough to provide for
himself and his family and live comfortably - hit a home run?

------
LaurenLee
The nature of work has changed so much that I find many blank stares in the
faces of young entrepreneurs when you ask what they do in their off time.
What's off time? What if work is play or simply that one so completely enjoys
their work and doesn't know how to draw a distinction between Work and Life.
On the other hand, a huge plethora of tools, cloud services, saas, etc manke
it available to "work" anytime, anywhere as never before. From project
management to the ability to create meaningful communication with remarkable
time-saving features (15Five.com) the nature and time-required for work is
what you make of it.

------
edw519
Over time, I have discovered that I generally work in one of 3 modes:

Mode 1: Unproductive. Like many corporate people. Busy, even completing
transactions, but when you get right down to it, not producing much product.

Mode 2: Productive. Writing software. Testing. Talking to users. Crossing
stuff off to-do lists. Making progress and feeling good about it.

Mode 3: Transcendence. Being "in the zone". "Seeing" things I hadn't seen
before. Making discoveries that leapfrog previous struggles and implementing
them quickly. Being ecstatic understanding new possibilities from the things
I'm building right now.

I'm usually in Mode 2 (I've discovered tricks to quickly identify and get out
of Mode 1.) I LOVE to be in Mode 3, but often don't have as much control
getting there when I'd like.

For me, Mode 3 is usually very early in the morning or late at night. I often
lose all awareness of time and space and don't leave Mode 3 until I'm spent.

I'd guess I am: Mode 1, 10%. Mode 2, 80%. Mode 3, 10%.

When you're in Modes 1 or 2, you think about things like Work/Life Balance,
work hours & conditions, and work habits. When you're in Mode 3, you don't
think about much of anything except what you're working on.

If you're building a startup, you should expect to be in Mode 3 quite a bit
(certainly more than my 10%). Sure, there's lots of transactions to conduct,
but if you want to disrupt, you have to pay your dues in Mode 3.

In Mode 3, expect to miss meals, family, friends, maybe even baths. You can
worry about those things when you return to the real world.

~~~
kunle
Have any tips for getting out of Mode 1?

~~~
sailfast
I recommend blocking out time to concentrate. I find lead time is definitely
required to get progress from mode to mode. If you've got a meeting or
something else scheduled every 20 minutes your brain won't lock in. If you're
in a corporate environment (like me) you need to work hard on this and keep
your meetings blocked together or keep your calendar free. Knock out the
morning admin and tasks and you have all afternoon and evening to work and
progress. This applies to code but also for phone calls - once you start, try
not to stop until your mind needs a break. Keep calling, keep pitching, keep
coding.

As for mode 3 - it can be tough to get to Mode 3 in a corporate setting
because often you've not been given the freedom to think in a way that can
lead to Mode 3, but it does happen. For me I just need some runway of time to
settle in.

------
ndonnellan
>> The notion that you need to work like crazy doesn’t come out of the blue,
there’s data to back it up.

From what I've seen*, "data" are usually blog posts like this one. I would
love for someone to also include "here are these 20 other startups I knew,
everyone worked their butts off. They still failed". Anyone?

\- yes, this too is an anecdote

\-- there are data

------
slieberman87
As someone who just took the plunge and started my own company I have thought
about this a lot lately. What we have started to do is go on temporary
relocations as a team (there are only 3 of us), and do our work from different
cities. Our home base is Chicago, but we just spent a week working in SF.
Allows us to keep working longer hours and stay sane at the same time.

------
tejay
Working a lot (>60 hours per week) is necessary, but alone insufficient, to
result in 'startup success,' I think.

Plus, sitting at a desk typing away for extended periods of time is actually
pretty easy -- what's harder is making sure quality stuff is being generated
for that entire time.

------
pcl
_I can work 70 hours a week consistently and be fine._

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).

------
kamakazizuru
[http://firstround.com/article/How-Dave-Goldberg-of-
SurveyMon...](http://firstround.com/article/How-Dave-Goldberg-of-SurveyMonkey-
Built-a-Billion-Dollar-Business-and-Still-Gets-Home-By-5-30)

------
mrgreenfur
What about the flip side? How many people work 70+ hours/week on their "home
run" only to find that it didn't succeed at all and they've wasted their 20s
in an text editor?

------
hcarvalhoalves
Of the things people regret before dying, having spent way too much time
working is #1.

------
alekseyk
I always laugh at people who say how many hours they worked per day like it's
an achievement of any sort.

Anybody can 'sit' at their desk for 10 hours that says absolutely nothing
about you or your job performance but hey you can brag about how many hours
you worked for.

I will come in focused, do all the work I have to do while you bullshit with
co-workers or talk about doing something for the 10th time without doing
anything and leave on time.

That what sucks about engineering/start-ups, if person is mediocre all they
have to do is stay in the office the longest and even if they can't beat the
quality and output of an engineer who does 9-5 that's overlooked by 'hey I
'worked' for 10 hours!'

~~~
labrentca
There's a political element to this to though. Remember, human beings,
including your boss and coworkers, are social creatures. What you consider
time spent "bullshitting with coworkers" might actually be an investment into
office culture and politics.

~~~
alekseyk
Nobody is saying that you have to lock your self in a box and do your work.

If you need 10 hours to do something that somebody does in 6. Maybe, just
maybe you should focus on your work instead of 'culture' especially if the
goal of a start up to succeed.

I have never heard of a single case where something got acquired for it's
culture. Have you?

But let me be clear. My point is that measuring somebody by the time they
spend in the office only rewards people who sit in the office the most.

That's not really what their job is right? Because if that's the case I can
hire few people to sit in the office for really cheap.

~~~
dennisgorelik
If I'm good at office politics and not good on writing code, then reasonable
thing for me would be to do more office politics and less writing code.

Me spending more time on office politics would unload some of the office
politics from your shoulders and let you focus more on software development
which you do the best.

That way it would be a win-win.

