The startup world is full of people addicted to work. The addiction often carries a heavy toll of lost friendships, broken relationships, bad health, and a dearth of other interests. All that matters is the next high from work. The next deal, the next milestone, the next round of funding.
If you had a similar addiction to cocaine or alcohol, people would call you sick and ask you to get help. But in the startup world, this addiction is praised by many. You’re a hero for putting in all your chips of life for that off chance that you’ll hit a royal flush.
What’s worse is that most of these addicts know intellectually that plowing through 14 hour work days is not actually a very productive way to get ahead. That more time doesn’t mean more valuable work done. Jason Cohen addresses this in Sacrifice your health for your startup. He recognizes that sleep deprivation is not helpful, but still sees it as a badge of honor. That the extra work is probably not quality product, but somehow still needs to happen.
He talks the talk of reason but walks the walk of an addict. Desperate to find a justification for his ways: You need to be nothing but work because you have to wear many hats. You need to have a single-tracked obsession with work because the nirvana of “financial freedom” is just a few highs away.
Being addicted to your work might be slightly better than a coke habit, but it follows the same pattern of abuse and escapism. And most importantly, it is not a requirement for success. You do not have to become an addict to run a startup. Be passionate, be obsessed, but don’t let it be an excuse for consuming your life.
André Faria Gomes
on 08 Dec 09Thanks for point it out.
Jeremy Nicoll
on 08 Dec 09I’ve found that these people are often afraid of doing anything else besides work. It’s not so much that they want to get ahead, it’s that they actually want to avoid the rest of life and do it under the pretext that they have to make their business work.
Nathaniel
on 08 Dec 09As a recovering workaholic I was looking forward to your rebuttal, 37signals. I had fallen into the trap of crazy hours, and just before Thanksgiving I woke up burned out. I ended up taking two full weeks off, and put in a light day yesterday.
I accomplished more in six hours, rested, than I would in two or three or even four days in my burned-out state.
To my fellow workaholics: let’s get a life. How can we improve our customers’ lives if we ourselves don’t know what living is?
Phil
on 08 Dec 09This was an easy article for Cohen to write. He’s cashed out. He has his f*ck you money.
I would’ve liked to see him write the article before he cashed out.
Also, as someone who has lost his health, and now am healthy again, I can tell you it is nothing to be flippant about. If you don’t have your health, you have nothing.
Phil McClure
on 08 Dec 09My last workplace encouraged some managers to stay after hours even if there was no work to do!... Just so they were seen to “be there”. WTF? Never understood that.
Chris Ellingsworth
on 08 Dec 09Compulsive behavior has powerful hidden forces. It seems there’s something dysfunctional that a workaholic has learned to cope with through that compulsive behavior. So, another way of putting it is workaholism is a band aide just like alcoholism is a band aide. The payoff is that, for the moment, it takes away the shame or dislike of yourself. As you said, the result is you are left with broken and fractured relationships. The other issue I see with it is that it is performance/shame based. You are only as good as your last deed. So I see fear as a driving motivator with workaholism. Fear of failing, fear of not attaining what probably is impossible ( a perfectionistic standard ). I fight this fear every day, and am definitely tempted to buy into the work addiction. It actually does feel good for a little bit, but man it sucks on the other side.
Scott LaPlant
on 08 Dec 09Great points David. I recently left an employer for a variety of reasons – but this one point you make really hits home and provides a good story.
We were expected to work harder instead of smarter. Except, this didn’t apply to the President of the company. He’d leave at 1 or 2 pm in the afternoon. It’s a running joke within that company. Do as I say but, not as I do – but dangit, you better work all hours of the day or night to get the job done. What kind of message do you think resonates within that company?
Don’t even get me started on the poor culture they’re cultivating.
Pavlo Zahozhenko
on 08 Dec 09I bet to disagree. Most of our technological, scientific and cultural achievements were made by monomaniacs, addicted to “the deed of their life”. They ruined their health, friendships and families, but they didn’t care, cause the only merit of happiness for them was the progress in the field of their addiction. Such persons are rare, but without them we would still live in caves!
Not that I think that every “startupper” should work himself to death, 99% of them would be much better off doing something else. But dismissing the usefulness of work addiction altogether is naive at best.
TK
on 08 Dec 09I think David has the right idea, but is framing the problem in the wrong way. The problem is that startup founders don’t know the difference between work and play. When you’re working, you better damn well be sure you’re refreshed, thinking clearly, and working on something that is going to get you a desired outcome related to your business (i.e. meets the goal). When you’re playing, who gives a shit?! Do what you enjoy and do it for as long as you want, AS LONG as your work is done.
What happens more often than we suspect is that since we enjoy what we do so much, the lines become blurred. How much of those 14 hours of “work” were really aligned with a goal for your business vs. working on something that you just enjoy working on. If you framed that activity with the idea that this is “work” and that it needs to accomplish a goal and it needs to be of a certain quality, would you take it on at 9pm with your tired eyes? Probably not.
Adam Neary
on 08 Dec 09Working like that ALL the time is terrible. And yet, the ability to pull a 72-hour bender when it really counts has tremendous value.
I think the key is balance, which is something David is saying. The balance for me is being ready, willing, and able to crank when it is necessary, but then being able to step back and recharge is what makes it work.
If you got the release out on time, your clients are happy, and you still got to throw the pigskin around with your phone charging on your bedstand over Thanksgiving, then you did it right. My view anyway.
Ernesto
on 08 Dec 09I think David is right.
Everybody knows that the quality of 16 straight hours of work is not the same as 6 straight hours of work. It’s human nature. We need rest. We need to space out a little. We need our health to be productive.
So, ‘sacrifice your health’ might work if you succeed in 2 or 3 months, maybe a year. But what if you don’t? I don’t support the ‘sacrifice your health’ at all.
I want to be rested when I start working. I want to have something else outside of work that motivates me.
When you know that you only have 6 or 8 hours of work a day, you prioritize what is most important for your company. When you can work 20 straight-hours, you lose focus.
Simon Fairbairn
on 08 Dec 09I have been at too many companies that have had this culture of number of hours = good.
It should, of course, simply be results = good. If you get the job done in half the time of your colleague cause you work smarter, then you should be allowed to choose what to do with the remainder – like spend some time with your kids.
@Pavlo – Yeah, I’m going to be needing an example to back up your point, there (one is fine).
Also, the ‘we would still live in caves’ thing is a tiny bit hyperbolic and devalues all of the work that ‘ordinary’ people put in to incrementally improve science, technology and culture.
Promoting the usefulness of work addiction is irresponsible at best.
Daniel Tenner
on 08 Dec 09Posted on HN:
Yes and no.
What if you were so excited about painting that you spent 16 hours a day painting. You produce the greatest masterpieces man has ever seen, you change the world of art forever… but yeah, you’re an addict.
So what? What’s so bad about being addicted to something worthwhile? It’s pretty usual to hear about musicians who will spend 20 hours a day in the studio getting their songs just right. Artists of all types do the whole obsessive addiction thing all the time, but we don’t point at them and say “hey, you better chill out, don’t worry about trying to achieve Artistic Nirvana, just chill out and have a beer with some friends instead”.
Being an alcoholic or a coke addict is bad because it’s an empty addiction that produces nothing of worth and destroys you along the way.
Being an art or business addict is a different thing altogether. There’s a good reason why there’s no “artaholics anonymous” group. Art is worth getting addicted to. Arguably, so is business.
Tony
on 08 Dec 09thanks, i was just needing an excuse to get off line and have some fun. way too much time behind my laptop lately. logging off…
Jagath
on 08 Dec 09In tasks that requires “complex thinking”, we are not wired to go at it in long stretches without a break. http://bit.ly/7cIVib. Pausing occasionally and reflecting on the work done so far is important for us to really make sense of everything that is happening to our universe.
Self-reflection is not just a romantic notion, but is a learning mechanism. It is a self-correcting mechanism that prevents us from going down the wrong track. All of us have experienced this. When we are stuck in a place, we take a coffee break, or a cigarette break, and then a solution magically appears. We clearly see the benefit of the break in such a microscopic perspective.
The same applies to the macroscopic perspective too. Is our business model the right one? Are we solving the right problem? Is this where we want to be in life? Have we considered all alternatives? These are not just philosophical self inquiries, but necessary analyses to prevent us from getting stuck with “tunnel vision”.
Taking a break, and going slowly at it, helps us identify patterns – to see the forest from the trees. Rather than act in a knee-jerk fashion for everything we see, it is more efficient to occasionally take it slow, filter out the noise, and observe the underlying information in the signals we are reading.
Next time, when you are stuck in a corner with a complex problem, just take a break, go on a trip, or ‘just sleep on it’.
You do not have to become an addict to run a startup.
Kai
on 08 Dec 09I know several stock broker workaholics that do a lot of coke so they can work longer. I’m sure the start-up scene is not much different…
Paul Grunt
on 08 Dec 09WORD
prosperityishere
on 08 Dec 09Clearly an intense focus is needed to get a business off the ground but anything done in exclusion to all the rest of life creates burnout and is not a recipe for a sustainable business. Thanks for standing up and voting for a work culture that is balanced and values quality in the long run.
Giles Bowkett
on 08 Dec 09I agree. If anything you don’t go far enough.
Being addicted to your work might be slightly better than a coke habit, but it follows the same pattern of abuse and escapism.
Being a workaholic isn’t better than other addictive behavior at all.
I had a client recently who wouldn’t accept a simple solution to anything because it gave him nothing to stress over. If I delivered something simple that worked, he quickly broke it or found some way of overcomplicating it.
After it happened a few times I realized what was up: he wasn’t paying me to get something done. He was paying me to fuel his problem, the same way he would have been paying a bartender or a drug dealer otherwise. He got mad when I solved his problems because it was problems that he was trying to buy. He came to the bar for whiskey and I was giving him water.
I decided to stop caring and just let him be the workaholic he had chosen to be. About two days after I came to that decision, I came in to his office (I was mostly working from home) and found him so hopped up on caffeine I would have actually been relieved to discover he had been using cocaine instead. But I knew he hadn’t.
I knew it was coffee because I actually saw in his house, before all this, an Alcoholics Anonymous book. The guy was a good guy but also very mixed up. I can say with absolute certainty, he decided at some point in life, no partying, no drugs, no drink, but espresso and work, that’s OK. I doubt the choice was conscious to any degree, but it sure as hell amounted to a choice of this high over that high, and nothing more.
Samuel Sawyer
on 08 Dec 09Our society is a society of escapism these days. You will find the same situation in almost any area of life.
They react to their boredom and fear by filling their minds with exciting “stuff”.
They can not help themselves and they are conditioned in doing so by social conditioning which comes towards them from all directions: media, advertising, politics, other people, family etc.
Steve
on 08 Dec 09@Jeremy Nicoll: Well put, and my thoughts exactly.
arcoiris
on 08 Dec 09Everyone who knows me considers me a workaholic.
At the beginning of this year I lost my best friend/business partner in an accident. For two years we’d been working hard, joking about when we were going to find time to play, go to those restaurants we’d been craving, enjoy each others company. Instead, all we actually did was work, complain about frustrating clients, congratulate each other on code/design well done, but no actual play.
I’ve now spent this past year working even harder just to avoid the deep feeling of loss and unbelievable regret I have for not taking the time, and for taking her friendship for granted, thinking “it’ll be there when things settle down.” I know it’s not healthy, but I don’t know any other way to cope, and work keeps me from having to really feel.
I guess I’m writing this in the hopes no one takes my example and experiences what I’m still going through. Don’t take the small things in life for granted. Life really is too short. It’s not a saying. It’s the harsh, cold reality.
markd
on 08 Dec 09I would love to see David and Jason go head-to-head with Jason Calacanis and Gary V on “This Week in Startups” about this topic. That would be epic !
Blue Sail Creative
on 08 Dec 09I recently read, Sam Carpenters “Work the System” and I found that he has a lot of similar philopsophies.
He talks that your business is made of several components which you can automate to relieve yourself from the workload. I have begun to do this and plan on doing more of it.
Once the business is automated you can step back and see the company from the big picture and find a way to tweek the systems.
Spencer Fry
on 08 Dec 09I agree with you that you definitely need that balance in your life. I use to pull the 14+ hour days, but I’ve changed my lifestyle to work more efficiently.
NewWorldOrder
on 08 Dec 09@Daniel
I think this post was written for folks who think they have to work 16 hours a day to be impressive or attain success. If you’re spending 16 hours a day doing something you completing enjoy because you absolutely want to, then I don’t think this post relevantly applies to you—as you’re completely happy with your way of life.
Nanuni kokoritu
on 08 Dec 09My thanks for write your opinion of this point.
Emson
on 08 Dec 09Thanks David, I needed that. Sometimes it’s difficult to see the wood through the trees. Ben
Scott Semple
on 08 Dec 09@dhh: Have you ever dug into a sizable portion of your savings and put it on the line for a new business? Or worse, run a business on borrowed money?
I’m not talking about the tech start up, not-our-money-so-we-can-spend-it nonsense. I mean the-bank’s-gonna-take-my-house-if-this-doesn’t-work kind of thing.
I apologize for making some assumptions, but most businesses rent started on the side, subsidized by other employment.
Debt has a way of modifying idealism quite quickly.
Eric Carroll
on 08 Dec 09Death-bed confessions never include “If only I had worked more…”
I’ve learned this lesson like most… the hard way. This year had some niche projects that ate up far more of my time than I ever expected. I was starting to get burned out.
Since then, I’ve taken on select projects and try to make time to write or do more things with real people (like my wife and kids) instead of working online so much.
Paul "The Pageman" Pajo
on 08 Dec 09Is there a Startupper Anonymous 12-step equivalent?
Killian
on 08 Dec 09DHH: I love reading your posts and I think your heart is in the right place. Nevertheless, the analogy is not responsible.
A coke or alcoholism addiction is so much more harmful and detrimental to an individual, their loved ones and society than any ‘workaholic’ ‘addiction’.
Please keep the insights coming and don’t take this as an attempt to compromise your views- but please visit a narco-anon or al-anon meeting and compare any startup entrepreneurs hardships to the real stories of recovering addicts and their families.
Steven Hansen
on 08 Dec 09You and your crazy Scandinavian ideas :-)
Matt
on 08 Dec 09I agree, one reason I myself have burnt the candle at both ends was when I was in a situation I had no control over, and in frustration you just end working longer as you can’t seem to do anything else, which is counter productive, but seemed like a good idea at the time.
Anonymous
on 08 Dec 09I think a lot of this madness is driven by VCs, who put pressure on boards/founders, who put pressure on employees… similar things happen with the layers of management in a big company. It’s a terrible way to “work.”
I wonder how a founder can stand up and say no to this. Is it possible? Or is this just another good argument for avoiding venture capital?
Sandeep Sood
on 09 Dec 09Thanks for the fantastic point.
I felt the same thing while reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s “Crush It”.
The part that rings the most true is that if work was not an available option, many workaholics would just reach for the next avenue for escape.
Sorry, Gary, but I don’t want to work “until I’m bleeding from my eyeballs.”
Fan Bi
on 09 Dec 09agree with phil. don’t think jason cohen would’ve taken his own advice. as a first-time entrepreneur/ founder, can’t help but drive the passion, lead by example, [insert more cliches here]. it’s just comes with the territory
Charly Omer
on 09 Dec 09Thanks for pointing this out, I was always assuming, it is normal to leave and act like that, as a startup founder.
John Topley
on 09 Dec 09I would be interesting to know what Paul Graham’s take on this is, given that he champions the startup way of life.
Scott Radcliff
on 09 Dec 09Damn you and your common sense approach! Nice post. True, but all too often overlooked.
Nanuni Kokoritu
on 09 Dec 09Very nice post, ty for submitting it!
jrduboc
on 09 Dec 09Chances are, if your company isn’t sustainable for your health (and your employees’ health), it won’t sustainable in other areas.
Sam Aparicio
on 09 Dec 09I am in full agreement with David. I wrote my own rebuttal on my blog. I think addiction plays a role, but more importantly, the problem comes from a lack of perspective that focuses on measuring INPUT instead of OUTPUT.
2cents
on 09 Dec 09About work, I ask myself a simple question: if I was to die tomorrow, would what I’ve done make me happy about my life?
And often, work is not at the top of the short list of things I would be proud of. I’d rather do/leave other things.
That’s what defines how much time I’m willing to spend on working a day.
Jay Godse
on 09 Dec 09Thanks for the posting David. It is food for thought.
Business success stems from engaging in activities in which the value of the outputs exceed the value of the inputs. But measuring the value of outputs is hard, because for most folks in software development, it is hard to correlate their measurable outputs with actual business value. For example, do you measure delivered function points? Lines of code? Monetizable features? Defect rates? Customer issues solved?
In the absence of useful metrics for outputs, most leaders resort to measuring inputs, and face time is the easiest one to measure.
One question that your article begs is how an investor measures the “passion” of a company leader, and how a company leader measures the “passion” of his underlings? When you hire people, how do you measure their passion, given that you don’t apparently place a lot of stock in excess face time? I’m curious to see if there is a measurement for passion that is less than 10 times harder than measuring face time.
If I were an average student coming out of school with some sort of computing degree and in a typical entry-level job, how would you advise me to develop skill & passion, exhibit skill & passion, stay healthy, have a life, and stay in the software development industry without putting in excess face-time?
Having said that, I think that you folks at 37 Signals are doing the software business the right way. You guys only build what is needed. You operate the software that you build. With technologies such as Ruby, Rails, and SaaS, you have very lean operating costs. And you guys are small enough that most of your employees can correlate their outputs with your top and/or bottom lines. But for the other 99% of us, how can we achieve it too?
Andrew Conard
on 09 Dec 09David – I appreciate your comments and I find them to be applicable to life in a church staff or as a pastor. I am a United Methodist pastor and have struggled with the challenge of getting things done and trusting God to do God’s work.
Jason Cohen
on 09 Dec 09Thanks for the intelligent rebuttal.
I think you at least have to frame your claim that startups don’t need 60 hours/week of effort. For example, how many restaurants operate with normal work-hours and 40 hours/week for the founders?
I would also argue that it’s hard to find exceptions to my rule. I’m not saying you’re wrong to argue it, but I don’t think you can argue the low-stress, low-hours life is how most startups are built.
Finally, I do understand your point that there’s lots of types of companies, lots of problems to solve, and lots of approaches, so why not pick the way that’s simpler, both in lifestyle and features and design and everything.
That’s a great point! But of course not all businesses are like that, NOR CAN THEY BE.
For those commenters claiming that I don’t take my own advice, that’s just absurd. Of course I’m writing from experience, which I explicitly say in the article, which you probably didn’t read.
However for those others who agree with David for rational reasons and aren’t just doing ad homonim attacks, thanks for your arguments; I do appreciate this perspective.
Anonymous
on 10 Dec 09Thanks for writing about this severely under-estimated problem. Is there a twelve-step program for it ? Yes there is: http://www.workaholics-anonymous.org
True
on 10 Dec 09@Jason Cohen in my last job everyone worked 50 hours for many months because project was late… after I left the job they were still late. Strange but when you’re late, you’re late working more a day didn’t help.
Matt
on 10 Dec 09Vigorous daily exercise is the key.
I started my company 6 years ago and have had all of the same situations as these hopped-up, NorCal, S-V junkies.
Except… a] I prioritize problems before I react to them and b b] I cycle at least 2 hours minimum of 5 days a week (even though it means putting the kids to bed, riding at night, on trails usually, by myself)
Put the hate/shame/stress/etc into the pedals and the stress goes away, period.
After you do this, you will only want to eat, shower, maybe eat again, and then sleep.
(Note: this can be running, working out whatever…some sort of vigorous exercise).
(Note: If you can’t ride a bike or run because of snow; buy some cross-country skis and some light but warm clothes. It will give you the same too-damn-tired-to-worry result).
Some many start up guys/gals go from being Expresso’d-up in the workplace to Red Bull’d-up playing XBox to being Red Bull & Vodka’d up at the club at night…their systems are on permanent “blitz” all the time.
And, so these cats might sell there company for $10, 50, 100 million, right?
Well, if you’re a complete d_ck getting there, most of the people who care about you won’t want to be around you.
So, when you have the money and they’re gone, you’ll be alone and you’ll still probably be a d_ck.
Rafael Hernandez
on 14 Dec 09Working with computadoresa over 8 years old, married, have 1 child of 9 years and still am crazy about the Internet.
Being addicted to something I believe but can complicate your life, say, “All that is behind him too much trouble,” but I think our job as web developers is to be connected to the world to get more knowledge and help others who are the market is not it?
Visit my blog about design and technology: http://www.rafaeldesigner.com.br/blog/
Thanks
This discussion is closed.