When I read yesterday's post about the sprint to launch at SXSW, I thought 3 things:
1. Great determination, great work ethic, great job.
2. It doesn't have to be this way.
3. It shouldn't be this way.
Thanks, Daniel, for saying what I was thinking, far better than I could have.
I feel fortunate that my DNA is blessed with some sort of internal "governor". I don't know where it came from, but I've always had it. Here's how it works: It stays out of the way when I am enthusiastic about something, allowing me work ridiculous hours and pursue almost anything that looks promising, whether it makes sense or not. But when I reach a certain point, it turns me off, completely. I don't seem to have conscious judgement of what that point is or when I reach it, but when it happens, I know.
A few examples:
- I have worked many times without sleep, preparing for a launch. Sometimes, I know my judgement is failing and continuing would cause more problems in the long run. So I stopped and apologize to everyone. I went to sleep and informed everyone that the project would resume at x. I'm not really sure exactly what happened, but I know I had little control over the governor.
- I had 2,500 invoices spread across the carpet, looking for a clue about a bug. After 8 hours, everything was fuzzy. So I just gathered up the invoices, filed them away, and went to sleep. Three days later a lightbulb went off, I spread out 100 of the invoices, and found the problem in 15 minutes. I know that if I had continued that night, I never would have found the problem.
- I worked 90 hours per week for 2 months for a big deployment. Without telling me, my co-founder spent all of our reserves travelling to a customer site to oversee the install. He emailed me every 20 minutes with a problem. Between being pissed off at him and exhausted from working on the wrong things, I realized the project was going nowhere and would never succeed. So I just stopped working completely. I went to bed and didn't answer email for 4 days. I'm not proud of this, just one more story about my internal governor.
I'm a little frustrated that I don't have much control over my governor, but also a little relieved that it does it's thing. After all, I've never really been burnt out, and I'm still going strong. Thank you, governor.
I've encountered something similar to your "invoices" situation many times. I'm actually blocked on something now, but I know my mind is hard at work to get things straight in some background process. Once my block is cleared, I know I'll just dive in and get things done in the same amount of time it would have originally taken, only with better results. I know that, because that's how it's worked for me so many times before. Every once in a while I forget what I was working on, but it's usually in favor of a better project or solution.
Fortunately, my blocks are usually short and resolved by letting my background processes chew on a problem during a night of sleep.
I think the real trick is to actually attack problems that cause me to block. If I stick with simple things I can process in real time, I'm not thinking hard enough.
The Pragmatic Bookshelf has a fantastic book that goes into some detail about how your brain might be working in these situations. Often sleeping on a problem and letting your subconscious do some of the work is the best policy. Check the book out here:
I had a logic teacher in college who would force us to exercise this concept. He would have us look at the very last problem on an exam on test days and make us just stare at it (no working on it allowed) for 5 minutes. Then we had to start the test from the beginning.
The theory being that your subconscious is working out the problem and you'll have a better chance of figuring it out. I felt like it really did work.
Seems like he should've had half the class do the staring, the other half take the test normally, and give as many points as appropriate. One could get a lot of data after doing that for several classes.
He also liked to show off his many other amazing 'mind hacks' such as memorizing everyone's name within the first few minutes of the first day of class. There were almost 100 students in his class and after he said he was done 'doing his thing' he would ask the students to change seats and never sit in the same seat twice for the first week to test him.
Well said. I never understood why people associate startups with long hours. Sure, that was the stereotype for VC-backed disaster startups back in the '90s, but there's no reason to expect that you need to work 12 hour days just to run a software business.
I live comfortably on revenues from my little software empire, and I can't remember the last time I worked a 40 hour week on one of my products.
I'm like most developers in that I work in bursts. I get maybe one or two full-day pushes in a good week, and lots of little tinkering bursts that last an hour or so. When none of that is happening, you'll find me off living my life.
While it's likely true that people who sacrifice everything are rarely successful, I think that the people at the top of their fields almost always have.
There's almost, but not quite, the subtext here that over the top dedication doesn't matter. But it does affect one's potential, it just doesn't guarantee success.
So rationally, since you probably won't get to the top of your field, it's folly to burn yourself out trying. But then, by that same logic, starting a startup is altogether irrational since it'll probably be a lot of work for little money and ultimate failure.
There's a function from commitment to potential, and the area between that line and the plot of a rational career choice is the place founders live. It's really a matter of how far of a departure overbearing self-confidence allows you to justify. But the biggest winners are the ones that start among the most self-deluded. ;-)
"While it's likely true that people who sacrifice everything are rarely successful, I think that the people at the top of their fields almost always have."
Not to harp on my favorite old saw about randomness, but drawing generalizations like this -- by only looking at the successful end results and searching for common patterns after the fact -- doesn't really help. For example, say there are 10,000,000 who sacrifice everything, and of them, there are 1,000 who are at the top of their field. The other 99,990,000 are "silent evidence". ("silent evidence" is worth googling)
Moreover, the actual importance of "sacrificing everything" becomes further masked unless you realize the actual total size of your cohort. What are the odds that someone could become the top of their field without sacrificing everything? e.g., is there a one-in-a-million chance that someone can both be the best and sleep 8 hours a night every night? If so, for some handful of people in your sample, you'd expect them to have succeeded anyway (assuming you could estimate that prior, which is laughable :)
This argument can also be used when people applaud "genius investors" with a 100% success rate for any arbitrary finite timespan -- given a large enough population, it'd be expected that someone would pick right N times in a row, and nobody hears or cares about the failures.
Similarly, folks argue from the anecdote of a few rags-to-riches stories and say look, income inequality is nothing to worry about! But actually, given the number of people in the bottom 95%, you'd expect some number of them to be able to make it to the top 5% -- and a better metric might be to look at that rate across other developed nations. One in a million times x million = x bestsellers about "how my drive and ambition took me out of the gutter bla bla bla..."
Anyway, just pointing out that causation is a very, very difficult nut.
(Likewise, starting a startup is hardly irrational -- the host of 'intangibles', plus greater exposure to positive black swans, make it kind of a no brainer :)
That's a good way to put it for those who see startups (and perhaps business in general) as a lottery ticket. I have a very strong suspicion (though not substantiated by evidence at this point) that the chances of success (where success is defined in the typical startup way as "fuck-you-money") are much higher if one goes about deliberately and sustainably becoming a fantastic entrepreneur, rather than betting everything on a single startup.
The question is, really, what affects potential more? Over the top dedication, or marathon-like persistence?
I'm betting on the latter. If two equally bright and ambitious young kids come up and say "I want to succeed in the startup world", and one of them continues "I've building this one startup and throwing everything I've got in it, my entire existence rides on it", while the other one says "I'm planning to spend the next 20 years doing it and I'll probably start 20 businesses at least in that time, each one better than the previous", I'd bet on the latter.
I suspect the only person who has any solid evidence that could weigh this debate one way or another is pg, though.
The major difference in what we're saying is that you're defining success as a step function, I'm defining it as a continuum. If we're talking about a step function, sure, you're more likely to get over the threshold with calculated risks and diligence. But out at the end of the continuum, where the Bill Gates and Michael Jordans of the world live, in that league, I believe you need over the top dedication and marathon like persistence.
Most people that I meet who run startups do so because a) they enjoy the challenge of building something cool and useful and making money from it, and b) they would like to make enough money to not have to worry about money.
Even if you're trying to build a Gatesian empire, I'd argue that taking it in steps could be a better approach, more likely to get somewhere. See Richard Branson as a counterpoint to Gates/Jobs/etc. And the advantage of taking it in steps is that if you don't have what it takes in both personal qualities and incredible luck to make it to the top, you're still left with something.
I don't think anything you or I can say on a website will divert a Steve Jobs or Michael Jordan from their intentions, in any case. :-)
But, certainly, both philosophies exist and have their pros and cons. Which one do you think is right for most people?
Neither. And that's the essence of what I'm getting at. I don't think there's a singular this is what people (or entrepreneurs) should do. It's widely variable upon the person, their constitution and tolerances, and for most people, probably altogether a bad idea. It's also a false dichotomy; in practice successful people, for either definition, do not choose between either or, but varying degrees of both.
"Founders! Do what makes sense! Use your brains, dammit!"
Good advice for all :-)
Worth noting that I explicitly did not judge whether it made sense for the SocialCam team to do it this way - I'm only criticising the general stereotype that "you have to sacrifice everything in order to make it". Imho that method works in a very small number of cases and is dangerous in most.
I think about this a bit because I have kids. I simply refuse to not spend time with them. If success at a startup is predicated on spending all your waking hours working, I'm doomed to never succeed.
I don't think this is the case. Strategy and design are two good examples of areas where more hours doesn't necessarily mean better. It is better to be slower and right.
Setting the tone and pace for others is a riskier part of this. Will employees stay late if the founder is never there for dinner?
You & me both, Ivan. And like every other controversy on HN, "hard vs. smart" isn't a real debate.
I've got 2 kids; they were 2 and 0.5 at the end of my first company, and 11 and 9 now. And one of the people from whom I learned the most about business was also a founder with kids. So, I'm particularly interested in the dynamics of startups and family life.
One thing I saw work remarkably well was company culture. You can easily create an inclusive and family-oriented culture: have the whole team be local, do lots of dinners and offsites, have after-dinners work-hours where kids are OK, make sure the families get to know each other.
At the first startup I ever worked for, the office was a very large apartment on the north side of Chicago. There was a full kitchen, they cooked dinners, and evening hours were --- at least in the beginning --- of a different character than daylight hours; people worked, but the whole environment was more social, less button-up, and more welcoming.
I don't think they really did this on purpose. It was just very friendly and family-oriented group of people. But I can't see a reason why it would be hard to duplicate and extend the idea. Just set an objective, to allow people to routinely work longer hours when necessary while causing minimal strain on families. Then come up with practices that support the objective. I can think of 10 ideas for that off the top of my head. I'm sure you can come up with 20.
It's kind of remarkable that so few new companies do this (if they did, they'd be made of stupid not to advertise it). Most startups advertise a culture that is almost the opposite of that idea.
If the biggest barrier to hiring at a startup is that most people think the situation too risky, then anything that might push normal people towards startups is good. I can easily imagine people stressed at large companies that choose startups for better work-family balance (which isn't the same as fewer working hours) that would join a startup just for the family culture.
Maybe one reason big companies get slower is that as they age, the young folks start having kids. This translates to less and worse work than before, but the blame is on the company which didn't shift it's culture. I guess some of these ideas wouldn't scale, but to my knowledge, they haven't been tried at scale.
I don't think there is anything wrong with crunch for a month or three, on the promise that the team can wind down, relax and be acknowledged for their crunch period after.
I find I can work intensively for three months, but then need a few weeks of working 9-5 to recover. I think that is pretty normal, and I assume this is what the SocialCam team did.
I think in this case, it's more about the timing. They want to get it done by SXSW. So it's not an arbitrary deadline, or worse just a philosophy that you have to drive yourself into the ground. They have a real deadline that, if they can hit it, they will likely give a nice bump to their launch and chances of success.
While I'd agree--killing yourself isn't good strategy or a real recipe for success--sometimes it needs to be done.
It's not just your physical and mental energy that gets burned out through 12 hour days, it's also your passion. For all entrepreneurs there is a strong underlying passion burning inside and we push ourselves based on how brightly it burns, because we simply have nothing else to answer to. So if you're well-rested or highly caffeinated or adrenaline-filled with passion, you will be productive, because you're excited to. If you're pushing yourself to work 100 hours a week just because you think it's the right thing to do (this is the equivalent of face time in a corporate company) then you will be less productive, if not also resentful and discouraged. That's not to say deadlines aren't important, but work ethics should come from a desire within instead of from external pressure. I mean, we don't like the corporate world because of this external pressure, right? So why bring it with us to our startups?
well said. Starting a startup is a marathon not a sprint; pace yourself or you'll regret it later.
Everyone starting out seems to think it'll be all over in a year and they'll be rich. It's more likely to be a couple of years and few people can sustain intense work for that long without crashing.
There's value to the experience of being on a team of people, working towards a goal you all believe in, all giving 100%. Agreed, you wouldn't want to do this 365 days a year, but I think it's important to understand the state of mind required to do this, so that you can call on it or recreate it for circumstances that merit it.
It's definitely easier to do this if you think your team is going to "win". In fact, if you don't think you stand a reasonable chance of winning, you may as well just go home.
But: If people thought too much about statistics, no one would ever try anything new. So I don't think that being able accurately to gauge your chances of success is actually that important (never mind the fact that it's essentially impossible).
That's a lot of modafinil. That stuff burns me out after a week of daily use, let alone 9 months. Mixing it with caffeine makes me crazy as well. Be careful with your neurons people.
At peak I was taking 1.5 100mg pills a day - one in the morning upon waking up, half after lunch to keep me going till the evening. Plus probably 2-3 (strong) coffees.
I would not recommend this to anyone.
Since this is over, I've taken Modafinil sporadically (only v. low dose... 1/4 of a 100mg pill), but I found that it doesn't really make that much difference. I feel more productive and focused when I take it, but I don't actually get more done.
What works best is a combination of a good night's sleep, a healthy lifestyle including physical activity, and decent discipline (in my case, with the pomodoro method).
50-70mg and no coffee, taken only when needed seems optimal to me. 150mg in a day is definitely too much, unless you're trying to pull some ridiculous 60 hour marathon, which is inadvisable anyway.
Too-large doses leave you unable to concentrate on anything for longer than about 10 seconds.
I feel fortunate that my DNA is blessed with some sort of internal "governor". I don't know where it came from, but I've always had it. Here's how it works: It stays out of the way when I am enthusiastic about something, allowing me work ridiculous hours and pursue almost anything that looks promising, whether it makes sense or not. But when I reach a certain point, it turns me off, completely. I don't seem to have conscious judgement of what that point is or when I reach it, but when it happens, I know.
A few examples:
- I have worked many times without sleep, preparing for a launch. Sometimes, I know my judgement is failing and continuing would cause more problems in the long run. So I stopped and apologize to everyone. I went to sleep and informed everyone that the project would resume at x. I'm not really sure exactly what happened, but I know I had little control over the governor.
- I had 2,500 invoices spread across the carpet, looking for a clue about a bug. After 8 hours, everything was fuzzy. So I just gathered up the invoices, filed them away, and went to sleep. Three days later a lightbulb went off, I spread out 100 of the invoices, and found the problem in 15 minutes. I know that if I had continued that night, I never would have found the problem.
- I worked 90 hours per week for 2 months for a big deployment. Without telling me, my co-founder spent all of our reserves travelling to a customer site to oversee the install. He emailed me every 20 minutes with a problem. Between being pissed off at him and exhausted from working on the wrong things, I realized the project was going nowhere and would never succeed. So I just stopped working completely. I went to bed and didn't answer email for 4 days. I'm not proud of this, just one more story about my internal governor.
I'm a little frustrated that I don't have much control over my governor, but also a little relieved that it does it's thing. After all, I've never really been burnt out, and I'm still going strong. Thank you, governor.