You can not have everything; if you work 12 hour days for long enough, your health, your sanity, and your relationships will suffer. Personally, I think 12 ho

You can not have everything; if you work 12 hour days for long enough, your health, your sanity, and your relationships will suffer. Personally, I think 12 hour days only make sense if you are within a week of a deadline, and if you can take some time off after that to recover, simply because you will not be as effective as you would otherwise be after that week is over. In the past, after the first 90 hours in a week, well, the additional hours might as well been spent drinking, for all the good it did the project. and the hangover, ugh. But I think even with regular hours, you need to make choices as to what you want to put time and effort into. None of us have infinite time or infinite energy. On the other hand, I know plenty of small companies where the founders only occasionally do the 12 hour day thing. The stereotypical 'startup lifestyle' may not be great for kids, but the 'lifestyle business' lifestyle would work great; Me, I spend almost all day at home, and could pretty easily hand off most of my tasks to a (remote) employee. Very little I do is time critical. I once worked with a lawyer who took her child with her to work every day. the kid was well behaved and generally less irritating than the dogs that other co-workers would bring in (yes, it was one of /those/ .com companies.) I got scolded for my language more often than usual, but it wasn't a bad deal all around.