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There is a difference between "I didn't have time" and "I didn't want to spend time". It is entirely up to you and you decided to not have time for them, but fo

by WA 16y ago

There is a difference between "I didn't have time" and "I didn't want to spend time". It is entirely up to you and you decided to not have time for them, but for your startup. Or put another way: You decided for the part in you that wants to work on the startup instead of the part in you that wants to deal with your mother or your girlfriend. When I read something like this, I sometimes wonder what the intention of people of running a startup is. Is it really about creating an app? The app/startup will be forgotten at some point in time anyways. So why are you doing it, if it isn't for the personal freedom that comes along with a startup (eventually) and that enables you to spend more time with the people you care about? I mean, it is just a startup. The people might care to some degree about your product, but they don't care about you at all and you shouldn't care too much either. I know that the "work hard" mantra is ridiculously widespread in the startup culture and especially in the US and I also know the feeling that one's mind always comes up with new ideas, whether you want it or not. However, I prefer to work on my startup 5 to 10 hours a week, just enough to get decent money from it, be ahead of competitors and make plans or delegate the work that needs to be done. I think the real trick in startups is not to spend as much time as possible, but as few time as possible and still get good results. At least, that is how it works for me and how it supports the general idea, why I run a startup at all: to increase my personal freedom.

nsoonhui 16y ago
Not everyone has the luxury of not spending every minute of their waking life on their startup.
- patio11 16y ago
  The 357th time I complained to my brother about salaryman hours, he told me something that stuck with me: "You chose that. Not three years ago, either: you chose it today, because you could have quit but didn't." You are choosing, right now, that the next thirty minutes of work on whatever is more important than calling mom. It may be. Is it always? I'm downright fascist about not wasting time on low-value activities at work and I still leak huge portions of my schedule. Are you sure that never happens? I mean, by the end of a week at 100%, I'm barely mentally capable of evaluating whether coding will be productive, to say nothing of actually coding. You've been doing that for years? How do the metrics look?
- WA 16y ago
  Why not? I can imagine that there's only one problem with that: You don't have enough money to support yourself so that your startup needs to be done ASAP. Then I would recommend to do some contracting work. This has two nice effects: First, it gives you money to let you support your startup in the long run. Second: It makes you more productive, because the time you have available to work on a startup is reduced. This constraint makes you focus more on the stuff that really needs to be done. Oh and third: Every idea needs time to evolve. I mean, real time. Not time you invest, but time doing something different. Just waiting-time. I believe, if you cannot afford taking a break from your startup, your startup has a conceptual problem.
- ascendant 16y ago
  This is a pretty intense statement. I think you just may be a workaholic that has found this "must work at all costs" startup mentality as a way to rationalize said workaholism. I started working where I am today and was putting in 80-100 hour weeks for a while. I lost a girlfriend over it, and then one day I woke up and realized that if I didn't hit the arbitrary deadline some executive somewhere dreamed up, the world wouldn't end. Now I rarely put in more than 40 hours a week and I'm happily married. Let me tell you something, if it comes down to my family vs my job, my job will lose every. single. time. Random websites that let you track how many tissues your friend in Utah used when he last sneezed will be dead and gone in a few years and no one will care. When your mother goes, you will definitely wish you spent the time with her.

by WA 16y ago

nsoonhui 16y ago

Not everyone has the luxury of not spending every minute of their waking life on their startup.

patio11 16y ago
The 357th time I complained to my brother about salaryman hours, he told me something that stuck with me: "You chose that. Not three years ago, either: you chose it today, because you could have quit but didn't." You are choosing, right now, that the next thirty minutes of work on whatever is more important than calling mom. It may be. Is it always? I'm downright fascist about not wasting time on low-value activities at work and I still leak huge portions of my schedule. Are you sure that never happens? I mean, by the end of a week at 100%, I'm barely mentally capable of evaluating whether coding will be productive, to say nothing of actually coding. You've been doing that for years? How do the metrics look?
WA 16y ago
Why not? I can imagine that there's only one problem with that: You don't have enough money to support yourself so that your startup needs to be done ASAP. Then I would recommend to do some contracting work. This has two nice effects: First, it gives you money to let you support your startup in the long run. Second: It makes you more productive, because the time you have available to work on a startup is reduced. This constraint makes you focus more on the stuff that really needs to be done. Oh and third: Every idea needs time to evolve. I mean, real time. Not time you invest, but time doing something different. Just waiting-time. I believe, if you cannot afford taking a break from your startup, your startup has a conceptual problem.
ascendant 16y ago
This is a pretty intense statement. I think you just may be a workaholic that has found this "must work at all costs" startup mentality as a way to rationalize said workaholism. I started working where I am today and was putting in 80-100 hour weeks for a while. I lost a girlfriend over it, and then one day I woke up and realized that if I didn't hit the arbitrary deadline some executive somewhere dreamed up, the world wouldn't end. Now I rarely put in more than 40 hours a week and I'm happily married. Let me tell you something, if it comes down to my family vs my job, my job will lose every. single. time. Random websites that let you track how many tissues your friend in Utah used when he last sneezed will be dead and gone in a few years and no one will care. When your mother goes, you will definitely wish you spent the time with her.