While I might tend to agree with this based on the less than approx. 2 years in my life that I worked for someone else, as an entrepreneur where you have to cov

While I might tend to agree with this based on the less than approx. 2 years in my life that I worked for someone else, as an entrepreneur where you have to cover so many bases, and work hard to create opportunity, I don't agree based on my experience. (Especially if you are bootstrapping.) I can tie many of the things that I have today to the wide net I cast in earlier years and the excess hours I put in trying different things until something stuck (many years later in a few cases). Forget vacations and weekends. That was for me. You may be different and be able to pull it off with less hours. This blanked "smarter not harder" is just that. It's a blanket statement that could be correct in some cases and not in others. So it is essentially worthless. Do you know if it applies to you? Sure many years later you will. Do you want to take that chance? I didn't and I'm glad I didn't. Otoh when I worked for someone else many years ago I was always amazed at how people would eat lunch in their cars and schedule really early meetings which I felt were counterproductive (given the amount you stood to gain in that particular situation). But even in this case it's a total YMMV. So my advice is to work hard and work many hours if you are an entrepreneur and need to try to get a business to work or keep working. If you are doing something else (programming) that may not be the case. Remember what PG said about "staying alive". What if he had cut back and hadn't had something to sell? We wouldn't be reading HN today would we? One last example. I learned Unix's in the 80's while running my own business in my spare time which led to being able to do many things on the net in the 90's. Had I not put in those hours (and it was working by the way) I would not have been able to take advantage of some of the things that I did. Of course if you can't work hard for some reason (health, family etc.) than you can't. So there is nothing to discus. And you have to accept that fact.