I’m writing to put an age-old inner conflict about working long hours to rest. This is from the perspective of an entrepreneur, but it’s equally relevant to someone with a job.
Trigger
It was The Millionaire Fastlane, but it’s a notion invoked by many in general. I’m rereading the book for inspiration now that I’m attempting the fast lane myself.
The author endorses and celebrates an extremely intense lifestyle before you become successful so you can enjoy more life than work later.
The premise goes like this: in order to get what others don’t, you need to do what others won’t. The “won’t” part typically boils down to daily time investment.
Put another way, the more you work each day, the higher your chances of achieving the success of your dreams.
According to another version of this philosophy, the only way to achieve success is to burn the proverbial midnight oil. Not by becoming a night owl who wakes up late and toils through the night, but by becoming both the day’s early bird and the night’s watchman.
The perceived logic is simple: the more you work, the more you get done.
Work for 12–16 hours per day, six days a week, for two to three years. Sacrifice everything that gets in the way of work – TV, family, friends, health, sleep, games, sports matches, recreation… everything. Once you do that, magic happens. Your work compounds and you taste success.
I want to debunk this theory.
Problems with the long-hours framework
But first, I must admit that I’ve believed in the long-hours notion my entire life. Even today, a part of me is fascinated by the lure of late-night stillness. That part goes to sleep guilt-ridden from not trying hard enough and from giving in to the body’s demands.
So, what’s the catch?
First, it’s possible to generate the same intensity – or even more – by working fewer hours. By fewer hours, I’m not endorsing something as extreme as working 4 hrs per week. There’s something called deep work. You’ve probably heard of it, right? If not, keep reading.
Second, long hours come at a cost. A huge one, if you ask me. If you’re lucky, you’ll get there in 2–3 years in a healthy state. But if anything goes wrong, you’ll have accumulated years of relationship and health debt that may take just as long to pay off.
A viable alternative – deep work
Having practiced deep work for a few years now, I can say that it’s possible to get the same amount of work done in fewer hours. The challenge is that it’s not easy, just as it’s not easy to work 12+ hours a day. Maintaining a distraction-free work environment is hard. So is the discipline required to stay focused. But it’s possible.
Three to four hours of deep work per day, accompanied by another three to four hours of less intense work (meetings, emails, admin, etc.), can leave you just as drained as a 16-hour workday.
The challenge is figuring out how to do it consistently.
On productive days when I’m “in the zone,” I easily get more done than I would during a distraction-laden 12-hour day. On such days, I look at the clock and find myself surprised that it’s only 6 p.m.
There are many books on deep work, so I won’t go into the details. If you’re interested, I’d recommend Deep Work by Cal Newport, Peak Performance by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness, Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, and Atomic Habits by James Clear.
Obstacles
One thing getting in my way at the moment is the sheer number of threads I need to work on. I often get stuck in decision paralysis right at the beginning of my deep work sessions, which ends up eating into valuable time and pushing me further into the rabbit hole of distractions.
To fix that, I’m going to start an experiment. At the end of each day, I’m going to write down the top one or two priorities for the next day so I’m not starting from a blank slate and am crystal clear about what I need to do to confidently crush the day.
Another intensity destroyer is self-doubt. It’s nastier and harder to shrug off. When self-doubt sets in, progress feels empty. Productivity feels like distraction.
In yesterday’s deep work sessions, it took me a long time to figure out a good name for my product. By EOD, I had made some progress on rest of the planned tasks but couldn’t finish them. So my mind did what it does best – reprimand me for being careless and shallow focused and failing to finish reasonable amount of planned tasks yet again.
It was only at the end of my thinking walk that I realised the importance of naming and how everything in code and branding and GTM revolved around it, and how it typically takes even more time with even more folks. Not to mention I had completed all three non-trivial action items from yesterday’s call.
Was I really unproductive? Self-doubt made me think so. If I had given in to it, I would perhaps have given up on my deep work schedule believing the long-hours framework.
It’s all about intensity
In the deep work framework, time is more valuable than money. Every wasted minute is gone forever.
That said, I want to acknowledge that the intention behind the long-hours framework is the same – to get you to a level of work intensity where you are getting stuff done quicker thereby increasing your odds of success. Intensity engenders reward. But only one of the frameworks is sustainable and the other is not.
To get shit done, I must either learn to focus deeply for a few hours while still enjoying the essential luxuries of life, or toil for longer hours while sacrificing family time and health.