Sometimes, it’s just time to go home

http://www.benmilne.com/sometimes-just-go-home/

by johns • 12 years ago

564 163 12 years ago

I don't want to be a wet blanket, but when I read how hard he and others work, the first thought that comes to me is:

"I'm not working even close to that level."

In a way, it's a glimpse into the reality required to do Great Things. Followed by the painful self-awareness that you're nowhere close.

snewman• 12 years ago

Great Things require dedication, passion, and vision. Working yourself to death is not on the list of requirements, and in fact can often be counter-productive.

If you're passionate about your job, you're likely to work hard. But there's a line between "working hard", and overworking. Beyond a certain point, more hours may (or may not) mean more things done, but almost certainly doesn't mean more of the right things done.

the_cat_kittles• 12 years ago

well said. as a corollary, id say that finding the right balance is really energizing. in some sense, i think its backwards to decide you want to do something "great"- i think its better to get in tune with what kind of processes and styles you like, and let that dictate where you go, knowing that because you are doing things that are suited to you, you are going to progress much faster.

sillysaurus33• 12 years ago

Great Things require dedication, passion, and vision. Working yourself to death is not on the list of requirements

If that's true, it should be possible to make a list of companies that have been built without the founders working very hard (or rather, extremely long hours). What are some companies that could go onto such a list?

As a filter, let's use criteria "The founders got rich enough not to have to work anymore, or the company went public," since that's generally why people start startups.

EDIT: I've updated the question to ask specifically for instances of companies that have IPO'd or been acquired without the founders working extremely long hours, and also to clarify that I'm asking about the founders' working hours, not the employees. Thanks, enjo.

dcw303• 12 years ago

Great point. No matter how engrossing or important the work I'm doing is, I've never been able to push myself to work past midnight. Something biological tells me I am done, my brain turns to soup, and I know I've gone past the point of diminishing returns. I've never been able to fool myself into believing that there is any point in doing any more.

I look at these guys pushing themselves beyond the point of physical, mental and emotion exhaustion, and I just wonder how they do it. I wonder what drives them go on.

birken2• 12 years ago

This is not the reality of what is required to do great things [1]. This is one path, but there are many others. There are lots of people who work 40-50 hours a week and have incredibly successful startups/companies/whatever. There are people who work 80 hours a week and their startup is a complete piece of garbage.

Jamie Zawinski has a great great blog post about this [2], which I'll quote part of:

He's trying to make the point that the only path to success in the software industry is to work insane hours, sleep under your desk, and give up your one and only youth, and if you don't do that, you're a pussy. He's using my words to try and back up that thesis. I hate this, because it's not true, and it's disingenuous.

I'm not saying the OP is trying to sell this lie too. He is posting about how he is tired and wants to go home and relax. However, the life he describes is very much in the vein of Jamie's blog post. This lifestyle is not required to succeed, and it may in fact be quite counter-productive (as this blog post is attesting to). If your life isn't like this and you aren't working this hard it really isn't saying anything about how likely to succeed you are.

1: Though I don't know exactly what "great things" is... Making a lot of money? Going to Mars? Getting on the cover of Forbes magazine? Some of these require more effort than others.

2: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-name-to-se...

hudibras• 12 years ago

Thanks, I hadn't read that jwz post before. This is another killer quote:

But the people who made 100x as much as the engineers did? I can tell you for a fact that none of them slept under their desk.

coffeemug• 12 years ago

There are lots of people who work 40-50 hours a week and have incredibly successful startups/companies/whatever. There are people who work 80 hours a week and their startup is a complete piece of garbage.

There are lots of people who work 80 hours a week and their startup is garbage. But there are very few (if any at all) people who got their startup off the ground with 50 hours of work per week. Working long hours is necessary but not sufficient. (There are lots of people who claim it isn't necessary, but none of them actually had a successful startup)

serve_yay• 12 years ago

Doing great things comes at a great cost. Some people are willing to pay the cost, some think it's too high. The realization that one is unwilling to pay the cost need not be a painful one.

kyleblarson• 12 years ago

"Great things" means very different things to different people. Working yourself to the point of breaking down just to make money is not a great thing.

markbao• 12 years ago

HN'd. Mirror: https://archive.today/QF25G

minikomi• 12 years ago

warning : back button breakage.

Awesome , gutsy article though.

javajosh• 12 years ago

Last year I worked for a startup and I allowed myself to be pushed past the breaking point. The founders tempted me with equity (which never actually materialized) and I ended up doing many all nighters and many 90-hour weeks prior to an early release (another company was doing the front-end while we did the server in-house).

I don't have a wife or a puppy, but I shouldn't have allowed this to happen. I was hired to work for a set salary under the assumption of a 40-hour work-week - although I am naturally obsessive so I knew that wouldn't actually last. But I didn't expect my boss to say things like, "If we don't have a working build by 3pm tomorrow, we're all fired," (which turned out to be false, actually).

Pacing is important, and I think it would be interesting to do a startup where pacing is actively encouraged. I think this might be possible at a startup with strong IP protection, good funding, and leadership that sets realistic goals and trusts it's people to be motivated to get it done. It may mean that the public has to wait a bit longer before having a cool new thing available to them, but it also means that the thing will have been constructed by fresh, happy minds.

There is a moral imperative to not buy goods made in sweatshops. There is also a moral imperative to not use software produced under inhumane conditions. Congratulations on discovering this for yourself - and I hope you encourage your coworkers to be humane to each other and themselves as well.

127001brewer• 12 years ago

If we don't have a working build by 3pm tomorrow, we're all fired...

This is a bothersome and worrisome comment that probably has been repeated (in some variation) too often. How is this the fault of the developer(s)?

I appreciate that founders need to fulfill their promises, especially when having the backing of investors, but these type of statements seem to indicate a failure in communication and planning (more than execution).

jacquesm2• 12 years ago

The founders tempted me with equity (which never actually materialized)

This happens frequently enough that by now it should be a thing that people are 'on to'. If you're being tempted with equity then insist on drawing it up in writing with a solid vesting schedule and don't work a day past the first vesting point without your stock.

yesimahuman• 12 years ago

Wow, much respect for writing this. While my company isn't quite at Dwolla scale, I've had my own version of too-much-travel this fall, and I am over it. I realized I was making the most impact back home, helping the team create the foundation for us to do more with less.

All these conferences and these meetings are rarely world changing. They hold potential opportunities and the start of relationships, but we never know if those opportunities would have come to us through cheaper, more effective means.

Travel bothers me so much because it feels incredibly suboptimal, like I'm working harder not smarter.

3pt14159• 12 years ago

Great article.

There are so many different angles to startup burnout, that sometimes it seems like we're playing a really rough game like American football, only instead of head and spine injuries we've got mental health problems and repetitive stress disorders.

Early in a startup the big enemy is yourself and poverty. Try to get yourself to finish that feature; to push the product over the line. To persevere after the launch basically goes unnoticed. The burnout is emotional because it's rooted in self doubt. Once a startup starts getting traction a different type of mental stress sets in: a fear of squandering an opportunity. All the late nights are rooted in the fear that your startup has had some luck and some traction, and maybe if you don't push so hard it will become another Excite. Used, but left to the wayside while a better contender came in.

xpop2027• 12 years ago

Not loading for me, :(

bbcbasic• 12 years ago

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=BYigSwhw

moron4hire3• 12 years ago

One reaction: "grow up". Stop letting other people dictate how you live your life. That is what parents do for children. Becoming an adult means making your own decisions about how to spend your time, and when enough is enough. Grow up. Stop putting other people, ones not even that close to you, first. Grow up.

abuteau• 12 years ago

It shouldn't be the way. We met Brad Feld last year in Las Vegas (Up Summit) and he talked about his depression[1]. I suggest everyone to read the depression archives on Brad Feld blog [2]. Pretty insightful posts. I tend to be obsessive and I lost someone I really care about because of focus on money and too much work. At the end of the day, you have to focus on your priorities, your wife/family is one and should deserve a decent amount of attention. Brad said that when Amy call him whenever he's in a meeting he will still answer, because she's a priority. Outworking yourself is not likely the way you will succeed in the long run. Work hard != work smart

George Bernard Shaw said: "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it."

1. http://www.inc.com/magazine/201307/brad-feld/many-entreprene...

2. http://www.feld.com/archives/tag/depression

unclebucknasty4• 12 years ago

I read the following from link 2 in your comment:

http://www.feld.com/archives/2014/10/helps-depressed.html

This may be veering off-topic, but reading the suggestions submitted by the reader in that post made me wonder some people (many, in fact) have to actively work so hard to hold off depression. Something is going wrong (organically, culturally, or both) that depression is the default state for so many.

Culturally, I think our relationship with work is certainly part of it. And, some personalities (e.g. driven or obsessive) may just be more susceptible.

rhizome• 12 years ago

Don't forget the industry that they're working in.

alexbecker3• 12 years ago

Something is going wrong (organically, culturally, or both) that depression is the default state for so many.

I'm not convinced that this is any different from the "natural state" of humans (which granted is not completely well-defined). I do not see any reason to expect people to be generally happy. While it's overly reductionist to think of evolution in terms of individual "fitness", it is not clear to me that a general trend of being unhappy (which in slightly more outlying cases becomes depression) decreases fitness. The only obvious effect I can see is suicide, but that's pretty rare statistically speaking, and we have strong self-preservation instincts independent of happiness that are pretty hard to override. Being reliably happy on the other hand is probably ruinous to fitness--what motivation would I have to do anything?

famousactress4• 12 years ago

The saddest thing about this post to me is the fact that he could only write it because his startup is apparently doing great.

Most startups aren't, despite the fact that lots of the folks there are in effectively the same personal position and feeling the exact same thing - in addition to the added pressure of not feeling like they measure up to stories like this one because their quarter didn't go nearly as well. I really feel for those people, and I wish they felt more freedom to be honest and public about these kinds of feelings.

Rather tangentially - I have a one and a half year old daughter who recently turned a question we posed her ("Woah, kiddo. Are you freaking out!?") on it's head. Now sometimes when she gets wound up she goes full-meta and runs back and forth in the kitchen waving her hands in the air yelling "freaking out!", in self-parody.

That reminds me, a little bit, of our startup-culture's relationship to overwork... and don't get me wrong, I don't think articles like this are the ridiculous self-parody, I think they're the really troubling and all-too-real consequence.

Put simply I think we need to do a little more wiggling our toes in the carpet and chilling the fuck out. The world's not suffering from a shortage of first-world martyrs.

Take a breath, go home, do great work tomorrow, and for God's sake appreciate the fact that you're in the hilariously small fraction of people who get to blog about the pains of working too hard by choice.

moron4hire3• 12 years ago

The really bothersome thing is that this isn't a revelation. Posts about burnout--and the subsequent replies commiserating and declaring how important of an issue this is and how the replier has been through their own version and how it isn't right and change is needed and-really-just-read-the-rest-of-this-thread--are a weekly occurrence on this message board alone. Who knows how many people are not commenting (remember the 90/9/1 rule of internet engagement), say nothing about the people who are just plane not here!

I started having the notion of starting my own company specifically because I was sick of being treated like nothing more than an input variable on some MBAs Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Does it make any sort of sense to work myself to death, in that same vein, in my own endeavours? I would have only traded one tyrant whom I could escape for one I'd be stuck with forever: myself.

mtbcoder• 12 years ago

The saddest thing about this post to me is the fact that he could only write it because his startup is apparently doing great.

Agreed.

Most startups aren't, despite the fact that lots of the folks there are in effectively the same personal position and feeling the exact same thing - in addition to the added pressure of not feeling like they measure up to stories like this one because their quarter didn't go nearly as well. I really feel for those people, and I wish they felt more freedom to be honest and public about these kinds of feelings.

...and let's also not forget all the folks who are barely making ends meet at their existing jobs, putting in 60+ hour work weeks for a measly salary that's been stagnate for years or all the folks needing to work an extra job or two just to survive.

famousactress4• 12 years ago

I certainly haven't! Those were the people I had in mind when I ended the comment with "and for God's sake appreciate the fact that you're in the hilariously small fraction of people who get to blog about the pains of working too hard by choice."

It's hard to fairly cover every situation the OP is enjoying more privilege than, because frankly there's an ocean of them.

dharmach• 12 years ago

The saddest thing about this post to me is the fact that he could only write it because his startup is apparently doing great.

Because if his startup was doing bad and he says what he said, he will be ridiculed and/or pitied for being a loser.

famousactress4• 12 years ago

And/or lose prospective/confidence-of-current investors.Lots of pressure to appear bulletproof and unburdened by the usual constraints of advanced humanity.

xtracto• 12 years ago

for God's sake appreciate the fact that you're in the hilariously small fraction of people who get to blog about the pains of working too hard by choice.

This made me think: How would a similar blog post from one of the albañiles (construction worker) be? Earning 13 bucks a day doing hard physical work and then having to do another job to earn a little more.

famousactress4• 12 years ago

We'll probably never know because that guy doesn't have time to write one. (Note the irony)

alrs• 12 years ago

Down. Google's cache:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bwQO1V7...

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

This was a great read. Something to consider in that moment is scale. It is impossible to be an entire company and survive. A CEO I highly respect told me that you can move a truck with a go kart engine, a big transmission, and a lot of coolant, but adding more cylinders is what makes it a truck. He was explaining to me that 'scaling' people was about figuring out how to take what someone was doing really really well, and turning that into a process for doing that thing. Then handing over that thing to the process.

The first startup I joined was run by a guy who had not, to my knowledge, ever been more than a line manager (directly managing people who did things, versus managing people who managed people to did things) He had a really really hard time working with the indirection, unable to feel comfortable that things were "in control" unless he went and talked to the actual people doing the work himself. As the company got bigger that became a bigger and bigger issue for him. He didn't scale, and I could tell that there would come a time when he would be 110% subscribed with tasks that he couldn't figure out how to delegate.

The message about getting home though is really really important. Too many people are sleeping at work because they have no home to go home to any more. If you can set a goal for 'quality hours with the family per week' and when that is in jeopardy due to work commitments restructure work to reduce its impact.

nickbauman• 12 years ago

I can't help but feel the whole startup culture is a conflict of mission writ large in two ways. First, you're trying to make people's lives better while deleting the idea of a better life for yourself. Second, execution is everything. But when you're working like this the quality of execution inevitably degrades.

I've done startups. At the end I got better at what I was doing but I wasn't ultimately proud of the work I did. The startup even succeeded (I helped other people get rich, I just made a living). Many startups don't even do that.

8f2ab37a-ed6c• 12 years ago

The startup thing has been both amazing and incredibly devastating.

Haven't seen my folks in years. Spouse dumped me because I practically didn't exist outside of work. Absolutely no hobbies or traveling in years. No guarantee the company will be anything but a massive drop in my financial history. You're constantly running out of money, so you're cutting every unnecessary expense, and you're living on scraps for years, knowing that you could be making 10x that much in the workforce. You can't quit though because so many people look up to you for direction, they need you to be there and lead them, to be certain of where you're going. The stress can be so high you just want to roll up in fetal in a corner and disappear. You understand why so many founders end their lives.

The experiences however and the connections are priceless. The feeling of playing the game on your terms is liberating and the hope of the upside is exhilarating, but I still wish the price wasn't so high. The amount of personal growth is astounding: once you go through the above, everything else feels like easy mode. You have to develop resilience, charisma, diplomacy, discipline and so many other traits or you will sink fast.

In hindsight, I don't know if I'd do anything differently. When you're this deep, you try not to dwell on hypotheticals.

I remember many years ago when I was sold to the startup lifestyle by the sexiness of the message, but the dozens of PG essays and stories of success and freedom. Nowadays I caution people to truly dig deep and understand if this is worth it to them, ask them if they're ready to sacrifice everything for likely nothing at all. Ultimately we're slaves of power law and similar to Hollywood talent in our outcomes: a very small fraction of us is going to becomes gods through either luck or huge sacrifice, and 99.9% of us will be waiting tables for the rest of our lives, or decide to do something else.

santoshalper3• 12 years ago

Even here, you can't help but romanticize your experience. If you could see through the silicon valley delusion you've been fed, you would realize that you destroyed your life, your marriage, and most of your personal relationships, probably for nothing.

You say you have developed these incredible skills, and perhaps you have. What will they do for you... what is your endgame? Perhaps your next startup will be massive success and you will be rich, but will you be happy with no relationships? Who will be happy for your success that is not also making money from it?

You have been conned into playing a game you cannot win at the cost of your humanity. Run away now.

72deluxe2• 12 years ago

I too was surprised how the listing of all the things that were lost (really important things in life) were suddenly swept under the carpet with "the experiences.... were priceless".

I don't think that the experience of not seeing or having a family and not having a life (traveling or hobbies) is a priceless experience!!!

partisan2• 12 years ago

The crazy part is that there are plenty of people making money off of "lifestyle" businesses. They cobbled their websites together using technologies we wouldn't even look down our noses at. They work 20 hour weeks and enjoy their freedom the rest of the time.

I think we buy into the story that it has to be so difficult, but it doesn't.

nanijoe• 12 years ago

The price does not have to be so high..IF stuff is not working out, you can just quit and try something else. There is nothing heroic or romantic about living in poverty. Joining the workforce or running a so called lifestyle business that makes actual money is not a bad thing.

All this talk of sacrifice and being gods tells me you need to step outside your bubble. You are trying to start a company, not solve World hunger.

gsibble• 12 years ago

You hit the nail on the head. Once you've done it, there's nothing quite like it. It's like the volume knob on the rest of the world gets turned down.

I'm 3 months out of my last CEO role and depressed, despite being depressed in my CEO role. Now I'm depressed because I'm bored. I don't know what happiness is anymore. It turns out that happiness is chasing the dream, not the dream itself. I've lost sight of it. I don't remember what it is or if it even existed.

It's like what Alan Watts said: it's not the end of the journey, it is the journey. Remember that and try to enjoy it while it lasts.

santoshalper3• 12 years ago

You neglected your life and took terrible care of yourself and now you are likely suffering from clinical depression. The volume knob got turned down because you stopped listening.

johnvschmitt• 12 years ago

2 big points I've learned & want to share on this topic:

1) In the smart long-term play, family & few close friends are most important. Everything else (including your startup) is trivial.

2) Even if you value your startup at 100% value (over family/friends/health/life), you're incredibly short-sited and killing your own startup baby if you don't have some balance in your life. Startup life is NOT a sprint. It's a marathon. To give the BEST to your startup, you need to bring your BEST every day.

Phrased another way, I often ask, "Let's say you're going to be interviewed on the Colbert Report, or other big-huge-friggin' deal tomorrow, what would you do today?" Often, people say, "I'll eat well, build something, hug my family, build something, help someone, build more, chat with a friend, take a walk, build more, play a game, go to bed early" So, if that's what you do to bring your BEST tomorrow, then what would you do if you wanted to bring your BEST EVERY day?

That tends to drive home the message that work-life balance isn't just helping your life, it's truly what matters to helping your work too.

Corollary: If you're overstressed, you aren't helping your work. Often, overstressed people at startups will add much more friction in the small team, hurting efficiency as arguments & disrespect poisons the day's actions. Not to mention the zombie-brain mistakes in execution when you're not taking proper care of yourself.

gerbilly2• 12 years ago

Totally agree, you have to keep some energy in reserve to handle the unexpected.

To go further, if you want to do more than just handle the unexpected (which is kind of like putting out a fire) you will need to bring wisdom to the situation.

Developing wisdom requires an even greater reserve of energy _and_ some downtime to reflect.

andrea_s• 12 years ago

Aren't we done yet with the rhetoric of "making the world a better place"/"improving people's lives"? I can't help but think about HBO's Silicon Valley every time I read this kind of thing...

Animats• 12 years ago

This guy is the CEO. So, by definition, this is a management problem. Dwolla has some money now; they can hire people. This guy needs to learn how to build a staff and delegate. He's only done startups, and hasn't worked in a long-established company where they have this figured out.

Some founders have trouble letting go of control. They want to do it all themselves. That doesn't scale.

bretpiatt• 12 years ago

Saying, "they can just hire people" is quite flippant. No matter how many people a CEO hires there is always more that they can do. Using a topic he discussed the f.ounders event... he cannot hire someone to go to it -- that event is exclusively for founders. By not attending he's missing out on a BD opportunity. Could he have hired someone to cover the BoFA or other meetings? Maybe? Maybe not -- would BoFA take the meeting with the brand new BD team member? Would that member be as effective? "Luck" is preparation meeting opportunity and as you're rapidly scaling any business scaling a team that is prepared and ready to take on the opportunities in front of you is as hard or harder than any technology scaling problem the business will face.

solistice• 12 years ago

I do think that there's a number of things the CEO shouldn't be doing though. Who was it, Dan Kennedy or someone put it quite aptly "Your job as a CEO is to make sure money keeps coming. Not making sure the printer works or whether the office is clean or any number of things that don't relate to your main goal". Going to a f.ounders event might be part of that, or overhauling the sales funnel or making sure that the next version of the product just kicks ass. Cleaning your own office proably isn't.

gambiting• 12 years ago

Exactly. My parents have been running a company since they were both in their twenties. Starting in a country where literally no one has heard of funding or investment(early years after communism fell), they have started with nearly nothing. For the past 20 years they have been spending every second of their time at work, well into their forties. They kept growing, hiring more people(now almost 200), opening more shops, and they just couldn't manage, there's only so many places you could be in at once. Until in the last few years they hired a couple managers to take the load off their backs. Now they only need to visit our offices a couple times a week, are a lot more relaxed than they were some time ago. But my point is - they didn't arrive at this conclusion that they need managers by themselves. They always thought that if they spent 5 minutes left at the office the whole thing would fall apart. Someone else told them that they will burn our completely if they don't start hiring other people to do their work - and it worked. There's no point in having money if you never have time to spend it.

genwin2• 12 years ago

There's no point in having money if you never have time to spend it.

Moreover, the only point of money is to spend it. They should focus on enjoyment now. They'll be playing catch up with other people who've been working to live through their forties. Ideally they'd sell the company if they wouldn't have to work again, so it's not a distraction.

lovelearning• 12 years ago

Good for you. If the CEO himself is burning out like this, can't help wondering how much worse their engineers are burning out.

tomasien• 12 years ago

I just re-booked my flight to get home from Vegas (where Ben just was) a day earlier as well. My team was super confused about this - but y'all, sometimes you just need to go home and sometimes you just need to be alone.

partisan2• 12 years ago

It's pretty standard to take a break after a long period of hard work. Especially if it starts to feel like burnout.

I'll probably write an enlightening blog post one day about how sometimes you have to take a nap during the day, especially if you feel sleepy. I'll encapsulate it into a life lesson: Don't lie to yourself, you are sleepy so just take that nap.

yason• 12 years ago

Life is now.

If you‘re doing something for money so that you can live your life the way you want later, that doesn‘t work because it takes time to learn to live your life the way you want. Typically it takes a lifetime to do that, so you must start early: you must start now if you wish to make it. Otherwise you‘ll end up with a lot of cash and no idea of what kind of life makes you fulfilled.

If you‘re doing something to make a difference – or to make the world a better place – then if you feel like you‘re running out of time then you‘re probably doing it wrong. That sort of goals are rarely if ever such undertakings that are constrained by time. Paradoxically, life is short yet there‘s always plenty of time so as to not have to hurry things. If you work madly for a few years what is it that you think you‘ll win from it if you compare doing that thing you can‘t not do for decades? Or maybe you weren‘t doing a thing you can‘t not do in the first place?

Rush is a sign that you have grown an inflated sense of importance. Nothing is that important, not even the important things.

If you‘re building a company, you have all the time to grow the business. Some families have been doing that for centuries, many individuals for decades. If you have a really great idea, take the time to work on it. If you‘re lucky, someone else does the same thing and finishes faster than you which means you don‘t have to do it at all! You can just enjoy the benefits of the addition of widget X or feature Y in the pool of things tangible in our lives. Maybe the idea wasn‘t that unique after all. But some ideas are and thosee you can work on for years. For many things in life, building them slower makes them last longer. Even a good relationship or a family tree.

For these reasons, I consider it a better approach to weave the things you can‘t not do and your life together. This removes a divide: life goes on at its own pace and along comes your calling but they‘re not in conflict. There‘s no contrast between work and family, or business and private life because everything is scattered around in the timeline of your life in small pieces. There‘s always some work but there‘s always home and family too. Neither is more important than the other and none of the areas can continuously hog a big chunk of your focus.

Daddy must work now, daddy has to write an important email because those people need daddy‘s opinion.

I can‘t have the meeting today, I need to cook dinner and water the garden with my daughter.

prof_hobart3• 12 years ago

For most people a vanishingly small amount of life is now. Most of it has either already happened, or more importantly is still to come.

I agree that there's a need to balance the now and planning for the future, and an awful lot of start ups seem, at least to me, to get the balance badly wrong.

But there are often sacrifices you need to do now to gain far bigger rewards in the future. Whether that's resisting that dessert sat in front of you because you want to be 50lbs lighter, saving money now so that you don't starve in retirement, or sometimes trading off time with the family for time spent working so that you've still got a job or a company in 5 years time.

coldtea2• 12 years ago

For most people a vanishingly small amount of life is now. Most of it has either already happened, or more importantly is still to come.

"Now" is a "rolling window". Lost 'nows" also agrregate.

calinet64• 12 years ago

There is a balance to everything. Sometimes the balance is in the opposite direction from your assumptions.

If I've learned anything, it's that the really important things you're talking about—those get done. They have my focus for most of every day, and I care deeply about them. I don't let them hit the floor.

The things that are missed are the ones I put out of mind to do that; that are broader than my current focus, more long-term, and especially, the things that are more human and soft. The long-range planning, the investment in systems to make my work more effective and less of a hamster-wheel, and the investment of time in life itself and the things that make me feel like myself, and make me truly inspired and motivated to to better work with the time I have.

It is these things that I forget as I'm trying to work harder and "do the right thing" for my future and my company's future. Ironically, the very things that would help its success most are the ones that fly out the window as soon as the going gets tough. That's why keeping this balance is so incredibly difficult, and incredibly important.

Your company needs a human, not a machine. It needs someone who is sane and effective every day, consistently, without fail. And if you're leading a group, multiply that importance by the number of people in it, because they will all be affected by your imbalance more than you will.

This is one of the kernels of Zen, by the way. The harder you try to hit the target, the further away your arrow lands. Success is not all about pure effort.

My hypothesis about your anecdotal examples is that they were probably missing something else. There are so many things. Or, their lack of investment in their company was not, in fact, balance, but simply lack of care or attention. They are not the same.

tedks• 12 years ago

This is the sort of sentimentality that has no place in modern capitalism.

Why would you need to cook dinner or water a garden (who even has a garden) or even have children in the first place? People have been doing that for thousands of years. If you want to scratch dirt you can move to Kansas and be a dirt farmer. Plenty of time with your kids with that career track.

If you're building a company, you have almost no time to do anything. Building a company is a very difficult task that very few people can successfully execute, and even fewer can successfully execute in the limit. It's just intrinsically hard.

In comparison, cooking dinner or putting the hose on some lettuce or some anemic tomato plants is easy as balls. They pay people pennies an hour to do those things for you. You can just pay them to do them, and do interesting, hard things yourself.

Personally, I think preferring easy things to hard things is a sign of weakness. Doing hard things is fulfilling. Cash is incidental, but it is a very good metric of how hard something is. If you are not making very much money, you aren't doing things that are very hard.

Life is, truly, very short. You can spend it doing hard things and, if you die, know that you were able to go further and faster and better than all the people around you, that you've won, or you can die knowing that you did the same boring things people did since they were barely past apes.

knd7752• 12 years ago

Huh. Interesting mindset. I truly hope that you don't have massive regrets later on in your life.

mooreds2• 12 years ago

Hey, I applaud you for your mindset for its purity and clarity. I think it's a bit shortsighted myself, but I've found the world a more complex place than I expected when I was younger (I'm in my 30s), and I think it's important to realize that everyone has different priorities.

I agree with the parent of this comment that it takes a life to learn how to live. If you want to live the life of a founder, live that life. I have found great joy in different aspects of life.

I think some people (you, obviously) are motivated by difficult tasks. Some are motivated by other kinds of difficult tasks (even ones that have been done for 1000s of years, like farming--a very difficult task, trust me!). Some people are motivated by learning, some by activism, etc, etc.

CocaKoala• 12 years ago

Yikes, are you for real?

Life is truly very short, I think everybody's going to agree on that. You can spend your limited time turning it into a competition where you look down on "dirt farmers" for the weakness inherent in them that leads them to make food which allows you to survive, or you can figure that some people aren't worth competing with and find things that make you happy.

Congratulations; you're probably going to go "further and faster and better" than I am. But I've got a job I love, I'm early in my career, I'm married to a woman I'm crazy in love with, and every evening I'm happy to fall asleep, every morning I'm excited to start my day. It's hard for me to see how I could be doing much better than that. Hopefully your categorical victory over me will give you some time to take a break, you sound like you need it.

dasil003• 12 years ago

What if "winning" doesn't fill the hole?

wonsler• 12 years ago

Work smart, not hard. Cash is a metric of how valuable something is to the purchaser, and not how hard it is for the master to perform, but for the purchaser to perform from scratch. Working hard, without balance, is an obsessive-compulsive behavior, so that you needn't define yourself and figure out how to live your life. The parent of your comment is spot on.

hibbelig• 12 years ago

I find that raising children and caring for and loving my family is the hardest I've done yet. It's not paying any money.

TheBiv• 12 years ago

>Building a company is a very difficult task that very few people can successfully execute, and even fewer can successfully execute in the limit. It's just intrinsically hard.

Please do not act as if 100% of the things you do on a daily basis are "hard" things. You're commenting on HN, so I know you are not 100% tapped on the hard things.

I believe that the author chose to use the example of cooking as a way to do a relaxing (easy) thing that doesn't need a whole lot of brain power.

OhHeyItsE• 12 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

moron4hire3• 12 years ago

> Life is, truly, very short. You can spend it doing hard things and, if you die, know that you were able to go further and faster and better than all the people around you, that you've won, or you can die knowing that you did the same boring things people did since they were barely past apes.

Yes, life is truly, very short. And in both cases, when all the people who knew you themselves die, you'll be completely forgotten. So you can spend life being happy or you can spend it being miserable. And when you die, it won't matter either way.

You don't get to say "haha, I won". There is no past tense to death. You're going to die and you're going to cease to be. That's it.

And nobody will thank you for the things you do. Even if--in the exceedingly rare case somewhere did--you won't know it.

And who knows, maybe you're all a figment of my imagination and the universe itself ceases to exist around me when I die. What then about all my achievements? What will I do with my degree and my money and my wife and my car and my house and my whatever when the universe ceases to exist?

NOTHING. That's the point. Nothing.

You think you are so big, but you are so small. You are just as small as the rest of us. And there is nothing you can do about it.

danielovich2• 12 years ago

What utter crap to write. Seriously, are you for real ?

hero454545• 12 years ago

Cash is incidental, but it is a very good metric of how hard something is. If you are not making very much money, you aren't doing things that are very hard.

This is the just world fallacy. How much people earn isn't analogous to how hard they work, how important their work is or how challenging. It's a product of supply and demand.

lgieron• 12 years ago

I can't tell if you're being ironic or not.

boken3• 12 years ago

It sounds like you're just a simpler person than most, who can be fulfilled by one thing: [your definition of] success. That may actually be pleasant. But a lot of people are not that simple.

And if you say that farming and parenting are easy, then we know two things about you:

(1) You call the things that you value "hard." (2) You've never farmed or raised a child.

You also clearly believe in an afterlife ("if you die, [you can] know..."); and you believe in one that looks something like a throne from which you can gaze down on your own and others' accomplishments. These two ideas may well have some truth to them, but neither are guaranteed.

Frankly, it's strange to me that in a society in which we are constantly exposed to the memoirs, memories, junkets, and essays of the roundly accomplished, we still think they are any happier than anyone else. Surely some must be or must have been, but I don't know of any confessors. I have heard plenty admit to dissatisfaction, to put it mildly. I hope you don't run into the same trap that many do.

The only thing I agree with you on is that I, too, am a misanthrope in even some of my best hours. I just don't think any more highly of myself for the fact.

Still, I would be proud to have made a better world for the people I do care about--and would even be happy with this George Eliot line for an epitaph, although the pronouns don't map quite right:

"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

untog2• 12 years ago

Life is, truly, very short.

Yeah, it is. And you can't take your money with you. Your startup might be the next Facebook. It also might fail in six weeks time leaving you with nothing.

The fact that you define life success in terms of whether you won against other people guarantees one thing: you will lose. There will always be someone above you that you can stress and obsess over beating. Or, you can decide you want none of it and find success on your own terms.

I echo the other poster that described your mentality as "simple". In other situations I'd consider that a little too insulting to say, but you've already described people who focus on anything other than "hard" things as "weak". Truly complex people get fulfillment from a variety of sources. Cooking, gardening, spending time with a loved one, whatever. Success is not the only metric for most of us.

santoshalper3• 12 years ago

This is just such a sad perspective. The trajectory of your life, which will be tragic, is surely obvious to everyone around you except yourself. This is entirely a delusion you have chosen to believe.

jasonlfunk• 12 years ago

I wish I had the permissions to downvote your comment.

galfarragem• 12 years ago

I would bet that in 10 years your speech will be different.

ryanpardieck• 12 years ago

"know that you were able to go further and faster and better than all the people around you, that you've won"

What exactly has been won here? There have probably been ultra-driven people for as long as people have been cooking or gardening or "scratching dirt." Being ultra-driven and ambitious is probably as boring and quotidian as any of those other things.

All of us die, it is usually unremarkable, and after a while no one remembers. You're optimizing so that you spend most of your life doing the things that seems most meaningful to you. Those people who are having children and watering gardens are probably doing the same. Each type of person can do that without condescending to the other type of person.

justinpaulson• 12 years ago

I think life is actually more about being happy. If that dirt scratcher is happier than the person killing themselves to make some random startup a success, then I think the dirt scratcher has won. You see, when you die you don't "know that you were able to..." You don't know anything, because you are dead. All you have is how you feel right now, because life could end at any moment and you won't know it at all, you'll just be dead and gone and the only thing that will have mattered to you is how you felt while you were alive.

ams6110• 12 years ago

Startups thinking they are "going to make peoples lives better" or "make the world a better place"... no you're really not. At least not very much. The vast vast majority of people in the world will never ever know about you. It's even quite easy to make the argument that services like Google, Facebook, and Twitter that people have heard of have create at least as many if not more problems than they've solved. Don't get too conceited.

cagl• 12 years ago

I like this perspective. Thanks for sharing

bpmilne• 12 years ago

Hey all. You folks killed my weak little blog server. Memory has been maxed and rebooted. Hopefully will stay online for a bit.

rocky1138• 12 years ago

Why are you mucking with a web server? Take a break!

startupgrinder2• 12 years ago

I wish I had the balls to write this post. Mine would certainly not be so honest and raw. It's also sad that it comes to this. I get home for dinner but work till midnight. I'm in town for birthdays but leave at 6am the next morning. I still talk to my very best friends but no one else. I hope to heaven that the startup never ruins my marriage but it's not impossible to see it could happen.

Maybe these "compromises" mean I will never quite get to that level - but regardless I'm not willing to do compromise them. At any expense.

jacquesm2• 12 years ago

I hope to heaven that the startup never ruins my marriage

That's probably already happening, you're just not being told/aware of it yet. If you're only in town for birthdays and leave at 6 am the next morning and wreck your social life you're well underway. Been there, done that so take it from me as an experience to avoid.

startupgrinder2• 12 years ago

Thank you for the concern. This is not happening, I'm just saying that as a founder I can understand how people's obsession can go overboard and ruin important stuff. Clay Christensen's "How to Measure Your Life" is the best book on this subject and is a guiding principle for me. If my wife said "You need to quit your startup it's ruining us" I would do it in a second. As much as I love what I do, it's not even close to the plane and importance of my family.

Mimu• 12 years ago

"I hope to heaven that the startup never ruins my marriage but it's not impossible to see it could happen"

I know it's (way) easier said than done, but I would suggets to stop hoping and start doing. I have never been married nor in a big commitment relationship, but I would assume than when you start thinking that a bad thing could happen, it's probably happening right now, or soon.

Good luck anyway, hope everything work out for you.

lumberjack• 12 years ago

Perhaps there could be something in between a startup and a job as an employee.

Startups are rewarding because you are not simply an employee but also part owner and they are hard because you have to undertake a lot of extra work and responsibility and risk.

Maybe there could be a third way were you are part owner but undertake less risk and less responsibility and less work. Imagine a startup where instead of the typical 2/3 founders 3/15 employees you have a 15 employees who all share an equal amount of ownership and responsibility.

The point of such a startup would be to provide better working terms and better pay than one would get when working as an employee or contractor but at the same time lessen exposure to risk and responsibility.

I don't know how doable it is but I always thought that it was strange that most startups were trying to emulate the same corporate structure the, founders themselves probably wanted to avoid because it didn't suit them very well as employees.

Sorry for going of tangent but it's just random idea that crept into my head and wanted to share.

archagon• 12 years ago

There is such a thing — a cooperative! One famous example is the Cheeseboard in Berkeley, a cheese shop and pizzeria that has been worker owned and operated since the 60's with wild success. Seeing how happy, creative, and productive the staff there is makes me wish that we had more organizations operating in this manner.

Kind of a tangent, but there's a lot to be said for cooperative living, too. One of my favorite experiences in college was living in a student cooperative. There were about 40 of us in a large, early 20th century Victorian house, each taking on a fair share of maintenance, cooking, and management. Every decision, including major ones like renovating parts of the house, was made democratically and collectively: there was no real centralized oversight. (There was a "central office" for the entire co-op system — itself largely made up of house representatives — but they mostly stayed out of individual house affairs.) Important positions such as president or workshift manager were voted in collectively and had certain benefits, like decreased rent or less hours required per week. It worked well for the most part, and many lifelong friendships were forged in the house.

I think it would be an interesting experiment to get a bunch of self-motivated creative folks together in such an environment and have them work on projects together. Perhaps the members would be selected by occupation, so that there's a solid pool of artists, programmers, designers, writers, etc. at all times. A majority of the money generated from these projects would go towards the members' collective benefit. Projects would be formed spontaneously, either by individuals working alone, or by people trying to "recruit" other members — kind of like how Valve does things.

A combination of cooperative living and cooperative working. I know it's not for everyone, and maybe it's a pipe dream, but the idea really appeals to me!

ericd• 12 years ago

I agree, and I think a lot of people are at least intrigued by the idea of something like that. I'm guessing that that last bit is sort of like what an "artist colony" is, except more multidisciplinary.

robinduckett• 12 years ago

Newsflash: Startup founder struggles with Work / Life balance and ends up not seeing his wife over Halloween.

dmak• 12 years ago

Almost 2 years ago, I had three major things going on in my life. I was working at another startup in San Francisco, finishing my Computer Science degree from SJSU, and being a boyfriend of a 4 year relationship with my then girlfriend. At the time, I was really worried about doing well in my career as well as making sure I don't fail my courses otherwise I would be held back and be even more miserable. I had to commute between San Jose and San Francisco every other day. I put much of my time into the startup, and naturally that took away my time from other things. In hindsight and after reading this blog post, I realised how much I overlooked and have developed further understanding on how things played out. But yeah, great blog post, it is important to learn to identify what is happening and realise the gradual damages taking place before its broken.

orofino• 12 years ago

I'm reading this while sitting in a restaurant in Nepal. My wife and I are here for around three weeks for hiking to Everest Base Camp. After this, we are headed to China for 11 days. In total, I'm going to be out from work for 5 weeks. Almost three years ago we quit our jobs, sold our house and travelled for 9 months through South America, Antarctica, and Europe.

I work at a startup. I'm the product manager and we are rebuilding the product from the ground up, in December we will have been working on the rebuild for a full year and our first beta customers will be starting on the new platform. The five weeks immediately previous to that, I'm out of the office for an extended period.

This is to say, you have to make the time for yourself. We both work hard, both of our new jobs (which are way better than our pre big trip jobs btw) allowed us to take this five weeks without much hassle. The team will survive and I'll come back refreshed and ready to tackle new problems.

Perhaps some think our startup will fail because someone took time off for this long, I'll tell you that I sure don't.

genwin2• 12 years ago

Good for you. Always work to live, not the opposite. It can be work just to figure out what you enjoy.

jacalata• 12 years ago

I would love to read about your trip to everest base camp - the website link in your profile doesn't appear to work, do you have a blog?

contingencies• 12 years ago

Hey, I'm on the eastern edge of the Himalayas near Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, China. While 11 days isn't much so I doubt it, if you guys are planning to visit Yunnan you are welcome to come sailing on our huge alpine lake. :)

notastartup• 12 years ago

This article really made my stomach churn because it really hit home.

If I had a one tenth of the success these guys are having I'd tell myself to keep going.

However, working on the project alone, for the past couple of years has been devastating. I've really no more friends left as a result of blindly pursuiting my passion. I admit it hasn't even been worth it to this date. But something, this lizard brain keeps telling me to go go go don't stop.

I've been working on my project off with about 3 years of full time development and 2 years of working at a job to support myself.

I don't know. I'm super confused and agitated after reading this article. I had this gut feeling not to read the article but I did it anyways.

I will probably continue. Crazy.

72deluxe2• 12 years ago

You sound to be in a bad way.

Remember, people are more important than things.

When you see African countries torn up and people fleeing with nothing, do you stop and think "why aren't they carrying all their important belongings?" The belongings and "stuff" are worthless; they can always acquire things again. What is important to them is their family and friends.

You cannot easily acquire lost friends again. But you can acquire "stuff" again.

Things don't make you happy; people do.

Out of interest, what have you been working on?

facepalm• 12 years ago

What is driving the stressfulness of startup life? Is it the fear of being overtaken by the competition? Or the excitement of unlimited possibilities, so you an always try more?

bakhy• 12 years ago

With the advent of startups, this is the new normal for IT workers.

The best part - after all this effort, majority will none the less fail. But in the meanwhile they will be doing huge amounts of work, while their investors can breathe easy, no need to worry much about overtimes, vacations, sick leaves, finding work for people after the project ends, etc.

This system is rigged against us, but a truly IT specific thing is that so many of us enjoy exploiting ourselves like this. Sure, many people would start their business anyway, but now we're dealing with a trend, "everyone" is doing it, it's the hip way to be, and there's very little criticism about this model, if any. The failures are merely presented as lessons to learn, it's rarely considered to call the emperor naked, to stop the show.

This text is nice, family is important, but this is from someone who can afford it, now that he has succeeded. I see no retrospect, no reflection here - could he have cancelled trips like this years ago, when he was still fighting? Is that what he is suggesting to people now? I don't think so, and that makes it all sound just so hollow.

Htsthbjig• 12 years ago

When I was young I met a Spanish tennis player called Rafael Nadal when he was a kid.

He was managed and coached by his uncle who had experience in being a professional football player.

What shocked me is that he did not sacrifice Rafael's life like most of other kids that could be good(examples like Michael Jackson or in tennis the Wiilians' sisters or Arantxa Sanchez Vicario in Spain).

At the time everybody believed that if Rafael was not sent to Barcelona to a tennis Boarding school without seeing their family and giving it all to tennis, he couldn't make it.

Toni, his uncle, believed that if he were to be a good tennis player sacrificing everything else, it was not worth it.

Rafael got to be the best Spanish player of all time.

When I created my company I wanted to be rich, but rich meant not just money, but having time to make love to my wife, see my children grow or reading and writing in HN.

At the end, you discover you could delegate lots of work.

lazyant• 12 years ago

Rafael got to be the best Spanish player of all time.

Easily considered the world's 2nd best tennis player ever, with chances of being the best tennis player ever.

wellboy• 12 years ago

Excellent story.

While I think it's worth throwing oneself into a startup for a few years, because there are learnings you will get this way, that you will never get anywhere else, there should be a long term vision.

The story of Rafael Nadal is great and applies to startups 100%, because the best founder is the one who has a balanced life and can make use of all of his creativity. A startup founder who doesn't have a life besides the startup, simply won't create a huge startup. Yes, they might be able to make a few hundred million, but they won't be the ones creating a transformative startup.

antaviana• 12 years ago

Just a small correction. Rafa Nadal trainer is not the former professional football player Miguel Angel Nadal (who is also Rafa's uncle) but Miguel Angel's brother, Toni Nadal.

sliverstorm• 12 years ago

At the time everybody believed that if Rafael was not sent to Barcelona to a tennis Boarding school without seeing their family and giving it all to tennis, he couldn't make it.

That's hustle. For those of us who are not gifted, we "make it" through hard work and sweat. Whether it's worth it or not is another question, but for most of us giving it your all is necessary to climb high.

jayantsethi• 12 years ago

One of the most beautiful articles I've read lately.

Reminds me of how I took the decision of coming back to stay with my family from a far off place, leaving behind an excellent opportunity, just to spend more time with my lovely family

yegor256a• 12 years ago

am I supposed to cry?

KobaQ• 12 years ago

That's the inevitable consequence of being overambitious. This pattern is the same, regardless of the area within which these folks try to become more powerful, rich or famous than others.

At BMW a former director told some trainees that he's the most lonely person in the world. Lost his wife, kids and friends. Hobbies? None. Money? More than can be spend. Power? You bet. "Too soon old, too late wise" is true even for extraordinary achievers like this guy.

I always like to point out to those younger folks that they need to be aware of their true motivation. To 99 % in the startup scene or at the big companies it's not to make the world a better place. It's not to be creative and productive. The main drive is ambition. That's OK, it's human. But it needs to be controlled. When you are aware of your true selfish motivation, it's easier to stop when it's all too much. You do it for yourself, not your family (you would choose a solid 9 to 5 job) or the world.

ilamont• 12 years ago

To 99% in the startup scene or at the big companies it's not to make the world a better place. It's not to be creative and productive. The main drive is ambition.

I'm not so sure about that. I'm also not convinced "most founders are in it to get filthy rich," as lemming says elsewhere in this thread. I think there's a spectrum of motivations, including:

* Ambition

* Creative drive/wanting to build something

* Aversion to corporate culture/large organizations

* Opportunity to make a lot of money

* Social needs

* Other

It's possible to have multiple motivations. But the one that interests me is "social needs." This includes everything from wanting to work with a great team to doing something because it's the "hot thing" or the activity that gets the most respect in the community. The recent news about YC applications rising 40% YOY may reflect some of that, and also explains the huge turnout for pitch events, networking sessions, etc.

phesse14• 12 years ago

I did really like this post. Many thanks for sharing since most of us, including me, are relunctant to write these kind of things down

Is the price of being an entrepreneur high? Yes, it is. I do not know anyone enrolled in "creating something from the scratch" that might contradict the prior statement

Do we have to learn to put some limits to the price we are paying? Definitely yes, and this guy is putting a name to a lot of muted voices. Personally, I do not distinct so much between my personal or professional time since in my case I do love what I do, but I try not to bother F&Fs with conversations about startups and I do try to talk about other topics. This has double benefits. One not to bother others (as mentioned) and Two open your mind talking about things you don't usually have the opportunity to discuss about

lorenzfx• 12 years ago

Looking at dwolla's site and seeing "Eliminate paper checks", I realised how lucky we in Germany are, that even though Germany is a pretty backwards country in some regards, at least we managed to get rid of paper checks a long time ago.

calinet64• 12 years ago

People ignore the systems surrounding themselves. Their life, the things supporting their happiness, and the things put in place to ensure your work functions in your absence, even just in the absence of being at home for dinner every night.

Put the right systems in place, whether it be delegation, or software, or a personal task management system (GTD is all about systems), and you don't have to worry about work all the time. You lead it by leading the right systems to function and continually improve themselves.

A systems-focused approach to work would improve every company because it's closer to reality. The reason we don't have the ability to put things down is because we make ourselves into the critical system of function, and that makes us part of the machine. Build a better machine you can trust instead. Remove yourself as a dependency.

Start with Deming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

edpichler• 12 years ago

The best path is the middle.

I learned this in some book about Buddhism. We must have a balanced life. Life is a long trip. The end is the objective and, of course, very important, but we also need to enjoy the travel.

seletz• 12 years ago

So I'll stop to pretend to "be at the office" now and actually go home to see my kids. No joke.

benjaminwootton• 12 years ago

Great article. I've been doing a startup this year and despite best intentions it really does take a toll on yourself and people around you.

barbudorojo• 12 years ago

What surprised me is the "Buy me a coffee" barner. It is supposed they are having a big success with BBVA selling their product/application. The business sound really interesting, but "buy me a coffee" doesn't give the impression I should like to receive for such a product. I was expecting to see something about how our product is the top one in security or any other required feature.

Perhaps I am a little harsh, but if you guy are having success now and you want to give a good impression I should take the banner out.

Also, I find it completely right to rebalance your life, now is the moment in which you can take a little rest and recover from the strenuous effort and stress. Is not only a desire, if a necessity for your enterprise to go on, don't get burned!

Enjoy family, get your batteries full, let your mind and mood recover. Cheers.

knd7752• 12 years ago

I would agree if it were the company blog, but this is his personal site. He may not need the money, but the button uses Dwolla's form builder. He probably just wanted a reason to use his own product. I don't see much wrong with that.

dddrh• 12 years ago

If you have never read The Monk and The Riddle, I would highly suggest it. The experiences that are shared and the story that is woven lends some really good perspective on our lack of an ability to focus on what is important now versus what will be important later.

It's a short read and worth every page.

nevergetenglish• 12 years ago

What I see and makes me to reflect is that we allow ourselves to be rewarded (go home) when we are on the way to success. But what happens when we are in the worse part of a start-up? Harsh, very harsh.

scottndecker• 12 years ago

Great post. Wish more people would be honest that we aren't invincible. Use things, love people; not the other way around. Our society needs more influence on family. Good work.

AndrewKemendo5• 12 years ago

I am constantly the contrarian in these cases, but not for sake of being contrary, it's just that I genuinely do not relate.

I would kill to be in Ben's place. He is making an impact. We aren't reading his words because he is a great dad or husband or whatever, he is impacting us and making us spill thousands of words because he is making something impactful. I could never turn that off, nothing is as great in my opinion. So like I said, I don't get it. If anything the more substantive work that is piled on (not bullshit bureaucratic stuff), the more effective I am across all components. Maybe I'm wierd.

Anyone who does this type of work for a living and responds negatively to you saying “I’m unable to make it, I miss my family and want+need to spend some time at home” isn’t a friend, partner, or an investor you should want to work with anyway.

See, at the same time I understand this also, because not all people are like me and just love doing good work they are passionate about. So when my co-founders or partners say things like this, its great because I know that they need that time and we will adjust things to give it to them.

The last thing I will say is this: No one's legacy is based on how good of a dad/partner they were.

untog2• 12 years ago

No one's legacy is based on how good of a dad/partner they were.

What the actual hell? You really think that? Let's take another view: Dwolla might tank. It could be dead and gone within a year - that's how startups work. What is "impactful" today can be forgotten within six months.

Your legacy literally is how good a dad you were because the only legacy you can really rely on (within reason, of course) is your children and your family. I challenge you to find a father that does not think their "work" with their child is not "impactful".

I would argue that we are spilling thousands of words on his post because we identify with it emotionally, not because he is the founder of Dwolla. I barely know anything about the startup and I care even less, but his words still resonated with me - that's why I'm here.

AndrewKemendo5• 12 years ago

the only legacy you can really rely on (within reason, of course) is your children and your family

Except that is completely untrue. Every family I have ever encountered is split and bifurcated and generally not that reliable. True they exist, but by and large families are not that reliable.

I'm a father of three and have studied parenting outcomes for a while now. My children's outcomes in life are marginally related to how available I am as a parent beyond a certain minimal threshold - more important are socioeconomic factors. Even if you take that into account, even the most perfectly raised children (Whatever that means) have a high chance of winding up in an outcome that is less than optimal based on parental expectations - assuming that you have some aspirational expectations to begin with for them.

All that is to say that raising kids is a crap shoot and outcomes, either for you or for them, do not necessarily correlate with effort spent. Again, caveat this with "beyond a certain point" which is the bar of not living in poverty - arguably one major benefit of being successful in business.

boken3• 12 years ago

No one's legacy is based on how good of a dad/partner they were.

You've never heard tribute paid to a parent by someone you admired? Or do you think it's always ceremony?

I can assure that you that there are those whom you look up to, who in turn look up far higher to a mother or father. And there are people who write about life as a parent--and not just mawkish mess with a glossy cover, I mean that rare stuff of substance--who cause far more words to pour out than Ben has here, which is to say nothing against him but much in their favor.

One final note: maybe no one is remembered by name for their work as a parent or partner--not that it matters to most--but there are some who are known and remembered for how bad of one they were. And their legacies are tainted, no matter what else they did.

AndrewKemendo5• 12 years ago

You've never heard tribute paid to a parent by someone you admired? Or do you think it's always ceremony?

Sure but that is not a legacy in my mind. Said this way, how good of a dad Steve Jobs was rarely if ever is discussed when talking about his legacy. If I recall he even had an "illegitimate" son.

No doubt about that, but those are cases of actual abuse, and real hardcore neglect. Is Nelson Mandela admonished for being a bad and absent father? No.

gerbilly2• 12 years ago

It's just a startup-a type of work organization operating in the first world, staffed by people who can find another job in a few weeks if it should fail.

It's basically an exciting game for privileged people with too much time on their hands. The worst outcome is you have to go work at a regular job.

Relax, no one is being sent to the scaffold over this!

cimorene12• 12 years ago

Reminds me of Startups Anonymous, except he has the courage to put his name out there.

https://startupsanonymous.com/

durbin• 12 years ago

How one extremely successful entrepreneur manages his time. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8574978

smoyer• 12 years ago

A start-up is a sprint to profitability ... except it's a distance run that tests your endurance. I did this for a long time and managed a reasonable balance by paying very close attention to my pace.

When I was sprinting at full pace, I learned that I could only reasonably expect about 5-6 weeks before I crashed (hard). I always planned for a much more relaxed pace for a couple months afterwards.

On the other hand, if we had a long-term project I could plan about 55-60 hours per week maximum, but I could sustain that pace almost indefinitely while still maintaining a life.

If you're doing continuous 80+ hour weeks you need to stop now ... if you don't, your body will fail you and other parts of your life will degrade (relationships). It's simply not worth it ... a few extra bills in your pocket is not going to compensate for missing life.

Sometimes, it’s just time to go home

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