Ask HN: Am I working enough? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Am I working enough?

10 pointsaugustflanagan5 comments

I've recently seen a few HN posts/read a few blogs/heard a few interviews where someone mentions they are working 60+ hours per week (or at least how they were doing that when they launched their start up) to drive their careers forward. On the other hand you always hear people from the Four Hour Work Week or 37Signals camps saying how you should hyper focus and get a ton done in a super small number of hours.

I'm no good at either of those. I love everything that I am doing right now, and am incredibly passionate about it. That said, I tend to work about 40-45 hours week on the following:

12-15 hours contract work (usually putting together basic marketing sites for small businesses).

12-20 hours a week working on two of my own projects.

8-10 hours studying Ruby on Rails and improving my general technical skills (although obviously this one spills over into the other two quite a bit).

I have some hyper focused periods where I get quite a bit done in short periods of time. I have other times when I get very little done. In general I think I average out to being a bit more productive than most people (though everyone says that about themselves so don't necessarily believe me).

In general I find myself a bit disappointed at how much progress I am making, both on monetizing my own projects and improving my coding skills. I wonder if I am working enough hours (or at least enough SUPER-focused hours) to achieve my goals?

Is this something where I need to start putting in more time, or is this something where I should say to myself "OK, this will take me 5-10 years to be where I want to be, just take it easy, don't burn out and you'll be fine."?

Any thoughts, bits o' wisdom, or semi-coherent ramblings will be accepted. Thanks!

EDIT: I should mention that my background is in Biochemistry, and that I have only been working on web stuff for the last two years or so.

Whether or not you're working enough isn't necessarily directly related to how many hours you work. The only question you need to answer is: "Am I on track to achieve my goals, in the time period I want, working as much as I am?"

And even if the answer to that is "no," the solution may not be to work more hours. It may be that you need to find something more productive to do with the hours you do work.

If, as you say, you're disappointed about the progress you're making, you really need to figure out if that disappointment is just because you (possibly unreasonably) feel like you should be progressing faster, or if you actually could be -- and actually care to be -- progressing faster.

Unfortunately I don't think this is a question anyone can answer for you.

This is going to sound like a cop-out, but the answer really is 'whatever works for you'. Don't measure yourself by how other people get through their day and how they make a go of it, this race is not with others, it's with yourself.

Set your goals, lay your plans and go about execution at a pace that you are comfortable with and that you feel that you can keep up for a long long time. As DanielBMarkham wrote in some other thread, this is a marathon, not a sprint so pace yourself accordingly.

First question anyone should ask themselves when wondering how many hours to work are: Are you happy? If you're working 4 hours a week and you're happy, then don't change a thing.

Being that you said that you find yourself disappointed by your progress, then it's time to do something. I'm not a big fan of working for the sake of work, so I would recommend not increasing your hours, but finding out why you're not achieving the "super-focus" that you think you're missing. Do you "work" yet surf Hacker News half the time? Find out if there is any way to improve your working hours, not add more. That's a recipe for burnout.

I think you'll find the answer to this question if you ask yourself the following: What's the amount of work required in order to get my business off the ground? You're the only one who knows the answer to this question since you're the only person who has a clear idea of your 2 side projects in details.

So to give you a more detailed answer, I'd say: 1. figure out the amount of work required in order to realize your projects. 2. Set a deadline and small goals in order to get where you want to be. 3. Only then, will you know the number of hours you need to work on your projects.

Hope it helps.

> 12-20 hours a week working on two of my own projects. > on monetizing my own projects > find myself a bit disappointed at how much progress I am making

Something easy to struggle with is knowing when to let go, as counterintuitive as it seems, perhaps it's time for an entirely new project?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com