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Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

My view shifted from "work as hard as possible, as much as possible" to a much more relaxed approach when I realised two things:

1. Working all the time is not sustainable. 2. There's always more work, and getting it done sooner isn't as helpful as you think.

Nowadays, I'm a proponent of basically exactly what the linked post says.

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My personal schedule is like this these days.

Weekdays: Wake up. Quick run. 4 to 5 hours of WFH (work from home). Office from 11 to 6. Gym. Dinner. Unwind. 1-2 hours catch up on work. Read something non work related for 30 minutes in bed. Sleep. Rinse Repeat.

Weekends: 4 hours of work catchup each day on Saturday and Sunday.

That is around 75 hrs/week. Please tell me you work for yourself.

Well, we all work for someone. I work for our investors. But yes, I'm the founder of my company, so I work for myself and because I love what I do. Realistically I'd say I do about 80 hours per week. But when you love what you do it's not work.

Thanks. I hope you dont take my query the wrong way, I was just concerned that how well your efforts are tied with (potential) rewards. Good to know they are tied well enough.

This is very similar to my routine.

6am I lay in bed going over emails (my co-founders are GMT -6 while I am in the UK so most emails come in over night for me) so I don't wake my other half. 7.30am ish I'm at my desk till noon. If it's a gym day then I'll be out till 2pm, otherwise I tend to only take 15 mins for lunch. Conference calls at 3-5 every week day, I then take an hour or so for dinner and then work till 10 or 11 at night.

Sat/Sun I tend to work 2pm till 6 and then a couple of hours in the evening.

When I worked for big companies I was a proper 9 on the dot, organise my day so I got out at 5 or 5.30 on the dot and drop work thinking like a heavy coat as soon as I was out the door. It's amazing what believing in what you do can do for your mental reserves though. The hardest part is convincing my partner that it's how it has to be for a while.

Has working with this type of schedule made any sort of negative impact on your social life? I'm kinda settling into a similar routine with my work hours slowly creeping up, and I'm afraid that some relationships might suffer in the long haul.

Working for a German company in 2009 really taught me a lot about vacations. They gave me something like 6 weeks of vacation and I used about 5 weeks of it...

This (or more) is standard everywhere in the world except the US.

Usually it's 4 weeks in Germany [0], but you have at least 9 statutory holidays in addition.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_emplo...

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