>Working more than 40 hours a week has diminishing (or negative) returns.
This can be so true. In the 24/7 operation it's important to recognize how this can occur and do whatever it takes to work around it.
OTOH making progress with unique electronics (which is not going to last forever anyway) can be done in an ordinary company if the ordinary company work can be accomplished in 35 hours instead of 40, and the resulting surplus 5 hours devoted to the unique electronics.
The equation says you have to actually work harder and more effectively for this to be true within the same 40 hours.
Resulting in the perfect example of positive returns.
Then if you put in 20 hours of overtime what have you got to show for it?
Well you could get five times as much accomplished per week on the unique electronics if you were so motivated.
The equation now says you have to actually work way harder and more effectively for this to be true and that 40 hours is out the window from the get go.
Only you can decide whether that kind of accelerated progress is more positive or not, and compared to what.
Probably your average job you could put in 80 hours and not even get nearly twice as much done as 40 hours, so why bother?
>Proper scaling means delegation and systems.
Ideally there would be backup gear and backup staff to insure 24 hour progress using only 40 hour weeks, but too many business operations are nonideal and build upon a relatively defective or incomplete foundation.
>Grinding away isn’t just unproductive, it’s a sign of a poorly run company.
I just can't let that bother me sometimes, most companies are not going to be that far above average if at all.
Usually little or no progress is on the agenda for being deployed.
If you're an innovator almost everything's always going to be underleveraged anyway since there's only so much resources to begin with.
Plus progress takes time & effort, how much progress would you like to make?