April 2nd, 2008
10-Hour Days
It seems I hear a lot of stories about workaholic entrepreneurs. They spend 80 hours a week working on their business, and the few hours left over each week goes to their friends and family. I’m the exact opposite. I think.
I spent 10 hours at the office yesterday, and it was a very strange feeling. Usually I spend closer to 6 hours at work, and then I do a few little items from home in the evening. When I found out this weekend how much I owe in taxes, though, I felt a lot of urgency to get into work and make things happen.
The funny thing is I’m not sure that I accomplished significantly more with the extra time. I must have wasted at least an hour over the course of the entire day thinking about how much longer I was spending at work. I wonder if 10-hour days are something that you have to do on a regular basis to get much out of them.
Apr 3rd, 2008
8:53 am
I see all these freelancer sites writing about how much they work and was thinking that I was crazy for not doing that. I work from home, and handle “dad” duties like picking the kids up from school. So my days are usually not more than about 5 hours of actual work since its so broken up.
I used to worry about that, but now I don’t. I got into freelancing because of the flexibility it would offer. It would be crazy to not take advantage of that.
Apr 3rd, 2008
10:24 am
@y0mbo: Having tried both now, I can’t imagine that 10-hour days is going to lead to a more satisfying life than my typical 6 hours or your 5 hours. I think you are correct to feel good about your short days. Get in, get the work done, and stop working for the day. There’s no reason to stretch that out to meet some quota of hours once the stuff that needed to get done that day is finished.