I work 7 days a week very consistently at my startup, but I don't put in many hours in a given day. I'm too embarrassed to say exactly how many hours. I take breaks when I feel tired or frustrated, and if a problem comes up in the afternoon that I don't know how to solve, I quit for the day. Usually I will be able to solve it in the morning.
I worry sometimes about whether I am working hard enough, so recently I started doing some time tracking to see where I am spending my time. I looked around for software and decided on the Web application toggl.com. All you do is write down what you are doing, and the software logs the time. Really though you could do the same thing with a spreadsheet or a piece of paper.
It's harder than it sounds to be honest about what you are doing, and why you are doing it. I have spent a bunch of time on Hacker News this morning reading posts and writing this. Is that productive, or is it just infotainment? It's hard to say. I wonder if the author of that article counted the time spend writing the post and responding to people as a part of work hours. Why or why not?
I haven't been doing time tracking very long, but I have found that sometimes there is this period of time at the beginning of doing something where I haven't really gotten into the task yet, and I feel like "Oh man I'm working! This is a drag." That feeling peaks maybe after 20 minutes or so. I find that if I'm able to keep working, I start feeling better, and then after an hour or so I feel fine, like "This is what I'm doing. It's comfortable. I could do more."
So I think that maybe sometimes I quit too early, and I could actually be doing more without feeling stressed or overwhelmed. But I think there are limits to how much you can push, and you have to be really gentle with yourself. Because if you force yourself too much, you get burned out and then it becomes very difficult to even get started on work. You can go days or weeks at a time getting almost nothing done.
I'm also studying a foreign language at the moment, and I think it is really important to study every day. Over on the language forum I visit, lots of people talk about how many flash card reps they do, and it's almost always more than what I do. What I do seems insignificant, both in terms of reviews and new cards per day. I feel it is another example of how I don't work hard enough, and I don't have enough discipline.
But I think the only real way to fail at foreign language study is to quit, so I hope that keeping my standards for serious study low and spending more time on fun stuff like reading comics and watching TV shows in the language, I will be able to stick with it. I haven't missed a day in over 6 months, but it's going to take years to get to fluency. It's a long process.
I hope working at a startup is similar. I hope it's just a matter of making progress every day, and not giving up. I hope it's not a competition over who can work the most hours. If it is, I'm afraid I will probably lose.
I worry sometimes about whether I am working hard enough, so recently I started doing some time tracking to see where I am spending my time. I looked around for software and decided on the Web application toggl.com. All you do is write down what you are doing, and the software logs the time. Really though you could do the same thing with a spreadsheet or a piece of paper.
It's harder than it sounds to be honest about what you are doing, and why you are doing it. I have spent a bunch of time on Hacker News this morning reading posts and writing this. Is that productive, or is it just infotainment? It's hard to say. I wonder if the author of that article counted the time spend writing the post and responding to people as a part of work hours. Why or why not?
I haven't been doing time tracking very long, but I have found that sometimes there is this period of time at the beginning of doing something where I haven't really gotten into the task yet, and I feel like "Oh man I'm working! This is a drag." That feeling peaks maybe after 20 minutes or so. I find that if I'm able to keep working, I start feeling better, and then after an hour or so I feel fine, like "This is what I'm doing. It's comfortable. I could do more."
So I think that maybe sometimes I quit too early, and I could actually be doing more without feeling stressed or overwhelmed. But I think there are limits to how much you can push, and you have to be really gentle with yourself. Because if you force yourself too much, you get burned out and then it becomes very difficult to even get started on work. You can go days or weeks at a time getting almost nothing done.
I'm also studying a foreign language at the moment, and I think it is really important to study every day. Over on the language forum I visit, lots of people talk about how many flash card reps they do, and it's almost always more than what I do. What I do seems insignificant, both in terms of reviews and new cards per day. I feel it is another example of how I don't work hard enough, and I don't have enough discipline.
But I think the only real way to fail at foreign language study is to quit, so I hope that keeping my standards for serious study low and spending more time on fun stuff like reading comics and watching TV shows in the language, I will be able to stick with it. I haven't missed a day in over 6 months, but it's going to take years to get to fluency. It's a long process.
I hope working at a startup is similar. I hope it's just a matter of making progress every day, and not giving up. I hope it's not a competition over who can work the most hours. If it is, I'm afraid I will probably lose.