~3 min read When I was younger, say 20 years ago, the 60- or even 80-hour work weeks felt amazing. You did so, so very much. You had an impact. You were needed. Then somewhere around 10 years ago. I realized that the string urgent projects had blurred together into one long emergency. A constant fire alarm going off in my head. The skipped meals and lost sleep and never going to the doctor—seriously I didn't go to the doctor from like age 20 until 35—eventually started showing up in my life. Yeah, I had weekends. But my average Sunday evening from 20-30 years old was spent trying to figure out how to "get ahead" without that destination ever being defined. And I had vacations, but I spent those primarily being back at work in my head, and sometimes on my phone, laptop, or even just paper. I don't quite remember when my viewpoint switched. But I do remember the lead up to it, when I was the leading engineering at one company, the business paid for me to have a business coach. He repeatedly asked me week after week on "what was my constraint?" I knew from long ago, that in the limit week after week, my time and my attention was the constraint. My solution was to attempt to get more efficient to accomplish everything. Through his repeated challenges, I eventually figured out that I had one primarily toxic impulse: when someone on my team was overwhelmed, my main solution was to help them get their work done. This might not sound toxic on first blush. And it's not when you have 1-2 people reporting to you, but it doesn't scale to 5 very well, and it really doesn't at 10. Anything beyond that you have a breakdown. And I had been trying to do that with >10. But this frame is even now not the entire thing I came to, because focus was the thing I needed to do actually. Not just for me, but for everyone who reports to me. I eventually realized that only have about 3-4 hours of actual good focus personal problem solving per day on average. After that, the incremental value delivered by each hour collapses. But even that there frame is a productivity frame, and life isn't about increasing my personal GDP or maximizing my ROI to myself. Those are still toxic frames. They view life as purely about the pursuit of money and to figure out how to pile it up for yourself in order that you may make more money. I embrace now what I would call, "anti-hustle", some might call it "having a life". Because of how I be, I need an explicit even frame. So here's my current working one. I used to say to myself: once I get x amount of money, I'll be "ok"; I'll be able to do what I want to do. Now I say to myself: lets skip to the end today. Lets assume that's true. What would I do right now if I'm "ok"? That may be to play video games with my son or go for a walk or hangout with some friends over coffee. But many times it is to work on something I find interesting. Also lets be honest, I always was "ok"; I wasn't dying; I wasn't homeless. I'm not independently wealthy now either. I still work 40 hours per week. I also still need to stop myself from working once I'm done for the day, as I still get excited and try to do too much. But I no longer feel compelled to do so. I anti-hustle, because life is now. Tech Dad Joke: What's a pirate's favorite OS? Arrrrrch Linux. This message is 100% organic human effort, so it will have typos. No, I didn't send it through an LLM to typo check it. It was made with just my fingers and my eyes. |