Why the 9-to-5 Day Is So Tough on Creative Workers
Well, reading this article makes me wonder where I'm. If a 40 work week is tough, what about people like me who are having a routine 40 hour work week job and trying to bootstrap a company/work on side projects by the evening and night.<p>I am sleep deprived regularly, often I just come to home totally tired after work and travel. Only to find I have to pick myself up and throw in another 5-6 hours. Add to this stress when things don't workout,an occasional bad day and occasions when I have to face failure after days of work. Plus I have a family to which I have to tend to. Often they feel I'm just not spending time with them.<p>I completely agree that currently I'm in some sort of tiring march. I'm tired already. I see wins rarely, but continue to put in record efforts. On the other hand, I see the only reason I'm doing this is because.<p><pre><code>    a. To some extent I enjoy what I'm doing.
    b. I want the money.
    c. I see I'm literally getting addicted to it.
    d. If I don't put such efforts, I feel guilty
       that I might just be getting lazy, or
       under performing.
    e. There are good deal of people whom I would like to 
       prove wrong.
</code></pre>
I've discussed this with my mentor, who is a veteran of 3 successful start up's and has had a great career so far. He tells the modern internet techie's narrative of stress and tiredness is just plain whining, complaining and asking for sympathy. Though he agrees its a little stressful and tiring. Smart people eventually realize achieving something big demands hard sacrifices.<p>I also see many other smart successful people putting ridiculous efforts day in and out to win. And its in every profession. Whether its sports, medicine, software, hardware etc.<p>I feel at the end of the day, its just like a rubber band. You can stretch until it breaks. Some people just practice it stretching enough number of times to keep the breaking point a little high. After some time you just get numb, and absorb failures, stress, big sacrifices and just keep moving forward. And then what happens doesn't really matter.