> handle the perceived insurmountable workload

This is so wild to me because output and work quality rapidly decline at (or well before) 40 hours a week. It sounds like a joke, but I probably have 4 good hours in me a day. Sure, more if I'm really into something, but working 4 hours a day 3-5 (max) days a week will actually achieve peak results in my experience.

I work on hardware development, that matches pretty well the time I can spend on high-creativity design tasks. I fill the rest of the time with tasks that could be outsourced, like assembling prototypes or laying out circuit boards, but I do myself because they are more like relaxing puzzles than demanding work.

When I have to work on single a software-only project, after about two weeks of sitting at a desk for eight hours a day, I absolutely have to do something else.

Some people moonlight other gigs (overemployed) and put unusually high levels of pressure to perform in themselves. So, 2/3x-ing that normal output is unsustainable but profitable. Context switching does take a toll when you’re putting out fires that have meetings attached. This was just an anecdotal example of a person who is running themselves into the ground. Startup culture of the 2010s fostered a lot of the myths of ultra-productivity and wealth without the backstory of drug abuse.

> It sounds like a joke, but I probably have 4 good hours in me a day

No joke at all. I eventually decided to never open email until lunchtime so that I could get four hours of productive work done while I was still fresh. Then lunch, then email, then plan what I'd do the next morning. I had to do the seriously difficult stuff in the morning or I'd be too worn out to do it right.

Funny how all of this changes with agentic development - once you setup your agents and the initial productivity euphoria , most of the time you spend in deep brainstorming and leave agents to “handle the details”.

Which is both liberating - a lot less punishing mentally and not requiring so much flow focus, but on the other hand you have to keep more loosely held context in your head.

And agents need you attention constantly throughout the day, you leave them working overnight. While you are not in the office etc, and it’s hard to justify when an agent just needs “a quick look” or some confirmation and direction. You leave being paged all the time so you never really relax.

I think a lot of developers will end up feeling what founders actually go through, for better or worse, but also without actually getting the golden ticket option founders usually hold.

It’s just a very different mindset for work, though maybe requiring less chemicals to actually make work

This isn’t true for everyone. I have witnessed people whose curves are more gradual. Their performance exceeded mine and the gap increased with increasing duration. The principal difference I’d say is task focus. After many hours my attention falters, but I know people whose attention diminishes more gradually.

I could see someone like that using more hours productively. In a sense, someone who is awake 18 hours lives 12% more life than the 16 h me.

100% correct and this resembles my experiences and countless anecdotes.

You can’t reliably do more than 5 hours of heavy concentration work per day.

That’s for maxxed out knowledge work. Most of running a business is simply doing mid grade knowledge/admin/management work in a responsible, cares-about-the-outcome aligned fashion, which you don’t get from some $50k/y admin person or middle manager.

I would say that less than 25% of a startup CEO’s workload requires the “well-rested, highest quality thinking” that you describe. A lot of it is simply quantity and determination. The output of “having grit” is not that you are suddenly smarter - it’s that you are less willing to stop.

Organizations get in their own way when it comes to quality, almost every time.

    > This is so wild to me because output and work quality rapidly decline at (or well before) 40 hours a week.

", but working 4 hours a day 3-5 (max) days a week will actually achieve peak results in my experience."

Yes, we max out on focus time ...

... but no, you're not a concert violinist. The rest of you time is all the other stuff - meetings, light reading, sales reps, catching up with professional colleagues, filling out forms, HR stuff, all the inquires from he newbies, returning emails, etc. etc..

The 3hrs focus/day is one kind of work, all that non-focus time is the 'work part of work'.

Literally most jobs is like that, it's 100% that kind of thing, there is no 'peak performance' it's just putting one foot in front of the next.

To be honest, I really think some people use the “I'm so productive“ as an excuse for why they’re doing drugs and cover for addiction (even if mild). A lot of this so-called productivity is spinning wheels and jumping around.

I mean maybe a bit of a controversial opinion but this is how I hide at my desk job to try to build my own stuff. Like I give 3-4h of focused work to my employer and 6to myself every day. Some days I need to work more for work some I can do more stuff for myself.

The problem is it's hard to realize that is indeed the case.

Probably no surprise some (Western) European countries allow you going to the GP, telling you are exhausted/burned-out/anxious, whatever fits the extreme fatigue, and you get some time of commonly agreed off, prescribed, paid. Everyone is better off that way (except the manufacturers of stimulants. Coffee excluded here! :-) ). Also, overtime is not a trend. Preserved for exceptional circumstances, for a brief period that an otherwise balanced person can handle. Europe is economically uncompetitive, the rest of the world makes circles around it performance and money-wise, also many abuse the system, still, without people a society is nothing, economy alone is crap if it is not for the people, as much people as possible so the streets are not crawling with too much crazy. We need to have a life first. Most of my European friends would never think of living in the US or Asia prolonged, only for an energetic period to boost some aspects (financial, experience, knowledge), mostly when they are young (but not with children, no!). Those places are not liveable from a European perspective.

^this

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