Ask HN: What will you do when you're 40 and still unsuccessful?
It was my second visit to the doctor this year due to stress-related illness (skin allergy before now ulcer)
I turned 31 this year and I have been thinking what will I do when I turn 40 and my business is still nowhere? What would I do when my body is not capable of the intense working hours of a startup?
I'll just probably go on trying but not at this rate anymore. I have been working 12hrs/day for the past 4 years. When I'm 40 i'll just probably work for 5hrs/day. What would be yours?
54 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 95.2 ms ] threadTake it from a Japanese salaryman: overwork is a disease, akin to alcoholism in its destructive potential, and people extolling it do not have your best interests at heart.
Pace yourself. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
His dad tells him that they drive heavier and heavier trucks across each bridge until it falls down. Then they weigh the last truck and rebuild the bridge.
Perhaps you, unlike these imaginary bridge engineers, should settle for a well-informed estimate of the limits of your potential, with a generous margin of safety. It sounds like your health is giving you a lot of hints about where the margin of safety might lie.
working harder and longer does not necessarily make you achieve more. try to stop investing time in actions that make you very little money or have very little benefits for you. focus on the top customers.
maybe you can start by evaluating what consumes so much of your time.
hope that helps a bit, martin
If that notion scares you, frame it this way: 30 is young, you have 30 years to go before you even think of retirement! You have 3x more time ahead of you than you've worked to date...if you formed a career in the past 10 years, you could create 3 more careers before you're 60! (or one really really amazing one if you focus on what you love doing)
Doing what you love gives you the energy to work harder than your peers. Get up, switch into something that isn't killing you slowly.
To be frank, it seems like a lot of startup employees suffer from OCD (literally). Working really long hours and improving the product, changing the world etc. is what it's always about. Lots of people seem to lose sight of the ultimate goal in life, which is being happy. Or maybe they didn't have a goal in the first place, and working really hard is a substitute for something else which is missing in their lives.
Unhealthily hard work is a good idea _for a period of time_, if it _seems as if it's working_, as a means to an end: Making a lot of money in a few years instead of throughout a lifetime, creating something of your own and leaving your mark on the world, reaching your true potential, etc. But if you're working 12 hours a day for _years_ with nothing to show for it, you are on the wrong track and should take a step back.
I realized this after experiencing burnout at 19, spending two years where I was capable of doing absolutely nothing traditionlly productive. Therefore, it's really surprising to me that a lot of supposedly older and wiser do this rat race for years, losing sight of the goal along the way.
Pushing really hard to achieve something great is a huge risk to your mental well-being, and this is something you should go into with both eyes open. It's better to make a tactical retreat if things seem too hard.
You can be perfectly happy not being a Steve Jobs. In fact, if it doesn't come naturally, you're almost guaranteed to be happier by being a little easier on yourself.
Working hard is fine, sometimes. However, if you're working hard for years and seemingly getting nowhere, then you clearly what you're doing is wrong.
It's not easy to create and build a business or startup. But that's doesn't mean it's an unachievable goal that, despite working yourself into the ground, you'll never achieve.
If you are killing yourself for years and years, you're probably never going to make it. There's not that much of a difference between those who succeed and those who fail. It's about working smart, not hard.
Yes, you might have to work both smart AND hard at times, but if you are working hard becomes never-ending then you need to assess how smart you are working.
This hit especially close to home for me. I'm 19 years old, in my second year of university, and looking to get into the industry within the next couple years. Even just finishing high school I was left with this emptiness: I had worked my ass off doing all kinds of crazy stuff--academic and otherwise--to get into a college of my choice, often getting 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night for weeks on end, only to start the whole thing over again right after I graduated.
I still work my ass off, deprive myself of sleep, overwork, etc, but I definitely see it all in the same context as you. It's short-term craziness for a benefit I want to see slightly down the road. And if it doesn't work out, I'm not going to force it. If you're not where you wanted to be at 35 by the time you're 40, maybe your plan wasn't the right one for you.
So yes, thank you for reminding me the point of all of this.
Edit: the point I was going for was not to blame stress on everything, which itself can be stressful. Sometimes, finding a simple cause to an otherwise stressful problem can lead to big reductions in stress levels (and thus, the other symptoms others have pointed out). The most likely cause of an ulcer is a bacterial infection, not the only cause.
"Chronic subtle hypercortisolism" is one term for the bevy of effects longterm stress can cause.,
Now excuse me, I have about 15 hours of work ahead of me today, so do as I say, not as I do.
If you're working 12 hours a day in the hope that some day it'll all pay off and you'll then be able to do things you love, then that's utter bullshit and you're probably deluding yourself.
Find things you love doing, and do them. Now.
If you've been working on unsuccessful startups it's easy to get into a sort of rhythm where you keep doing the same things that didn't work in the past, but only with more vigor. It's complete and utter madness to try to brute-force your way to success. It can work, of course, but the odds are stacked against you, and as a business person you should only play when the odds are highly in your favor.
My guess is that you've probably lost a bit of perspective if you've been punishing yourself like this for the past 4 years. Stop punishing yourself. You don't get rewarded for punishing yourself, and you shouldn't feel good (reward yourself) for working harder than is sustainable or harm your (mental) health. Reward yourself when you make good decisions, and punish yourself (if you have to) if you waste time on shit that doesn't matter. Because working on the wrong things will kill your startup, working 8 hour days does not.
What is the cause of your stress? Is it the work? Is it the lack of traction for your product or company? Is it cash flow? Is it physical exhaustion?
Assess the source of that stress and start figuring out why it stresses you out. Then do something about fixing the "being stressed out" part by changing your perspective on the problem.
Second, realize that number of hours work is not necessarily the best approach. Figure out if you are spending the time efficiently. Figure out what could be done by someone else. Compute the cost of doing some of those other tasks and if the task is non-essential to your business and the cost of the task is higher than what you would pay yourself on an hourly basis, then outsource the sucker.
Third, remember that YOU ARE NOT THE PRODUCT. The product is the product and it may need fixing but it's not you, as a person. Get that perspective and start looking at it as something that you put in customer hands, not something that you are. This should greatly alleviate the stress.
Now go on to 40 (and beyond) with those concepts in mind. It took me until a second stay in the hospital at age 39 to realize that I was doing it wrong. I had burned myself out a few times (12 hours? pfft... try 18!) and after a near-death experience, realized that I could do a better job by refocusing. My new company, as a result, is moving along nicely and I believe it will succeed but I also realize there will be bumps in the road along the way and those are part of the natural course of things when growing a business.
In your case, perhaps your drive and your passion are not aligned at this time. Once that's fixed, life becomes much better.
The thing that keeps me going is actually not stressing about being successful. I've had plenty of good ideas turn up developed by other people (not connected in any way) and just said, "OK, they did good, move on".
No single business is so precious, that you have to die trying. For me the most important is to make sure that you can fight another day, because your next task might just be the one...
If I had 8 hours to cut down a tree, I would spend 6 hours sharpening my axe.
Cheers from a 43 year old that is still "unsuccessful".
For me it was money issues after graduating Uni. To be honest I didn't even know I was "stressed" but my health told me other wise. I had 3 years of serious illnesses that most people my age (early 20's) would never have had (pneumonia, severe tonsilitis, kidney issues) especially after having a relatively illness free child-hood.
The only thing that helped me to feel like I was making progress (and healthier long term) was working on fixing the problem at the root. Trying to step away from the frantic scrabbling around & viewing the problem from above.
When you're frantic over a situation you don't just stop being stressed as soon as you leave work. You may have been working 12 hour days but your body remains stressed out for all of it, even during sleep. Perhaps your body has had zero down-time over the last 4 years!
I think you would benefit from some analysis of your working day. What ARE you working so hard on? Where are the bottlenecks. What can you delegate or eliminate?
Spend a few days/weeks working ON your business (streamlining) instead of IN it.
Aim to achieve more with less.
Maybe you could even use the HN community to improve some aspect for you!
I find I do more in 3 30 hour weeks than I do in 3 60 hour weeks.
I guess he might feel all kind of issues when he was 45. But I guess he was too busy to rally think how he didn't accomplish anything.
Also makes me think of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Moses