Ambitious people : How many hours you work ? And how/ how long you relax each night ?

[Shan]

I have posted this on another thread and did not feel the answers helped or my phrasing was right there. I couldn't get input from Leo Gura yet, so posting it here. Please see bolded lines to get the zest of both my questions. 

I am a struggling Entrepreneur and have a young family. One of the classic recommendations for Entrepreneurs is to work 80 to 100 hours a week. 

1) I find putting so many hours hard and wonder if anyone with a young family is able to do this?  Asking about quality work hours and not time like traveling to work or just sitting at your desk but sorting out other stuff. From your inputs, I would like to set a realistic yet ambitious quality-hour target.

2) What to do such hard working people do to relax and for how long? Do they even relaxing activities at night all or just go to bed? Watching junk TV or XBOX is bad.  But It's hard to meditate or do other things then as we are emotionally and physically tired. Is there any neutral or positive realizing task which I could do than TV ? Because I dont know this process I am just watching TV or sometimes drinking to fall asleep and messing up the next day.

 

You are welcome to suggest where else I can post this question on the internet. Hopefully, don't have to and thanks for ur time. 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 25, 2018 by Shan

[Emerald]

@Shan Now, I'm probably not the prime example because I just started my business venture, but I am an life-coach/entrepreneur with my own YouTube channel (which I've had for a few years now... it has about 17,000 subs). I also have a young family. My daughter is 7 and my son is 3. 

Presently, I work about 20 hours per week doing life-coaching, and about 15 hours per week making a weekly video for my channel. Then, I probably do about 10 hours per week of research and other types of work to be used soon to expand my channel. So, that comes out to about 35 hours per week. And from all of my income sources, I'm making about $1600 per month. So, I've currently matched my entrepreneurial income to my income that I would normally make as a substitute teacher... so I can quit if I want to.

Technically, I've actually already exceeded that income by about 40% because substitute teachers don't get paid during summers, winter break, spring break, or other school holidays. So, I've presently solved a huge financial problem that our family has weathered for the past 8 summers, just by starting my entrepreneurial ventures.

Next month, I will begin working on a course to sell through my website. So, I will spend probably about 12-16 hours per week working on that as well, with no financial gain until I release it. But once I do, I'm hoping that it will add quite a bit to my income without having to do much work to maintain it other than dealing with technical difficulties and advertising it. 

Then, once I actually get certified as a life coaching, I'll raise my prices because I'm offering the service for dirt-cheap now. So, I'll probably be making about $5k per month, at that point off of life coaching (if I have ten clients per month) and I'm hoping to make at least $1k or $2k per month off of my course (hopefully more). 

But I don't believe at any point in time, will I have to spend 80 to 100 hours per week on my business... in fact, I could not do that if I wanted to. I'm the heavy lifting parent between my hubby and I.  So, I wouldn't want to spend any more than 45-50 hours per week working... but I'd prefer 35 to 40 hours. 

I used to spend 60-70 hours per week working as a full-time teacher and I never had any energy for my kids. This is one of the reasons why I preferred substitute teaching. So, I would never want to go back to that as long as I have kids at home. Plus, I can schedule my work times for times that my daughter is at school as well. So, that's really good.

Now, if you wanted to have like a 6 or 7 figure business, you might have to spend that 80 to 100 hours per week. But if you want to make it in a modest way, then there is no need for that if you play your cards right. 

[Jim Bob]

If you don't want to meditate you could try swapping the alcohol for a herbal tea and the TV for some relaxing music. Rest your eyes and allow your mind to wander, reflect on the day...your dreams, the things you want to achieve and how you can make tomorrow a better day. Don't forget to enjoy the process of working on your vision.

Schedule some time to reconnect with nature, make this a priority. It's gives you time to contemplate whats important and why you're working so hard.  If it's for the kids, take them with you.

I can't speak from personal experience about working long hours with children. However I think these two books may be of some use to you...

1. The Miracle Morning: Hal Elrod

2. Eat that frog: Brian Tracy

Hope you can use the ideas in these to claim some time back...

All the best

[Shan]

@Emerald Thanks for taking the time and such honesty and useful info ! I checked out your site and its awesome.

 

@Jim Bob Thank you. I have read book#2 10 years back and havent read book#1.  I will go through them and your other tips also are really helpful.

[Elisabeth]

Depends a lot.

As a physics student, I've never been able to put in more than 30 hours a week, and even that is not really sustainable for me. (Keep in mind this is hard intellectual work learning new stuff all the time, if half of my job was talking to people, I'd certainly do better).

Edited October 26, 2018 by Elisabeth

[Nahm]

@Shan Spend some time at night looking into passive incomes.