On Burning Out: Working 60+ Hours a Week

[AceTrainerGreen]

I was planning to revive a year old thread; however, I was told to create a new topic instead.

https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/14334-self-discipline-vs-burning-out/

My question to Leo or anyone who reads this:

What about the people who consistently work 60, 80, 80+ hours a week for decades on end?

There are many famous icons in our society who are workaholics. For example, individuals such as Elon Musk routinely work 80+ hours a week. For this year alone, he has "worked" 120 hours a week. Musk has been working insane hours at least since 1995 with the founding of his first company Zip2 more than 23 years ago.

I cannot work 80 hours a week. I have tried working 60 hours a week largely inspired because of Mark Zuckerburg's 60-hour work weeks and because I see it as a happy medium between work-life balance and overworking. Unfortunately, I burnt out after 2.5 months. That's with hour-long meditations, eight hours of sleep, healthy eating, 10-minute breaks every 50 minutes, and pretty much every basic self-care I can think of. On the bright side, during the summer, I learned the fundamentals of four "languages": HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Python. I even blogged about it too with posts longer than 20+ pages and received more than 10,000+ views. https://briansprogrammingsucks.quora.com/

However, I noticed that even with all of the recognition, the absolute passion of writing every day, I burnt out. From hyper-productivity to 

I've been feeling neurotic about the "lack of work" I have been committing for the last several weeks because it feels like I have to work an absolute minimum of 60 hours a week in order to achieve the professional goals I want: the absolute ideal is a medical entrepreneur or at least a professor. I'm a college student, by the way.

According to Nature, the leading scientific journal in the world,

Quote

Long hours are still the norm in many corners of science. In a 2016 Nature poll of early-career researchers worldwide, 38% of respondents reported working more than 60 hours each week — 9% of whom claimed more than 80 hours (Nature 538, 446–449; 2016). A survey published in 2013 of academic work habits in Europe found that senior academics in Germany reported working an average of 52 hours per week, more than researchers in any other country canvassed1 (see 'Academic hours'). In a 2014 occupational-stress survey of university lecturers and professors in the UK University and College Union (UCU), 41% of employees with full-time contracts said that they worked more than 50 hours a week (go.nature.com/2q8abi9). And a similar UCU survey in 2012 found that nearly half of all respondents often or always felt pressure from colleagues and supervisors to put in many hours (go.nature.com/2qt7xdw).

 

https://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7656-175a

 

nearly half of all academics work more than 60+ hours a week. Outside of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerburg, it would seem that I have to work at least 60 hours a week.

Honestly, as I finish writing this post. I seem to have the answer. The answer is 40 hours a week, but this makes me afraid. In order to achieve my goal, a PhD is necessary if I want to work on the frontiers of medicine. I have done research on obtaining a medical degree, and I am okay with spending 7 years obtaining both. Unfortunately, again, graduate and medical school seem to require far more than 40 hours. Additionally, at the current moment, I am doing a double major in computer science and biology. They are not easy degrees. I have considered dropping one of them, but both are necessary to me. Analogously, it is like wanting to become a physicist. Double majoring in mathematics and physics is a wonderful idea.

In summary,

I want to become a medical entrepreneur/professor. This requires you to work at least 60+ hours a week. I cannot sustain this workload after 2.5 months, even despite massive passion and optimal health maintenance. I fear that working less than 60+ hours a week is not enough to pursue my ambitions. What should I do?

Thank you.

[Pilgrim]

I am not sure about this, but I would try feeling into why you want to do this? What are your true motives for your achievements? Are you sure you really want this for the sake of the process? Or do you want this because you would like the outcome: being an entrepreneur/professor? Or do you want to do it because you want to prove to yourself that you are capable of doing it? Because deep inside you might feel you are not enough or you want to make other people proud?

I believe that Musk and Zuckerburg are actually addicted to the knowledge. They are totally immersed in the process and it's not really work to them. But this is rather rare and usually linked to a certain kind of personality.. very often INTP on the Myers and Briggs have this tendency.. they live for mastery and knowledge.. it's really in their nature to be this way. But copying other people can never be the way, because it might just not be suitable for you. You have to be very honest to yourself and feel into your motives. I believe that you will find the answer there. 

[Andreas]

Stop chasing status by getting degrees, and work out your self esteem issues with a psychologist. If you want to change the world and achieve great things, learn to network with multiple people majoring in biology, CS, math, business, medicine and so on. Im sorry if this isn't what you want to hear but you cannot do it all alone. Im just being honest. You need multiple people and work as a team. Even Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerburg didn't do it alone, they where leaders. If you need to do it all alone then that's your problem. I do admire your drive though. Good luck!

[zambize]

I think people who work 80 hours a week mean they are at work for 80 hours.  They could be being complete idiots, talking, pretending to go to the bathroom every hour, and get almost nothing done.  But, they were at work for 80 hours.  I can't really tell you how much I work,  I just work, try to be efficient about it, and I know when that efficiency starts to go down and I need a break, I take it right away.   You're putting work into worrying about how much work you're supposed to put in.  Don't.  That time could be spent doing work, or resting better so that you can come back even fresher.  People love to exaggerate what they do, you're completely normal, probably a harder worker than most all of us, don't stress it!

[Dan Arnautu]

@AceTrainerGreen Like Leo said, work smart not hard. I'll give you an example.

Let's say you want to grow a business and you still live with your mom. How do you grow it faster? By working 120h a week on it while eating Mc Donald's and canned tuna?

You could do that, or... you could learn a freelancing skill for 3 months day in and day out, you then get some gigs that pay 1000$ for 3 days of work per month. You use half of the money to delegate tasks in your business/hire people and you invest the other half into assets or further educations/coaching/mentoring that would exponentially grow your business.

With this simple scheme, you just grew your potential to earning 10x as much for 1/2 of the time... This is what smart work looks like.

And yes, 3 month is enough to learn a skill to the point of being able to charge 40$/h on freelancing websites.

[Chase Ellfeldt]

Invest in productivity and management strategies so that you can acomplish 60 hours of work in 30 hours.

Just by reading - Deep Work (book) you will be able to acomplish 3x as much then the average person. 

[K VIL]

I love the black and white screenshot. Impeccable attention to detail. Overwork. you'll see where it leads.

[Hellspeed]

You have to decide to go with society and schedules or you build something, create something of value to share and sell. Go deep in Meditation and you will find your true purpose and what you trully like.