Elon Musk, "...nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week"

[AceTrainerGreen]

For the ones reading this in the future, I'll copy-paste my other extended posts onto this main post, so you don't have to look for it in the next pages.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/business/elon-musk-interview-tesla.html

According to an interview from the New York Times this year, Elon Musk has reported to "work" 120 hours a week. To put this in perspective, that's 3x longer than a 40-hour work week, 71.43% of your 168 hour week (or assuming if you get 8 hours of sleep, he works more than your 112 hours awake).

From the same interview,
 

Quote

 

In an hourlong interview with The New York Times, he choked up multiple times, noting that he nearly missed his brother’s wedding this summer and spent his birthday holed up in Tesla’s offices as the company raced to meet elusive production targets on a crucial new model.

Asked if the exhaustion was taking a toll on his physical health, Mr. Musk answered: “It’s not been great, actually. I’ve had friends come by who are really concerned.

 

 

Quote

And some board members have expressed concern not only about Mr. Musk’s workload but also about his use of Ambien, two people familiar with the board said.

 

Quote

“There were times when I didn’t leave the factory for three or four days — days when I didn’t go outside,” he said. “This has really come at the expense of seeing my kids. And seeing friends.”

 

Quote

He turned 47 on June 28, and he said he spent the full 24 hours of his birthday at work. “All night — no friends, nothing,” he said, struggling to get the words out.

Two days later, he was scheduled to be the best man at the wedding of his brother, Kimbal, in Catalonia. Mr. Musk said he flew directly there from the factory, arriving just two hours before the ceremony. Immediately afterward, he got back on the plane and returned straight to Tesla headquarters, where work on the mass-market Model 3 has been all consuming.

1

1

Quote

And after sending a team of engineers from one of his companies to help rescue members of a stranded soccer team, he lashed out at a cave diver who was dismissive of the gesture, deriding him on Twitter as a “pedo guy,” or pedophile.

 

Quote

To help sleep when he is not working, Mr. Musk said he sometimes takes Ambien. “It is often a choice of no sleep or Ambien,” he said.

 

 

There are also many complaints inside SpaceX and Tesla's employees. Many are incredibly overworked. There are many articles describing these conditions.

 

Related Videos:

 

Leo's Thoughts on Elon Musk and Overworking (no particular order):

 

Personal Thoughts

I sometimes feel like you HAVE to work 60, 80, 80+ hours a week to be professionally successful. However, life purpose, although incredibly important, it should not be the entirety of your life. There is much more to life than work. Leo's video on workaholism strikes me to my core because I am guilty of being a workaholic. He stated that the core cause of my work is because I ultimately do not have value to my internal self. Paradoxically, the second video I referenced states that there is no meaning in life.

I want to believe my goals are similar to Elon's. I want to become a medical entrepreneur and help find ways to cure diseases such as the myriad types of cancers. In a way, I want to be written down in history. In order to do this, working 40 hours a week is not "fast enough". Then again, there is the argument for burn out. Ironically, I invest so much time trying to extend life whereas I am not entirely enjoying life at the present.

I've done some research into the 8-hour workday.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day

This is preliminary research, but it's interesting how many entrepreneurs work way beyond 40 hours a week.

The main question is:

• Is it possible to achieve Elon-Musk-like professional success or at least an order of magnitude less by working 40 hours a week?

 

Some other questions on my mind:

• What are your thoughts on working 4 days of 10 hours and having 3 days off?
• I'm interested in making philosophy videos as a hobby for YouTube. I genuinely enjoy it. If I put in 20 hours a week, is that a 60 hour work week? Or is that saying, "I play video games for 4 hours a day after work."
• How do I get rid of my desire for wealth, fame, and power? I like to think my intentions are noble as it seeks to cure the multiple facets of cancer. Helping people is a higher priority than this, but the three are fantastic to have if you want global change. Leo talks about this in the pictures I quoted. There is a difference between contributions to humanity than one's care of their consciousness.
• Do you think if Elon focused on one company instead of multiple (SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, Hyperloop, OpenAI, Neuralink, Boring Company), he could be much more productive?

 

Thank you.

 

RESPONSE #2

On 11/29/2018 at 10:39 PM, Leo Gura said:

"Oh God! I wish I worked more."

What no one said on their deathbed, ever.

Thank you for your short answer @Leo Gura. There's no need for you to comment further because you have already spoken much about it on earlier threads and your videos. It's good to know your position still stands.

On 11/30/2018 at 3:00 AM, Shiva said:

A wise man once said, "If you want to make the world a better place take a look at yourself, and then make a change (Ooh!)".

Elon, why are you not listening to MJ?

2,000+ years from now, when future civilizations will look at us, will they look at Michael Jackson's songs the same way as a source of wisdom the same way we interpret ancient Roman and Greek scholars?

I've done much more research on the topic. It's taken me two days of intense learning. First, it was through Leo's videos and posts on the forum. Second, it was by reading a bunch of other content about it elsewhere. The conclusion is that one must work 40 hours a week.

Resources that Further Convinced Me:

1. Stanford economist John Pencanvel's 2014 analysis

He's no ordinary economist. His resume is 13 pages long!

https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/people/cv/3695-vitae2015.august.pdf

http://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf - Official Study

https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2014/12/09/proof-that-you-should-get-a-life - A summarized read

"

2. This paper from the US federal government

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2004-143/pdfs/2004-143.pdf

3. This article - the importance of delegation & video

https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/elon-musk-is-wrong-you-can-definitely-change-world-on-40-hours-a-week.html

Quote

If it takes one person 60 hours a week to change the world, then it would take two people 30 hours a week. Or one person could work 30 hours a week, in which case it would take twice as long to change the world.

 

It's obvious advice. If you want to "work 120 hours a week", hire two people to work 40 hours a week each. SpaceX is arguably easier to handle because Elon has a second-in-command, Gwynne Shotwell, to help. Unfortunately, for Tesla, there is no second-in-command. Delegation is vital.

Quote

Finally, and more importantly, Musk himself puts the lie to the notion that you can't change the world in less than 40 hours a week. Both SpaceX and Boring are potential world-changers and Musk can't possibly be spending even 40 hours on either of them, not while running Tesla.

 

Elon runs multiple companies. There's SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, OpenAI, Hyperloop, Neuralink, and Boring. Exclude OpenAI and Hyperloop because he stepped down on the first and is sometimes involved with the second. Even then, Elon has reported having been working 120 hours a week at Tesla. What about the others? The Giga Factory is still being built, Neuralink has incredible progress, and construction was approved for Boring. There's a lot of delegation going behind-the-scenes.

---

4.

Now, there's also a video inside of that article from before. It's a woman stating ten reasons she stopped overworking.

Quality over quantity - work smarter versus harder

Sleep matters - Jeff Bezos sleeps 8 hours a day

You suck when it counts. Imagine being sleepy and having clouded judgment during a presentation?

Your mood is a buzzkill. I noticed that when I work 60+ hours a week, I become a jerk.

Judgment is impaired — similar reasons for lack of sleep.

Setting a bad example - If you are working 80+ hours a week, your employees will be "inspired" to operate a similar amount of hours. You create a culture of irritated, sleepy, and clouded people who also have family problems for always working all the time.

There's an infinite amount of tasks you can always do.

Hurts relationships - You're a dick when you overwork.

Hurts health - Similar to sleep, not getting enough exercise, not eating correctly, not developing your spiritual side

It's not that important - deadlines are flexible

 

5,

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/23/elon-musk-120-hour-working-week-tesla#comments

At this point, my mind has been convinced a 40-hour work week is what's needed.

Some questions at the back of my head:

Regarding my life purpose, I may have to rethink if a Ph.D. & MD is worth it. A Ph.D. may have to satisfy.

Is it possible to drop the double major of computer science and biology? Can a minor in biology be sufficient?

Research European Union's, especially Germany's work-life balance

I can only study for 6 hours at a time. That's with 10-minute breaks every 50 minutes and a 30-minute break every 4 hours. I'd ideally like to be an academic student for 40 hours a week. There's a lot of great news about working 10 hours for four days. I wonder if it's possible to do the same with being a student. For myself, studying is a lot more mentally draining than physical exercise.

 

RESPONSE #3

22 hours ago, John Lula said:

@AceTrainerGreen Pick up a rock and throw it. There you changed the world in a couple of seconds.

@John Lula

Zen. It reminds me of several things.

1. Butterfly Effect

2. It's A Wonderful Life - If you travel back in time and murder someone that would turn 80 years old, the present will look noticeably different.

3.

18 hours ago, kingroboto said:

how many hours did you spend making this that no one will read

@kingroboto It didn't take long 40 minutes for the first post; 30 minutes for the second. All I did was copy-paste the notes I took. For the note-taking, it's taken well over 8+ hours. I don't mind making "long posts." I tend to write 20+ pages. This is nothing. I don't care if no one reads it. I'm just displaying my thoughts, so other people can help me navigate my thinking. You don't have to read all of it.

16 hours ago, kingroboto said:

I guess the takeaway here is that Elon thinks he's changing the world. The world is the world. Nothing gets changed it just is. Or put it in another way, the world is constantly changing on it's own just fine

@Shadowraix but i am interested in the length of the post, just not in the way you like 

@kingroboto

Probably. There's a concept in history called the Great Man Theory.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Great_man_theory

It's an exciting read. Your comment made me research about the topic further. At first, I only knew about it in a dictionary definition sense. I spent three hours reading about it and taking notes. The Great Man theory deserves its thread, to be honest.

Here are the notes I took recently.

 

Sharing this for the sake of sharing new information I learned.

One particular insight would have to be the forces of nature vs. nurture. When I look at Elon Musk, it seems that he's the only person who is single-handedly running all of the companies; however, that's false. There are a lot of factors going behind-the-scenes. For example, Elon's work relies heavily on subsidies from the government as well as public-sector funded technology. Perhaps, the Great Man Theory is like standing on the shoulders of giants. Without external forces such as geography, technology, socioeconomic status, Elon would not exist. Then again, it gives an interesting question: If Elon never lived, would these advances have been possible?

15 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

There are times when I work a lot. There are times in life when you need to work a lot. But this should be done strategically, in bursts, not as a chronic habit in an attempt to avoid spiritual work (which is what Elon Musk is doing -- avoiding spiritual work).

Work will NEVER make you satisfied. If work made people satisfied then Elon Musk should be the most satisfied guy in the planet. And yet he is clearly miserable. He has turned work into a neurosis.

I find that if I work too much I start to feel like a robot and I lose my creativity and passion for life.

The times I am most creative and connected to life is on my days off.

As I learn more about myself through your teachings, other resources, and my personal experience, I agree. Hard work and success does not correlate with authentic being, yet many tend to do so otherwise. At the back of my mind, even despite all of this learning about workaholism and the dangerous consequences of it, I still feel pushed to work hard.

Regarding your last sentence, it reminds me of playing a challenging video game. When I keep dying at a boss battle, I tend to rage quit and do something else for a while. I don't think about the game, but when I come back to it the next day, my mind seems to have figured out a way to beat it. I've done some reading on this, and I find it incredible how the subconscious mind is capable of generating insights. Active vs. diffused thinking is vital.

15 hours ago, zambize said:

What I am trying to do, is to create a path for myself to live a more fulfilling and profound life, that others may or may not choose to follow.  How can I expect to beat myself over the head with 80 hours of work a week in a never ending cycle of optimization, and then at the end, come away with happiness for myself and others.  People would look to me and the path I followed with dread and never follow it.  However, if I can prove that a more profound life is achievable in a reasonable amount of time by focusing on the right areas of your life, that's a path people will follow.  I'm trying to live the most profound life I can live that other people could reasonably follow, and see what I'm doing and think, yeah I could do that too, not look up to me like I'm some god who busted his head open and sent himself into psychosis to find the Truth

Your comment reminds me of this post I read on Wall Street Oasis. The website is for people who want to work at Wall Street, hence the name. Within the notorious culture of working 80+ hours a week, there are a lot of threads about burnout. One particular thread I remember fondly of would be a person quitting his job as an analyst and instead of working as a professional pianist.

https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/life-after-investment-banking

Inspirational.

It also reminds me of Gary Vaynerchuk's advice on careers. He stated, "

I've tried looking into burnout into other careers. On Wall Street Oasis, the most commonly recommended advice is to take a vacation, so you can get perspective. When you're in the grind every day, it's hard to think of yourself outside of the box.

15 hours ago, NoSelfSelf said:

What would you do with sucess buy more stuff that you dont need?

@NoSelfSelfI'm not very materialistic. If I were rich, the most expensive item I would be a gaming computer and a Tesla. Haha, The goal is to use fame, power, and wealth to help people.

15 hours ago, Serotoninluv said:

@AceTrainerGreen I spent many years conducting research related to cancer and tropical diseases. 70-80 hour work weeks were normal. Always after the next result, the next discovery, solving the next problem, getting the next publication, the next speaking engagement, the next grant, the next promotion. I never had children - they would have taken up too much time. I never got married - she would have wanted too much time.

I pushed and pushed scientific research until I reached the terminal end - and it didn't look like what I thought or hoped it would. . . 

@Serotoninluv

Thank you for your comment. It's good to know that you are speaking from experience.

15 hours ago, Winter said:

For Elon Musk, It's not about success, it's about solving problems. With each problem solved will be more. Each dollars made can be reinvested in future projects. It's not about cravings the end result, it's about enjoying the ride.

There's not much to understand, dream hunting is a pretty irrational arbitrary choice. 

It's similar to Bill Gates. Instead of using his wealth for his selfish ambitions, he's using his tens of billions of dollars into fixing poverty worldwide.

Yeah, that's what I mean in response to @NoSelfSelf

15 hours ago, Joseph Maynor said:

I kind of agree with Elon.  The thing you're passionate about you're kinda always working on.  You're always working on it because you're passionate about it.  It's fun to work on it!  It's what you wanna be doing.  This is why finding your passion is so important and starting to move everything your work on in your life to be in alignment with that passion.  When I was learning how to play jazz, that was real passion.  I would work on jazz all day long.  I would read books on music theory.  I would practice my instrument at least 4 to 5 hours per day.  I would practice all these skills that jazz musicians practice.  I would spend all day working on jazz, and none of it seemed like I was punching a clock at a job.  That's when your work is aligned with your passion.

@Joseph Maynor

For myself, passion is difficult to determine. I have many interests; however, these tend to be intense and last for several months. Recently, I became very obsessed with uploading video game footage for my YouTube channel. I gained 800 followers and 200,000+ views. It's something I would spend 8+ hours on every day, and I would look forward to it. Recently, I have been feeling burnt out. Outside of the small fame, it makes me realize that passion alone is not sufficient.

I have many interests, but interests do not always mean passion. When I think about it, there are several areas that I routinely come back and several processes that allow me to enter flow. It's good to know that I've documented this. Some reoccurring interests would have to be philosophy, psychology, and politics. I tend to overthink about ideas. The processes that allow me to enter the state of flow would be anything related to creating such as writing and video making.

Outside of this altogether, when work becomes play and you "work" for 12 hours, you also tend to neglect other aspects of your life. Going back to my little YouTube interest, I had incredible fun for 2.5 months; however, I ignored many other aspects of my life during this time such as sleep, fitness, and even prolonging excretion urges.

 

15 hours ago, Outer said:

Couldn't you work 40 hrs a week while still conducting research?

Could you sleep at the lab?

@Outer Not sure if you're sarcastic.

14 hours ago, aurum said:

@AceTrainerGreen

I didn't read what Leo said but I mostly agree with Elon. Your attitude towards work is more important than whether you are working. "Work" is just a label, we decide what is enjoyable and what isn't.

The more spiritual work I do, the more I feel I get aligned with my purpose. And the more I get aligned with my purpose, the more energy I want to flow into it.

@aurum I think you're fine. I think the problem with Elon is that he's so incredibly passionate about his work or his play that he's neglecting other facets in his life such as his health and family.

12 hours ago, Serotoninluv said:

@Winter I've always lived within two miles of school/work and would ride my bicycle. Only about a 10min. ride each way, so not much time.

What I did at work depended on the stage of my career: whether it was as a grad. student, post-doc or prof. 

@Outer I could have only worked 40hrs, yet what would I do with all that free time? . My life and identity revolved around work. My motto was "Work Creates Work". The more work I did, the more work it created. More experiments to do, papers to publish and grant money to get. Plus, advisors put a lot of pressure on me to get results, publish and bring in money. Looking back, I think they could sense that I had weak boundaries, was a people-pleaser and could be manipulated to work longer. Also, there was a subconscious fear that I wasn't good enough and I had to work extra hard so they wouldn't kick me out of school. There was one point in grad school I was working looong hours to get a paper out. Another lab was catching up on my work and there was enormous pressure to publish before them (only the first lab gets to publish). I was so stressed I couldn't sleep or eat well. I was getting severe headaches and stomach pain. I told this to my advisor and he said "If all the pressure and stress is increasing your productivity it is a good thing". That's the type of environment I was in. 

There were also some really inspiring, passionate, exciting times as well - yet I wouldn't say that was the default.

I see multiple problems.

1) Your life and identity revolved around work.

2) The more work you did, the more work is created. It's never-ending.

3) Your subconscious fear of not being good enough.

It reminds me of Leo's video on workaholism. It makes me wonder if hanging out with incredibly professional successful people is more or less a good thing. Their ability to accomplish rubs off on you; however, at the same time, it also rubs off a culture of workaholism and that it's okay to place less time on family, friends, and other aspects in one's life. For example, what would happen if you worked in Silicon Valley where everyone is overworked?

-------------------------

Thank you for all the responses and thank you for the individuals who read all of it. I have more insights to think. I wasn't able to do much research about the questions I was asking about on my last post; however, I did research Great Man Theory and responded to these responses. I like to return to almost all of them because it helps facilitate my thinking.

A question I have:

What do you think of Gary Vaynerchuk preaching workaholism?

Topics to Research:

- Butterfly Effect

- Silicon Valley & Workaholism

- I tend to be very indecisive. Is my personality even suited for entrepreneurship? There's Warren Buffet who researches immensely into a company before making any moves.

Edited December 1, 2018 by AceTrainerGreen

[Leo Gura]

"Oh God! I wish I worked more."

What no one said on their deathbed, ever.

[Joseph Maynor]

@Leo Gura  Yep.  When your work is aligned with your passion it doesn't seem like work.

Edited November 30, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[SgtPepper]

We need to slow down.

[Extreme Z7]

I don't care about achieving the kind of success that Elon Musk has. I'm a simple moderate self-actualizer.

Edited November 30, 2018 by Extreme Z7

[Rilles]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

"Oh God! I wish I worked more."

What no one said on their deathbed, ever.

Depends on who you are though, an Indonesian working 16 hours a day to get his children into school is probably very proud to have worked alot. Nuance nuance. 

[AceTrainerGreen]

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

"Oh God! I wish I worked more."

What no one said on their deathbed, ever.

Thank you for your short answer @Leo Gura. There's no need for you to comment further because you have already spoken much about it on earlier threads and your videos. It's good to know your position still stands.

40 minutes ago, Shiva said:

A wise man once said, "If you want to make the world a better place take a look at yourself, and then make a change (Ooh!)".

Elon, why are you not listening to MJ?

2,000+ years from now, when future civilizations will look at us, will they look at Michael Jackson's songs the same way as a source of wisdom the same way we interpret ancient Roman and Greek scholars?

I've done much more research on the topic. It's taken me two days of intense learning. First, it was through Leo's videos and posts on the forum. Second, it was by reading a bunch of other content about it elsewhere. The conclusion is that one must work 40 hours a week.

Resources that Further Convinced Me:

1. Stanford economist John Pencanvel's 2014 analysis

http://ftp.iza.org/dp8129.pdf - Official Study

https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2014/12/09/proof-that-you-should-get-a-life - A summarized read

"

2. This paper from the US federal government

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2004-143/pdfs/2004-143.pdf

3. This article - the importance of delegation & video

https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/elon-musk-is-wrong-you-can-definitely-change-world-on-40-hours-a-week.html

Quote

If it takes one person 60 hours a week to change the world, then it would take two people 30 hours a week. Or one person could work 30 hours a week, in which case it would take twice as long to change the world.

 

It's obvious advice. If you want to "work 120 hours a week", hire two people to work 40 hours a week each. SpaceX is arguably easier to handle because Elon has a second-in-command, Gwynne Shotwell, to help. Unfortunately, for Tesla, there is no second-in-command. Delegation is vital.

Quote

Finally, and more importantly, Musk himself puts the lie to the notion that you can't change the world in less than 40 hours a week. Both SpaceX and Boring are potential world-changers and Musk can't possibly be spending even 40 hours on either of them, not while running Tesla.

 

Elon runs multiple companies. There's SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, OpenAI, Hyperloop, Neuralink, and Boring. Exclude OpenAI and Hyperloop because he stepped down on the first and is sometimes involved with the second. Even then, Elon has reported having been working 120 hours a week at Tesla. What about the others? The Giga Factory is still being built, Neuralink has incredible progress, and construction was approved for Boring. There's a lot of delegation going behind-the-scenes.

---

4.

Now, there's also a video inside of that article from before. It's a woman stating ten reasons she stopped overworking.

1. Quality over quantity - work smarter versus harder
2. Sleep matters - Jeff Bezos sleeps 8 hours a day
3. You suck when it counts. Imagine being sleepy and having clouded judgment during a presentation?
4. Your mood is a buzzkill. I noticed that when I work 60+ hours a week, I become a jerk.
5. Judgment is impaired — similar reasons for lack of sleep.
6. Setting a bad example - If you are working 80+ hours a week, your employees will be "inspired" to operate a similar amount of hours. You create a culture of irritated, sleepy, and clouded people who also have family problems for always working all the time.
7. There's an infinite amount of tasks you can always do.
8. Hurts relationships - You're a dick when you overwork.
9. Hurts health - Similar to sleep, not getting enough exercise, not eating correctly, not developing your spiritual side
10. It's not that important - deadlines are flexible

 

5,

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/23/elon-musk-120-hour-working-week-tesla#comments

 

At this point, my mind has been convinced a 40-hour work week is what's needed.

Some questions at the back of my head:

1. Regarding my life purpose, I may have to rethink if a Ph.D. & MD is worth it. A Ph.D. may have to satisfy.
2. Is it possible to drop the double major of computer science and biology? Can a minor in biology be sufficient?
3. Research European Union's, especially Germany's work-life balance
4. I can only study for 6 hours at a time. That's with 10-minute breaks every 50 minutes and a 30-minute break every 4 hours. I'd ideally like to be an academic student for 40 hours a week. There's a lot of great news about working 10 hours for four days. I wonder if it's possible to do the same with being a student. For myself, studying is a lot more mentally draining than physical exercise.

[bejapuskas]

@kingroboto  I actually read it haha.

@AceTrainerGreen  You still don't understand the problem. 

[Quicksilver]

How much success in enough success? 

[Hello from Russia]

No, it was actually a pretty good read. Big thanks for putting all this down 

[kingroboto]

ok,  what is OP is trying to say  

[Shadowraix]

1 hour ago, kingroboto said:

how many hours did you spend making this that no one will read

If you aren't interested in the length of the post then why are you even posting on it?

Leave it be and let people who actually want to read it and contribute post.

[kingroboto]

I guess the takeaway here is that Elon thinks he's changing the world. The world is the world. Nothing gets changed it just is. Or put it in another way, the world is constantly changing on it's own just fine

@Shadowraix but i am interested in the length of the post, just not in the way you like 

Edited November 30, 2018 by kingroboto

[Leo Gura]

There are times when I work a lot. There are times in life when you need to work a lot. But this should be done strategically, in bursts, not as a chronic habit in an attempt to avoid spiritual work (which is what Elon Musk is doing -- avoiding spiritual work).

Work will NEVER make you satisfied. If work made people satisfied then Elon Musk should be the most satisfied guy in the planet. And yet he is clearly miserable. He has turned work into a neurosis.

I find that if I work too much I start to feel like a robot and I lose my creativity and passion for life.

The times I am most creative and connected to life is on my days off.

[zambize]

What I am trying to do, is to create a path for myself to live a more fulfilling and profound life, that others may or may not choose to follow.  How can I expect to beat myself over the head with 80 hours of work a week in a never ending cycle of optimization, and then at the end, come away with happiness for myself and others.  People would look to me and the path I followed with dread and never follow it.  However, if I can prove that a more profound life is achievable in a reasonable amount of time by focusing on the right areas of your life, that's a path people will follow.  I'm trying to live the most profound life I can live that other people could reasonably follow, and see what I'm doing and think, yeah I could do that too, not look up to me like I'm some god who busted his head open and sent himself into psychosis to find the Truth

[NoSelfSelf]

What would you do with sucess buy more stuff that you dont need?

[Forestluv]

@AceTrainerGreen I spent many years conducting research related to cancer and tropical diseases. 70-80 hour work weeks were normal. Always after the next result, the next discovery, solving the next problem, getting the next publication, the next speaking engagement, the next grant, the next promotion. I never had children - they would have taken up too much time. I never got married - she would have wanted too much time.

I pushed and pushed scientific research until I reached the terminal end - and it didn't look like what I thought or hoped it would. . . 

[Joseph Maynor]

I kind of agree with Elon.  The thing you're passionate about you're kinda always working on.  You're always working on it because you're passionate about it.  It's fun to work on it!  It's what you wanna be doing.  This is why finding your passion is so important and starting to move everything your work on in your life to be in alignment with that passion.  When I was learning how to play jazz, that was real passion.  I would work on jazz all day long.  I would read books on music theory.  I would practice my instrument at least 4 to 5 hours per day.  I would practice all these skills that jazz musicians practice.  I would spend all day working on jazz, and none of it seemed like I was punching a clock at a job.  That's when your work is aligned with your passion.

Edited November 30, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Outer]

13 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

@AceTrainerGreen I spent many years conducting research related to cancer and tropical diseases. 70-80 hour work weeks were normal. Always after the next result, the next discovery, solving the next problem, getting the next publication, the next speaking engagement, the next grant, the next promotion. I never had children - they would have taken up too much time. I never got married - she would have wanted too much time.

I pushed and pushed scientific research until I reached the terminal end - and it didn't look like what I thought or hoped it would. . . 

Couldn't you work 40 hrs a week while still conducting research?

Could you sleep at the lab?

Edited November 30, 2018 by Outer

[aurum]

@AceTrainerGreen

I didn't read what Leo said but I mostly agree with Elon. Your attitude towards work is more important than whether you are working. "Work" is just a label, we decide what is enjoyable and what isn't.

The more spiritual work I do, the more I feel I get aligned with my purpose. And the more I get aligned with my purpose, the more energy I want to flow into it.