10,000 Minutes
A quote from Barack Obama popped up in my LinkedIn feed today that followed along the lines of "If you strive to be excellent, there is no balance." This, of course, is the call to cast work-life balance aside in the singular pursuit of making your business successful. I've never been able to successfully classify myself as a diligent worker. Other people have mentioned unbidden that I was at least a decent worker, and, like most people, if I get interested in a particular topic or am up against a deadline, I'll put in extra time. However, by and large, I've never understood the desire to prove oneself by working long hours. In fact, one of my proudest accomplishments was running one of the most successful engineering teams at my company without any team member working more than 35 hours per week on average (the standard 40-hour work week with an hour for lunch thrown in every day). Bragging about being a more dedicated worker because you're exhausting you...
