At some point we're going to have to talk about the fact that the most successful people at anything work nights and weekends...

This is a tweet about guilt and shame that is disguised as a practical tweet on how to become successful.

Debates around "how long one should work in order to be successful" are doomed to become ego bait: how do I defend my own practices.

The only answer for how many hours you ought to work is: it depends. Depends on you. Depends on the nature of your work. Depends on your idea of success.

Work nights. Work weekends. Work 4-hour workweeks. You don't have to defend it as an ideology that others should adopt.

Just my $0.02 😊

I love the work I do, spend plenty family time, get exercise done...I pay attention taking care of how I feel. Sleep when I'm tired. Switch off when I've had enough.

These days I feel like I'm unable to say 'I do work on the weekend' (in fear of being shamed). I often do work on the weekend, but often it is a blurred line of work and things I am learning or creating or maybe I chose not to work (or do less hours) during the week.

¯\ _ (ツ) _ /¯

The biggest failure in this tweet is the assumption of what success means, and that it is the same for everyone.

Is it how many commas you have in your bank balance? I don't think that's the definition of success--not for everyone. What a shallow measure that is...

I recently came across an interview with a famous rapper (can't remember who it was I saw in the first video) who talked about working with Eminem in the studio. He said it was a mind-boggling experience, because it wasn't at all what he expected. Long story short... Eminem shows up at the studio, like clockwork, Mon-Fri at 9am. He takes a lunch break at 1pm. And leaves the studio at 5pm. Doesn't matter if he's in the middle of recording a bar--it's 5pm, he's out. And he doesn't work the weekends.

You can search and find other interviews with artists like Akon who say the same thing. Eminem works Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm (lunch at 1pm), and takes weekends off.

I don't know him personally, but I'm sure Em has plenty of commas in his bank account.

But, again... that's not a stand-alone measure of success I think is worthwhile.

How many rich and famous people are hardly ever sober because they're so miserable with their "success?" How many have we lost to drug overdoses or drug complications because they were mostly unhappy? Too many to count.

There are plenty of stories of people who make a modest living, have little stress, and are more successful than any billionaire in the limelight.

To me success is having the freedom to do what you love, when you want to do it, with whom you want to do it, from wherever you want to do it. That's why I chose the life of an entrepreneur.

And sure, I wouldn't mind a couple more commas in my bank account. But if it comes at the cost of my family time, my happiness, and overall well-being... that wouldn't be success to me.

Perhaps most interesting is the correlation / causation aspect of this.

It's not necessarily that working on weekends makes them successful. It's that that's a wrapped up in a bunch of other character traits...

Most obvious being, that if you work weekends and nights ... you probably really love what you do. And that's (possibly) a greater predictor of success.

If you have a strong desire/vision and you actually like doing what you're doing, it's nobody's business to tell you that you shouldn't do it on the weekends, too. It's not an on/off switch that you can conveniently turn off on the weekend.

Today it´s more about working smarter then working harder. If you are good at selling, you can make plenty of money with a sub-mediocre product, but you can have the best product and you won´t make any profit if you don´t know how to sell it.
Best example: How irrational is it to buy a mobile phone for 2K USD? Know how to sell it and you can do it.

That said, working on a startup is a thing of exchanging current pain for future pleasure. Even though one might not work 16 hours a day, which easily lead to a hefty burn out, the idea and the business itself stays within the head 24/7. However, never underestimate a healthy lifestyle and a good work/life ratio. You simply need quality time with yourself, friends or family.

Sometimes that work 24/7 for your success sounds like a warning or a scare tactic to prevent people to try becoming an entrepreneur...

I’m of the mind that discussions about working habits are largely a way to get people talking/engaging. I’m not sure how useful they are, though. Folks often take dogmatic positions on these sorts of topics.

I figure you just need to ask what you want from life—and then run occasional diagnostics to see if your current setup still suits you.

I’ve worked long hours for many years. For me, this works, as I like building things. (And I tend to be happier when I work.) That said, I don’t expect others to do the same. My setup works for me, and if it stops working, I’ll change.

Some will succeed as a result of working nights and weekends; some will fail. Meanwhile, some will succeed by working a lot less. Yet others will realize that success might look different for them than others.

There’s no one formula for this. Do what works for you and your family.

I sometimes work on weekends and at night, but I also very often take a midweek day off to do other stuff or relax.

Take today (Thursday) for example - I woke up at 7am, answered a bunch of support tickets. Then coded a new mini feature in my app and pushed it out to production. It is 10:30 and I am now going to down tools and go learn and practice a new chess opening tactic. Then, after lunch (with my family), I am going to help my son record his new single in our home studio. Then enjoy a beautiful sunny tropical day in the hammock.

Sure, I have plans to do some documentation updates and server maintenance this Sunday for a few hours, but today (and other days like it) totally balance that out.

So many interesting takes, but there's an essential fallacy of privilege baked into even most of the responses here, since we're generally an entrepreneurial class on this site. If you were not fortunate enough to get an education or develop a skill-set to break out of an hourly wage job, then you will never be able to stab at the type of success people with the freedom to work nights and weekends do.

Plenty of others have pointed out that number of hours is not causal of success (I'd argue it is correlative), but I think it misses the point. Being free to work outside the strict constraints of wage and hour laws is in itself a privilege that requires a number of life circumstances to already break your way. It's a little myopic to then assume that people who work 40 hours a week at the best job they're qualified for are somehow not driven or unsuccessful.

That's where the causation / correlation in this bugs me a bit (although she does acknowledge the lack of equity in this observation). And definitely, if success is defined as having time to be with the people you love and do the things you love, since no amount of money can buy more time, then we have to agree on the same definition of success and this might not be that.

Thanks for surfacing the tweet. I think Emily's an insightful writer within the context of her expertise.

You should know how to balance it so you don't burnout but yes.

She calls it "nights and weekends", but let's not be fooled: she's not actually talking about when you work. She's euphemistically talking about how many hours you work.

She neglects to mention that Darwin, Dickens, and many of the most successful people only worked for four hours a day.

Tweets like this don't help other people. They only help the author justify their own practices.

You can be a failure working 80+ hours a week. You can be successful working 4 hours a week. There's no real correlation between the number of hours you work and how successful you will be, and certainly no causation.

In fact, there's actually a lot of evidence to suggest that shorter work days are more productive.

But we can put that aside. Here's what I believe: work for however many hours you want. Don't listen to these people who pander their own work practices. You don't need to justify yourself to anyone else.

Not always, I have my ordinary job, family, an 8-year-old daughter and I still code every day of the week, at night, when everyone sleeps or there is no one at home, fine, users like my project, but I have made just 100 quid from it and got 3 job offers.

Ain't got nothing from it despite that my ego has grown pretty much, I have been working since January 2019.

Successful...it depends what is understood with successful...

It depends on the length of the game and how quickly you are trying to get to the end of it and whether you are in a race with others aiming for the same goal.

I work full-time and I find that the laser focus that comes with that extra 4-6 hours per day during the week, and the mixed bag of scattered weekend work, actually has us incredibly efficient. Have the benefit of two full time developers - so that is an X factor. We may not be getting as much "done" as the 100 hour/week person, but what we are getting done is crafted, well-thought out and usually on point.

Mixing up my metaphors - I can throw the lasagna in the oven at 1000 degrees to try to get it cooked more quickly.. but I'm pretty sure the 350 degree version is going to be better.

This is great. It comes down to flexibility. Nothing wrong with working in the evening after your kids have gone to bed, if you've taken time off during the afternoon to spend quality time with them.

Some of my best work and favorite moments have come from plopping on the couch with my laptop and putting on an action flick Saturday afternoon. 🤷‍♂️

Everyone looking at everyone else assumes what it took for them to reach the level of success they assume they have, to reach the level of happiness they assume they have.

If your success and failure criteria are laid out correctly, you can 'work' as much or as little as you need to reach those.

Don't assume to be more 'successful' you need to 'work more'.
Don't assume you can 'work less' and still reach some level of 'success'. Figure out what you want in life and how you can get it.

If you want to progress through the ranks of IT auditors, you will probably have to spend 80 hours a week at one of the big 5 working on someone else's spreadsheet. If that is the work required to reach the success you decided you want go for it. :)

Yep!

I absolutely work some nights and most weekends.

But - at 3pm on a Monday - I'll probably be working out. Or baking. Or browsing Twitter.

I imagine if/when I have kids, even more of my work will switch to evenings.