hoursI know it’s not the “real question” it’s not how much time your work, but how much is done, but I’m still curious. (And probably others are as well)
To my surprise I didn’t find a similar question on this site.
Do startup founders usually (as in, not when there’s a rush) work on Saturday ? On Sunday ?
How many hours do they work on an average day ?
I’ve heard 18h, from the founder of airbnb (ok, tried it. From a health point of view. It doesn’t work) The founder of Wufoo said 8-10 hours, 5 days a week. Which seems a bit low.
I personally do 12+ hours a day (including quick meals, so more like 11+) and work most Saturdays as a half day. It is average ? Am I a lazy founder ?
Again, I know it’s not a deep truth about your startup, but I’m curious.
So, how much did you work in the early days ?
As a startup founder, you should have your startup and 1 other thing.
This means that whenever you are not doing your hobby or spending time with your family etc you should be thinking about your startup/your project.
This doesn’t mean force yourself to think about your startup all the time. This means that you are so excited that all you can think about is your startup. So, don’t force yourself to work 18hrs or 10hrs a day, work as much as you feel like.
There is no optimal, it differs from people to people.
I recently learnt during a course called Software Project Management that you should not work more than 40hours a working week because there after you become very unproductive and even the next day you start off being unproductive because you are tired and strained from the previous day.
If you decide to work on weekends make sure it is not for the whole day, just in to carry out some not so intensive tasks and leave.
I agree with @demirb you need to have one other thing that you do besides working on the startup it kind of gives you a mental boost when you are returning to the startup work.
I also particularly found very useful an online course from Lynda.com called Small Business Secrets that mentions that as founder of a startup you should delegate more because it reduces switching cost (time/cost of switching between tasks) which actually means you do less work at the end of the day. It is worth getting and watching that online course.
80hrs a week but of different intensity. About 40hrs of intense work (coding). Other work is more light weight, ie research, writing, emails
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