"Sincerity begins at a little over 100 hours a week. You can probably get to 110 hours on a sustained basis, but it's hard. You have to get down to eating once a day and showering every other day, things of that sort to really get your life organized to work 110 hours."
- Len Bosack, co-founder, Cisco Systems, and hero to the hardcore
I'm certain that both the Cisco founders have a "benign" variant of OCD. Turning these people into heroes is counterproductive: for every founder that is actually able to get something out of their 110-hour workweek, there are 100 who only make their lives miserable and accomplish nothing trying to emulate the masters.
There is no way any halfway sane person is able to work 110 hours a week on a "sustained basis". Your physical and mental health will start to suffer after a pretty short time. Genius comes with insanity, not the other way around. There are a few crazy, brilliant people out there, but you will know beforehand if you are one of them. Ripping out piercings on stage will not turn you into Marilyn Manson, breaking all the sexual conventions will not turn you into Oscar Wilde and leaving only 8 hours a day for life-supporting routines will not turn you into Len Bosack.
Normal people should play by the normal rules. You're only wasting your life if you keep telling yourself that you have to be hard, cold and miserable in order to succeed. The crazy geniuses in this category don't read Hacker News.
Having had sustained periods of 112 hour weeks I agree that the physical, mental and emotional toll is incredible. Having said that, I do belive that some people can work longer hours than others, particularly when they enjoy their jobs and are passionate about what they're doing.
I try to keep myself down to 50-60 hours a week. I'm not quite sure what I'd do if I limited myself to 35!
I personally don't believe there's anything wrong with working every waking minute if it's your only job at that time. If you don't have kids, and don't have a spouse or partner and at that period of time you're content with it then I say go for it.
However, I wouldn't idolize someone who does do that. The true hero is someone who can work for 10 hours a week and get done what the man doing 100 hours a week does.
Sadly an addendum to this, as a writer my output is directly correlative to the time put in. However there's a limit to how much I'll actually get done. Sometimes ignoring my writing seems to get more done. I've sat down and written for 6 hours in a row and only been snapped out because I was dying from hunger and I'd drank like 4 sodas and hadn't gone piss. I got more work done in those 6 hours than I normally do in 30 hours.
- Len Bosack, co-founder, Cisco Systems, and hero to the hardcore