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80 Hours a Week?

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Content provided by Ray Zinn. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Ray Zinn or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

Work life balance. Is it a recipe for long term success, or a surefire way to fail? In the Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn counters the case made by some enormously successful CEOs. (Watch Now on YouTube)

Ray Zinn: Hello, Rob. Good to be with you today.

Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, this is a special edition of the Tough Things First podcast, because it is a video podcast. If the listeners would like to watch instead of just listen, they can go to Toughthingsfirst.com, find the podcast, locate this podcast, and then of course find where … There’s a little button to click for watching the video. It’ll take you to the YouTube channel where they post the videos all the time, so I hope you enjoy that, if you choose to do that. If you don’t, still, we’re happy to have you here listening. Ray, I found something that I’d like to talk to you about. This is from a Fortune.com article. It says, “There are many workers out there who are perfectly happy clocking in at 9:00 and heading out the door at 5:00,” and Cerebras co-founder and CEO, Andrew Feldman, said, “They can have a great life. However, if you want to launch the next billion-dollar company or innovate a product, you won’t get anywhere at 40 hours a week.”

This is his quote, here. “The notion that somehow you can achieve greatness, you can build something extraordinary, by working 38 hours a week and having a work-life balance, that’s mind-boggling to me,” unquote. That’s Feldman, again, leader of the $8.1 billion AI chip company. He said that recently on a 20VC podcast. He says it’s just not true in any part of his life. Apparently Jeff Bezos agrees with this philosophy. There are other industry titans that believe in this. You’re not one of them, Ray. Why is that?

Ray Zinn: Well, historically, the work day has been eight hours a day, five days a week, 40 hours a week. Yeah, so if you think about what your effective work schedule is, because you have to have time to eat and sleep and do other things other than just be at your desk slaving away at whatever product line or business you have, it’s inefficient. It’s ridiculous. If it requires 80 hours a week to be successful, then you don’t have enough people, so obviously, if you can’t afford to hire enough people so that you don’t have to work 80 hours a week, then I guess you’d have to work 80 hours a week. I mean, you’ve got to do whatever you have to do to be successful. I know people that have a beauty salon and they’re the only one, they’re the top talent for that, to do that particular service, and so he has to put in whatever hours he needs to cover his overhead. He recently had a few people leave, and so he was taking over their customers and he was working 80 hours a week, but it was killing him. In other words, he had no life.

As I mentioned, there’s 24 hours in a day, but you can’t spend 20 of it working, and so if you just do the math on it, 80 hours a week, you’re working 16 hours a day, unless you’re working seven days a week, so it’s not really efficient or not a good lifestyle to work 60 to 80 hours a week. I ran Micrel for 37 years, and I believe the longest work week I ever had was 50 or 60, and that was during the time we were preparing for our IPO and that sort of thing, which required a lot of my personal attention. Having to work more than eight hours a day just doesn’t … If you just divide the day up, you’ve got three eight-hour periods in your day, and it’s very, very difficult to not have some form of life other than your work. If you have to give up sleep, I mean, I don’t know how effective you’re going to be by not sleeping, but I do know that some people try to get by to three to four hours of sleep, and God bless them for that, but they’re not going to be very healthy. Your health is important too, as you try to be effective and efficient as a CEO or as a leader of an organization, so again, I disagree that you have to work 80 hours a week to be successful.

Rob Artigo: Do you think they’re factoring in some things like, you get off work and you go home. If you’re the leader or the CEO or or you’re in the middle of developing something, that you can go home, enjoy dinner, enjoy some time with your family, but at the same time your brain doesn’t necessarily turn it off. Could they be factoring in some of the hours that you put in working where you’re just maybe looking at technical manuals or something like that at home, and taking up your own time to do that, or are they talking straight, in the office, going hardcore and driving, and being either always on the phone or always having a meeting, or always trying to develop something?

Ray Zinn: It’s at work. I mean, obviously you can’t turn your brain off, but your family knows if you’re not focusing on them or on something other than work, they notice that. Just because you’re home, if you’re on the phone or if you’re doing Zoom or whatever with clients or employees, they notice that. We’re talking about now not having your total cognitive hours focused on work or work type activities. I know people who love to work 80 hours a week. I think Donald Trump says he works, I don’t know, he gets three hours of sleep or four hours of sleep a night. I don’t know how healthy that is for him, but I do know that, they claim anyway, he’s running around the clock and just barely gets any sleep time. Even his hours of where he eats and has other things to do other than just work, he’s still working. I mean, even at dinner, I mean, he’s got other people that he’s surrounded with that he’s talking to, and on the phone with different country presidents and so forth, and maybe he can do that for a few years, but to do that around the clock, I don’t think it’s healthy.

Rob Artigo: There’s diminishing returns, because if you are … You were talking about the cognitive impacts of, the positive cognitive impacts of getting rest, letting your mind rest, so you can actually go drive for 80 hours a week and really only get 60% and even less productivity out of it mentally, because you’re not thinking totally straight, than if you worked fewer hours and gave yourself a chance for your mind to recuperate.

Ray Zinn: Yep. Well, that’s part of it too. You can’t exercise 24/7. You have to spell off a little while. I exercise five days a week, I don’t exercise seven days a week, and so you have to give your body a little chance to relax and to recuperate. I’ve heard that there are people that even conduct business while they’re taking care of some personal business, as they say, or even when they’re at the dinner table, but to me, it’s not healthy. I mean, your stomach, you can’t have a decent meal and digest that meal effectively if you are arguing with somebody over the phone. I mean, your system recognizes when you’re upset or when things aren’t going right, and so pounding your fist on the table while you’re eating or yelling and screaming into the phone is not going to help your digestion. I think there’s more to life to be successful than just working 80 hours a week on your job or your work function.

Rob Artigo: If I hear you correctly, Ray, it seems like it’s a … Excuse me. It seems like it’s really a matter of saying it’s okay to work a lot of hours one week. You just don’t want to make it a habit of doing that throughout your career, because eventually it’ll run you down and you’ll be less useful.

Ray Zinn: Yeah, I know people that literally believe they have to work 80 hours a week or they don’t think they’re being successful, and that’s just a mindset. It’s not reality, and so if you think you have to work 80 hours a week to be successful, God bless you, because you’re not going to live a long healthy life. I ran Micrel for 37 years and I’m still working, even though it’s been 10 years since I sold the company. I’m still actively either writing books or doing podcasts or teaching at the universities, so I haven’t backed off doing things. I just don’t believe that I have to work 80 hours a week to be successful.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, you have your own private plane, and I’d be worried about you, your longevity if I found out, “Okay, I’m in New York, I’m heading to Dallas right now. I’ve got to be in LA by 2:00 tomorrow afternoon. I’ve got a meeting there, it’s an hour. Then I’m going back to the Bay Area.” Something like that, I would definitely find that a concern, but there are people who do that, and I think maybe that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re 25 years old, but when you start piling on those years of hard work, like you said, the longevity’s not there, and then you’re just burned out or we lose you too soon.

Ray Zinn: Well, in my mind, to be successful, it has to be more than just your work opportunity or your work objective. You have work at home to do, you’ve got your family to raise, you’ve got service projects to help others in your community, and it’s more than just pounding away at your job function. Remember, there is a balance you have to have, whether it be in the way you eat, the way you exercise, the way you interact with other people, your family. It has to be balanced. Anything that’s out of balance, as you know, doesn’t do well. Tires on a car that are out of balance, you know what that does to the car and to you, so balance is important.

Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, I want to thank all the listeners, and in this case, viewers, for those who watch this on YouTube, on your YouTube channel. Thank you for being here for the Tough Things First podcast. You can join the conversation at Toughthingsfirst.com. Your questions and your comments are welcome. You can follow Ray on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First. As you know, the Zen of Zen series is available, one, two, and three, and on sale now, The Essential Leader, which is this image you see behind me right here, 10 Skills and Attributes and Fundamentals that Make Up the Essential Leader. Thank you, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob. Good to be with you.

…   continue reading

90 episodes

#Marketing #Ray Zinn #Business #Entrepreneur
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80 Hours a Week?

Tough Things First

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Manage episode 515087409 series 167730
Content provided by Ray Zinn. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Ray Zinn or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

Work life balance. Is it a recipe for long term success, or a surefire way to fail? In the Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn counters the case made by some enormously successful CEOs. (Watch Now on YouTube)

Ray Zinn: Hello, Rob. Good to be with you today.

Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, this is a special edition of the Tough Things First podcast, because it is a video podcast. If the listeners would like to watch instead of just listen, they can go to Toughthingsfirst.com, find the podcast, locate this podcast, and then of course find where … There’s a little button to click for watching the video. It’ll take you to the YouTube channel where they post the videos all the time, so I hope you enjoy that, if you choose to do that. If you don’t, still, we’re happy to have you here listening. Ray, I found something that I’d like to talk to you about. This is from a Fortune.com article. It says, “There are many workers out there who are perfectly happy clocking in at 9:00 and heading out the door at 5:00,” and Cerebras co-founder and CEO, Andrew Feldman, said, “They can have a great life. However, if you want to launch the next billion-dollar company or innovate a product, you won’t get anywhere at 40 hours a week.”

This is his quote, here. “The notion that somehow you can achieve greatness, you can build something extraordinary, by working 38 hours a week and having a work-life balance, that’s mind-boggling to me,” unquote. That’s Feldman, again, leader of the $8.1 billion AI chip company. He said that recently on a 20VC podcast. He says it’s just not true in any part of his life. Apparently Jeff Bezos agrees with this philosophy. There are other industry titans that believe in this. You’re not one of them, Ray. Why is that?

Ray Zinn: Well, historically, the work day has been eight hours a day, five days a week, 40 hours a week. Yeah, so if you think about what your effective work schedule is, because you have to have time to eat and sleep and do other things other than just be at your desk slaving away at whatever product line or business you have, it’s inefficient. It’s ridiculous. If it requires 80 hours a week to be successful, then you don’t have enough people, so obviously, if you can’t afford to hire enough people so that you don’t have to work 80 hours a week, then I guess you’d have to work 80 hours a week. I mean, you’ve got to do whatever you have to do to be successful. I know people that have a beauty salon and they’re the only one, they’re the top talent for that, to do that particular service, and so he has to put in whatever hours he needs to cover his overhead. He recently had a few people leave, and so he was taking over their customers and he was working 80 hours a week, but it was killing him. In other words, he had no life.

As I mentioned, there’s 24 hours in a day, but you can’t spend 20 of it working, and so if you just do the math on it, 80 hours a week, you’re working 16 hours a day, unless you’re working seven days a week, so it’s not really efficient or not a good lifestyle to work 60 to 80 hours a week. I ran Micrel for 37 years, and I believe the longest work week I ever had was 50 or 60, and that was during the time we were preparing for our IPO and that sort of thing, which required a lot of my personal attention. Having to work more than eight hours a day just doesn’t … If you just divide the day up, you’ve got three eight-hour periods in your day, and it’s very, very difficult to not have some form of life other than your work. If you have to give up sleep, I mean, I don’t know how effective you’re going to be by not sleeping, but I do know that some people try to get by to three to four hours of sleep, and God bless them for that, but they’re not going to be very healthy. Your health is important too, as you try to be effective and efficient as a CEO or as a leader of an organization, so again, I disagree that you have to work 80 hours a week to be successful.

Rob Artigo: Do you think they’re factoring in some things like, you get off work and you go home. If you’re the leader or the CEO or or you’re in the middle of developing something, that you can go home, enjoy dinner, enjoy some time with your family, but at the same time your brain doesn’t necessarily turn it off. Could they be factoring in some of the hours that you put in working where you’re just maybe looking at technical manuals or something like that at home, and taking up your own time to do that, or are they talking straight, in the office, going hardcore and driving, and being either always on the phone or always having a meeting, or always trying to develop something?

Ray Zinn: It’s at work. I mean, obviously you can’t turn your brain off, but your family knows if you’re not focusing on them or on something other than work, they notice that. Just because you’re home, if you’re on the phone or if you’re doing Zoom or whatever with clients or employees, they notice that. We’re talking about now not having your total cognitive hours focused on work or work type activities. I know people who love to work 80 hours a week. I think Donald Trump says he works, I don’t know, he gets three hours of sleep or four hours of sleep a night. I don’t know how healthy that is for him, but I do know that, they claim anyway, he’s running around the clock and just barely gets any sleep time. Even his hours of where he eats and has other things to do other than just work, he’s still working. I mean, even at dinner, I mean, he’s got other people that he’s surrounded with that he’s talking to, and on the phone with different country presidents and so forth, and maybe he can do that for a few years, but to do that around the clock, I don’t think it’s healthy.

Rob Artigo: There’s diminishing returns, because if you are … You were talking about the cognitive impacts of, the positive cognitive impacts of getting rest, letting your mind rest, so you can actually go drive for 80 hours a week and really only get 60% and even less productivity out of it mentally, because you’re not thinking totally straight, than if you worked fewer hours and gave yourself a chance for your mind to recuperate.

Ray Zinn: Yep. Well, that’s part of it too. You can’t exercise 24/7. You have to spell off a little while. I exercise five days a week, I don’t exercise seven days a week, and so you have to give your body a little chance to relax and to recuperate. I’ve heard that there are people that even conduct business while they’re taking care of some personal business, as they say, or even when they’re at the dinner table, but to me, it’s not healthy. I mean, your stomach, you can’t have a decent meal and digest that meal effectively if you are arguing with somebody over the phone. I mean, your system recognizes when you’re upset or when things aren’t going right, and so pounding your fist on the table while you’re eating or yelling and screaming into the phone is not going to help your digestion. I think there’s more to life to be successful than just working 80 hours a week on your job or your work function.

Rob Artigo: If I hear you correctly, Ray, it seems like it’s a … Excuse me. It seems like it’s really a matter of saying it’s okay to work a lot of hours one week. You just don’t want to make it a habit of doing that throughout your career, because eventually it’ll run you down and you’ll be less useful.

Ray Zinn: Yeah, I know people that literally believe they have to work 80 hours a week or they don’t think they’re being successful, and that’s just a mindset. It’s not reality, and so if you think you have to work 80 hours a week to be successful, God bless you, because you’re not going to live a long healthy life. I ran Micrel for 37 years and I’m still working, even though it’s been 10 years since I sold the company. I’m still actively either writing books or doing podcasts or teaching at the universities, so I haven’t backed off doing things. I just don’t believe that I have to work 80 hours a week to be successful.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, you have your own private plane, and I’d be worried about you, your longevity if I found out, “Okay, I’m in New York, I’m heading to Dallas right now. I’ve got to be in LA by 2:00 tomorrow afternoon. I’ve got a meeting there, it’s an hour. Then I’m going back to the Bay Area.” Something like that, I would definitely find that a concern, but there are people who do that, and I think maybe that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re 25 years old, but when you start piling on those years of hard work, like you said, the longevity’s not there, and then you’re just burned out or we lose you too soon.

Ray Zinn: Well, in my mind, to be successful, it has to be more than just your work opportunity or your work objective. You have work at home to do, you’ve got your family to raise, you’ve got service projects to help others in your community, and it’s more than just pounding away at your job function. Remember, there is a balance you have to have, whether it be in the way you eat, the way you exercise, the way you interact with other people, your family. It has to be balanced. Anything that’s out of balance, as you know, doesn’t do well. Tires on a car that are out of balance, you know what that does to the car and to you, so balance is important.

Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, I want to thank all the listeners, and in this case, viewers, for those who watch this on YouTube, on your YouTube channel. Thank you for being here for the Tough Things First podcast. You can join the conversation at Toughthingsfirst.com. Your questions and your comments are welcome. You can follow Ray on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First. As you know, the Zen of Zen series is available, one, two, and three, and on sale now, The Essential Leader, which is this image you see behind me right here, 10 Skills and Attributes and Fundamentals that Make Up the Essential Leader. Thank you, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob. Good to be with you.

…   continue reading

90 episodes

#Marketing #Ray Zinn #Business #Entrepreneur

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