[chrisfosterelli]

"You don't really love what you do unless you're willing to do it 17 hours a day every day" is an interesting take.

You can love what you do but if you do more of it than is sustainable because of external pressures then you will burn out. Enjoying your work is not a vaccine against burnout. I'd actually argue that people who love what they do are more likely to have trouble finding that balance. The person who hates what they do usually can't be motivated to do more than the minimum required of them.

[threetonesun]

Weird how we went from like the 4 hour workweek and all those charts about how people historically famous in their field spent only a few hours a day on what they were most famous for, to "work 12+ hours a day or you're useless".

Also this is one of a few examples I've read lately of "oh look at all this hard work I did", ignoring that they had a newborn and someone else actually did all of the hard work.

[alwa]

I read gp’s formulation differently: “if you’re working 17 hours a day, you’d better stop soon unless you’re doing it for the love of doing it.” In that sense it seems like you and gp might agree that it’s bad for you and for your coworkers if you’re working like that because of external pressures.

I don’t delight in anybody’s suffering or burnout. But I do feel relief when somebody is suffering from the pace or intensity, and alleviates their suffering by striking a more sustainable balance for them.

I feel like even people energized by efforts like that pay the piper: after such a period I for one “lay fallow”—tending to extended family and community, doing phone-it-in “day job” stuff, being in nature—for almost as long as the creative binge itself lasted.

[chrisfosterelli]

I would indeed agree with things as you've stated. I interpreted "the work they do" to mean "their craft" but if it was intended as "their specific working conditions" I can see how it'd read differently.

I think there are a lot of people that love their craft but are in specific working conditions that lead to burnout, and all I was saying is that I don't think it means they love their craft any less.