Like most entrepreneurs, part of the price (and joy) of being an entrepreneur is the challenge that comes with working in a job with no real bounds, no end point, and no finish line.  Sure, many other folks work quite hard as well (you know who you are), but as a job class, few folks work harder than entrepreneurs.

But how hard do you work?  Where do you draw the line?

We all know that every minute spent on a growing business helps.  But does it?  As the heat of the DC summer kicked in again this week, the kids are hitting the pools, picnics and barbecues are running at full tilt, and (as usual) many entrepreneurs are slogging away behind computer screens.

I've started 4 companies now, and one thing that has become apparent to me is that really long hours really do not have a direct correlation to success.  I do suspect that short hours correlate with failures, but we're focusing on the one extreme here - people who work incessantly.  I believe that the highest correlation with success (putting aside luck) is smart work, not extreme hours of hard work. 

Follow this logic with me:  When you work extreme hours, you begin to shut out the outside world: things like human relationships, family, leisure time, sports, and many wonderful aspects of life.  When I have been in the "extreme zone" the days seemed to flow together, and I felt like a ping-pong ball bouncing back and forth between one side of the table called "work" and another side called "sleep".  The days blended together.  The nights were just respites between work sessions.  When I finally gave myself a break, it was like cool water in the desert.  It felt so good to unplug and take in the sights and sounds of that thing called life.  But what was more amazing was that when I returned to work, I found that I had gotten off track.  Even though I had made a lot of "progress" on a project, often I discovered that in my isolation with my co-workers, we had drifted from the simplicity of the business model and customer solution into an area I'll call "self-aggrandized coding".  In a nutshell, we were creating a solution that while very good, had drifted from the original vision and customer focus.  we were building more for ourselves than the customer.

Fortunately, this problem was caught in time, and we all got back on track (the end result proved this).

But it made me think - and I realized that this is a pattern I'd seen in the past, albeit to a much lesser degree.  The lack of human, life-based perspective - left-brain mental breaks if you will - can easily cause one to become self-absorbed and misaligned with the proper, balanced goals.  And if the stretches between breaks are long, the odds of getting off-task are pretty high.  The breaks put your work into perspective and help you keep your solution simple, focused, and on track.  The breaks also allow you to take int he bigger picture which cannot be done in a work-sleep-work-sleep endless cycle.

So in a nutshell - take the kids to the pool or have a barbecue.  Not only do you (and your family) deserve it, but your company will actually benefit. 

Sounds like a win-win scenario to me.