July 28, 2010
Created another form of Gambling…..
“Some executives, in an effort to compensate for horrible experiences as children, find an exhilaration in the climb to power. As CEOs of billion-dollar corporations, they only feel alive when dealing with crisis or huge risk. Leveraged buyouts, takeovers and acquisitions become the “bets” of just another form of compulsive gambling. Hooked on the stress of extraordinary power and the risk of losing everything, they cannot leave their jobs. Deal making twenty hours a day, they can hardly sleep or be with their families. They play with traumatic possibility and cannot leave it alone. For recreation they love high-speed motorcycles, sky diving and other high risk diversions.”
Patrick Carnes
Sex, Drugs and Tommy Bahama 
July 28th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Fire the people who are workaholics! Here’s five reasons why:
Workaholics may well say that they enjoy those 14 hour days week after week, but despite their claims, working like that all month, all the time is not going to be sustainable. When the burnout crash comes, and it will, it’ll hit all the harder and according to Murphy at the least convenient time.
People who are workaholics are likely to attempt to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at the problem. If you’re dealing with people working with anything creatively that’s a deadbeat way to get great work done.
People who always work late makes the people who don’t feel inadequate for merely working reasonable hours. That’ll lead to guilt, misery, and poor morale. Worse, it’ll lead to ass-in-seat mentality where people will “stay late” out of obligation, but not really be productive.
If all you do is work, your value judgements are unlikely to be sound. Making good calls on “is it worth it?” is absolutely critical to great work. Missing out on life in general to put more hours in at the office screams “misguided values”.
Working with interesting people is more interesting than just working. If all you got going for your life is work, work, work, the good team-gelling lunches are going to be some pretty boring straight shop talk. Yawn. I’d much rather hear more about your whittling project, your last trek, how your garden is doing, or when you’ll get your flight certificate.
If your start-up can only succeed by being a sweatshop, your idea is simply not good enough. Go back to the drawing board and come up with something better that can be implemented by whole people, not cogs.