A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Jack Ma is the founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. He recently extolled the virtues on social media of working long hours, calling it a blessing..

Ma took to social media recently to voice his support of an intense work culture known as “996,” which refers to working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. That all-consuming, life-force-sucking schedule is reportedly common among the country’s big technology companies and startups and Ma is okay with that.

And you thought the US was bad.

US startups have always been famous (infamous?) for working 80+ hour weeks and pulling multiple all-nighters conferred even more bragging rights.

More bragging rights, no matter the size of your company.

Sometime in the last 20 years, with the rise of giant tech companies, unicorns, unicorn wannabes, and other new(ish) companies, long hours got baked into startup culture and continued long after the company qualifies as a “startup.”

But even the Chinese government disagrees with Ma’s 996.

“The mandatory enforcement of 996 overtime culture not only reflects the arrogance of business managers, but also is unfair and impractical.”

Working excessive hours damages/destroys family, friendships, productivity, creativity, and a host of other things, but the first thing to suffer is sleep.

Besides the damage that lack of sleep does in the present, the long-term damage, while different, is as dangerous as football.

Considering how the tech world worships health, longevity and the possibility of extending their lives well past 100 they may want to rethink those long hours.

Not because I say so, but they might want to listen to Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of the book “Why We Sleep.”

Image credit: HikingArtist and Tech Insider

I have been trying to think of topics to write about this week and am struggling. As I laid down in bed only one thing came to mind, sleep.

I have a 5 week old now, along with three other beautiful children and sleep alludes me.

They all have different schedules and needs. They are all competing for my attention as well.

How can I fix this? Sleep.

It made me think of the competing interests we have at work. Different deadlines. Different priorities. Agendas to pursue. They can all add up.

I had a conflict at work recently.

The sum of it was not that great but in the moment it was contentious. Emails and gnashing of teeth on both sides.

I tend to not get too wrapped up in drama at work, but it will happen when two or more humans are gathered.

In that moment I was angry, but I chose to wait to respond.

My solution? Sleep.

I rested and rethought about a solution.

The next day the sun was shining and the birds sang. I was no longer angry and was able to resolve the issues.

Sleep. That is all you need.

I know this is not the only answer to life, but at this moment it’s a good answer.

Image credit: Ana Sofia Guerreirinho

Have you ever had one of those days where you just can’t seem to get it together?

You drink your coffee, go on your run, or perhaps your moment of zen. Yet that doesn’t get you out of your rut. What do you do about it?

I am in a stage of life where I am building. 

I am building my sales practice, building my family (up to five now), and building my wealth. I have found that those all keep me busy and I have little time for me. When I compare myself to my friends, though, they are in similar circumstances.

The ebb and flow of emotions is normal. Low points happen and should not be feared. However, if we allow ourselves to dwell too long, it can become more than a rut, it can be a lifestyle.

I have a new little girl at home and she is amazing. She also is a night owl and I have found that sleep deprivation and feeling down are directly correlated. My wife and I are walking around in a fog and I am not at my best.

I have started to become aware of this in the past week and have actively worked out ways to overcome it.

Currently my little one likes to wake around 5:30 in the morning. I have found if I just get up to go for a run I get the added bonus of watching the sun rise. That’s an amazing feeling.

I have also found that she likes to cry a bit so we stay up rocking her. This has led to my wife and I having genuine conversations because our phones aren’t attached to our faces. This has also been amazing as I actually like my wife. (To be clear I love her as well).

I say all of this because it’s on my mind. I know I am a bit low and I know others are too on occasion.

Ultimately it is our choice on how we proceed.

How will you proceed?

Image credit: Larry Jacobsen

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Back in the distant 1980s, when startups were valued for what they did, as opposed to the cash they raised, a founder made a casual comment that has stuck with me all these years.

He said, “There will be times when my team has to pull all-nighters, but if it happens often it is a failure of management to correctly schedule the work and set viable deadlines, as opposed to an unexpected emergency.”

Boy, has that changed. These days founders brag about their 80-120-always-on-hour-weeks and expect their team to do the same.

And they do.

It’s the new techie status symbol.

And not just in tech land.

The gig economy not only brags about it, they base their recruiting on it.

 “You eat a coffee for lunch,” the [Fiverr] ad proclaims. “You follow through on your follow through. Sleep deprivation is your drug of choice. You might be a doer.”

Doer? Or exploitee?

Or, more accurately, stupid, with a capital S.

“A culture of overwork is damaging because it turns brief binges of hard work into a long-term strategy, and, worse still, an expectation. When managers start measuring the worth of their employees according to how quickly they return emails at 3 a.m., that particular work culture is broken,” Adam Alter, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, told Business Insider in an email. (He wrote a book about how technology keeps us “always on.”)

Stupid because 80-100+ hour weeks lowers creativity and productivity, while increasing coding and other errors. Not to mention lost sales and misunderstandings.

Founders take note. Not of me, but of the research, crunch the numbers, and analyze the data.

Then think twice, send your team home and go yourself and get some sleep.

Even Uber is planning on that.

“Uber is a data-driven company, and the data shows unequivocally that when you work longer, you are not working smarter,” Uber board member Arianna Huffington told the company’s employees during an all-hands meeting last week, according to leaked audio obtained by Yahoo.
Huffington also added that employees won’t have to be “always on” and responsive to whatever is going on at the office, no matter where they are. Because “when you’re always on you’re depleted, you are distracted,” and “not as creative” as you are when you’re well-rested, Huffington also said, channeling the thesis of her new pro-sleep startup Thrive.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Last year I wrote two posts on the value of sleep and how to power nap, important to all, but especially to entrepreneurs.

Without good sleep your life will be ruined, but if you don’t drink enough water your life will end, period. (Note: it’s not a comfortable ending.)

People know this, it’s not rocket science.

But knowing isn’t doing.

So as a public service today I’m sharing an article about Plant Nanny; a whimsical way to make sure you stay hydrated.

When you download the app, you input some personal information (height, weight, physical activity level) and then pick out a plant. Plant Nanny tells you how many cups of water you have to drink per day.

For every cup of water you drink, you tap the little circle in the bottom right hand corner. The goal is to drink all the cups of water you’re supposed to every day. It keeps your plant happy, and presumably it keeps you hydrated. If you forget to water your plant, it will look sad. If you completely neglect it, it will die and you’ll have to start over.

I like the fact that the amount of water, as well as the size of your “cup,” is customizable based on you — not one-size-fits-all, which it doesn’t.

It works on iPhone and Android, so you don’t have that excuse.

Besides being a lot healthier, water is a whole lot cheaper — as in free.

If you have a thing against tap water, invest in a good, refillable, filtering water bottle.

Because a lot of bottled water is not special and plastic is definitely not green.

Happy hydrating.

Image credit: Plant Nanny

Procter and Gamble is known as a marketing powerhouse and no novice when it comes to social media.

So it makes you wonder how one of its divisions could have stuck its foot so deeply into its mouth on Twitter.

Vicks, maker of NyQuil, DayQuil and ZzzQuil tweeted the following

SLEEP LIKE he finally proposed. And you have been dating for a decade. #SleepLike #engaged #shesaidyes pic.twitter.com/r3MQNNjZM6

— ZzzQuil (@ZzzQuil) January 23, 2015

and was lambasted for 19 hours by women and men alike.

While the tweet sucks as an attempt at humor, it is right in line with two TV ads currently running.

In case you aren’t familiar, one is for dads and one is for moms.

The dads take NyQuil so they can go to work, while the moms take DayQuil so they can stay home and chauffeur the kids around.

Seems like all three would play better in the 1950s than now.

I suppose you could blame Vicks advertising agency for them, but Vicks marketing must have signed off on them.

It just goes to show that even the savviest companies can trip if they lose site of who their customers are, as opposed to who they were.

Image credit: theimpulsivebuy

Entrepreneurs are notorious for their 80 to 100 hour weeks.

In fact, many of them see that work schedule as a badge of honor; an initiation by fire to an exclusive club.

What they ignore is that as time goes by each week, the quality of the work produced goes down.

Because, much as they want to be superman, entrepreneurs are human and humans require food and their brains require rest to function at their best.

Many have tried napping, but often feel worse afterwards.

The good news is that there is a scientific reason why naps that exceed 30 minutes have the opposite effect as desired.

The secret to revitalizing a tired brain and juicing creativity is not found in grabbing an hour’s sleep here and there.

It’s found in the practice of Power Napping.

Try it; it works!

YouTube credit: AsapSCIENCE

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Whether you admire Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post, or not, you can’t argue with her success.

But it came at a cost, “…seven years ago I collapsed from exhaustion, burnout and sleep deprivation. I broke my cheekbone on the way down and got four stitches on my right eye.”

That incident lead Huffington to add a third metric to success’ standard two metrics of money and power.

…the third metric, which includes our well-being, our wisdom, our capacity to wonder and bring joy into our lives, and our capacity to give. Without these four pillars, life is really reduced to our to-do list.

Too many in the startup community do treat their lives as a to-do list, from starting a company through marriage and kids, with sub to-do lists for each.

They lose sight of the simple; seeing life as a series of competitive challenges.

Which I find hilarious, since that attitude harks back to the much maligned Boomers, whose mantra was “life is a challenge to be overcome.”

Granted, there are many challenges that indeed need to be added to our to-do list until overcome, but there are many others that, although noticed, may be passed by, with nary a ripple in our well-being.

Destroying yourself for the sake of a vision benefits no one—not your team, nor your investors, nor your family/friends and least of all yourself.

Image credit: HikingArtist