“You're better off with a kick-ass half than a half-assed whole.”
― David Heinemeier Hansson, Rework
TLDR: David Heinemeier Hansson and Yvon Chouinard are great rolemodels for living simply and balanced work, especially for entrepreneurs.
I'm Scandinavian and come from a very different and balanced work culture incomparable to the US. First of all by just working a blue-collar job fulltime(37 hours pr week), you can live a high quality life and even save up enough to buy property in the countryside. So I do have a lot of advantages that most would find hard to recreate.
I just wanted to tell you as a young entrepreneur and fulltime MA Student ranking up debt, I'm so happy for the life I'm living and continuously creating. I don't work crazy hours like most other entrepreneurs or people who work insanely much in order to save up for living free in a couple of years. I reach my deadlines and move forward (OK, some periods I work more hours than a normal fulltime job). For me I prefer a balance, where work and life aren't divided, but blend together. I want to be able to answer the question: was it worth it? even if I fail or should I fall off a cliff tomorrow. I want my time to be well spend to see as many sunsets as possible, climb mountains, dance with people, admire blue skies and feel the sun on my skin. For me time well spend is neither not working nor working constantly. And working a lot, being stressed continuously, makes me a worse leader, thinker and person. I need to be in nature and connect with other people to inspire my creativeness. I will always much rather work 2 hours well than 10 half-assed.
What I wanted to give you in this community, is a bit different take on “antiwork”, more like “balanced work”, it's two rolemodels I admire for their work balance, who have written great books about it too:
Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia
Famous for “Let my people go surfing”
David Heinemeier Hansson
A Danish entrepreneur that throughout his career has managed to avoid submitting to the crazy workhours and have wrote some best selling books about it:
“Workaholics don't actually accomplish more than nonworkaholics. They may claim to be perfectionists, but that just mean they're wasting time fixating on inconsequential details instead of moving on to the next task.”