I find myself often going back and forth between working to live and living to work. As a freelancer you have the ultimate flexibility to just work when you want and not work when you don’t want, but at the same time you see the direct finacial benefit to busting your ass. It is not only what you put into it, but what you get out of it.

I recently watched a great video from FoWA which is a sort of two sided view of Work/Life Balance presented by Jason Calacanis and Tom Nixon:

This video got me to thinking… which side do I relate to more. Now I don’t think I will ever think I will me making millions of dollars a year, but I do love what I do and I don’t really see the problem with working 14 hour days/7 days a week, as long as it is on my terms, doing what I love to do. At the same time I have recently grown to appreciate spending more time with my family, socializing with people other then the people I work with (my tolerance for “normal” people stupidity has seemed to go up in my old age) and in general just taking the time to “smell the roses” of life.

I can’t say I clearly identify with either of these… there is an aspect of me that lives to work, but I also don’t want work to be my only thing. I think perhaps there is a hybrid alternative that really boils down to your output expectations. If your goal for your work is to be rich, then you just need to put in the time and work hard, but if you are like me and find that money is a lesser drive then creating cool things and conquering problems and projects I find that I can usually take on these issues at a couple weeks/months spans at a time. I think this comes from the fact that I am a starter, not a sustainer. I can come up with ideas, implement great solutions and then left them out into the webosphere, but I  have no real interest in sustaining business. The great thing about it is as a freelancer, I really only ever start things… very few of my jobs have a great amount of retainer quality to them and I don’t have to do the mundane tasks that you need to do to “run” a business. I can do a sprint style of work, working hard for 20 hours a day nonstop for a couple weeks, and then I can work 3 hours a day , 3 days a week for a month, nurturing my other needs besides work.

Perhaps as a startup you just need to find the balance of people that can acomplish all jobs and you don’t neccessarily have to have an all or nothing attitude.