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Do Founders Get Holidays?

Regular people work about 2,000 hours a year and spend weekends and holidays doing things with their friends and families.

They don’t tend to be my readers.

They generally don’t know the type of people who are my readers.

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Photo by <a href=httpsunsplashcomtunebasicsutm source=wordpress instant imagesutm medium=referralutm source=wordpress instant imagesutm medium=referral>Kerin Gedge<a> on <a href=httpsunsplashcomutm source=wordpress instant imagesutm medium=referral>Unsplash<a>

Startup workers clock in about 3,000. They’ve heard rumors about weekends and holidays, but generally, write them off as myths when their friends and families try to tell them about such things.

clock in closer to 4,000; probably above that. Eight plus hours a week for work. Maybe Forty for sleep. Less than 50 for everything else. Holidays catch them by surprise when a store is unexpectedly closed.

Can’t even get them to recognize Festivus. And if I did, they probably focus on the tradition of the “airing of grievances” to complain about the stores being unexpectedly closed.

But if they read my productivity series, they could probably save at least one percent of their time. That could give them one weekend each year. Or two holidays.

Yes, two holidays. Festivus and Thanksgiving.

And on Thanksgiving, they could remember that for them to be able to work hundred hours weeks (rather than just eighty-hour weeks), there has to be an entire society of people working hard to provide support and infrastructure.

I am for the other 364 days when they aren’t thinking about, I will be twice as grateful to everyone that spends their 2,000 hours making sure that I have power, Internet, phone service, and an entire supply chain of things I rely on, would be entirely unable to build for myself, and all too often take entirely for granted.

 

Thank you.

Written by Russell Brand

Entrepreneur in residence at Founder Institute, he has mentored, performed due diligence on and invested in numerous early stage companies. Hundreds of these early stage companies have described Russell’s insights and advice as the most useful thing in the history of their companies. He has always had an inborn ability to find more valuable uses of new ideas and faster ways to achieve results.

 

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