Reply to Throw Away Your Work
'Pages of rap lyrics I've writen'This would have been a 7.5, but you lose 0.5 for lack of proof reading. ;)
Reply to Live Longer by Riding a Motorcycle (sort of)
Everything's risk vs. reward; playing the odds.
You're more likely to have an accident on a motorcycle caused by another driver than by your own error, and those are statistics that are very hard to find.
In my immediate family, there have been three motorcyclists (parents, sister). One is now on morphine every single day for the pain caused by having his leg broken in 7 places and his knee shattered, having had a car drive out of a drive way and smash his leg against the bike (an accident determined in court as 100% the car driver's fault), another had a ligament in her knee snapped, causing frequent dislocations in the 20 years since the accident (also caused by the other driver, turning a corner and driving on the wrong side of the road) and constant pain; the last one has been happily riding for the past five years; no accidents or even near misses.
Reply to Where The Bar is Set
An post, written by a friend, from the other end of the spectrum:
http://www.zog.net/xanadu-or-bust/rants-ideas/an-impassioned-defense-of-the-8-hour-work-day/
Some interesting perspectives:
'not working as much as you does not mean I'm not as good a worker as you. [..] It may, on the contrary, just indicate that you are not very good or efficient at your job.'
'Nobody ever lay on their death bed wishing they'd spent more time at the office.'
Were you not a huge advocate of the '4 hour work week' by Tim Ferriss just a few months ago. What changed?
Reply to Where The Bar is Set
Why should you spend every waking moment (or trying to spend every waking moment) being productive? Browsing the internet is fun. Some TV shows are great fun; I enjoy watching films. Is life being 'wasted' (by the definition in the OP)? I don't think it is, because they're enjoyable hobbies.
After spending 16 years working solidly, ten of them doing two jobs: running a consultancy on top of a full time (50-60 hours/week) career, both of which I loved - I took at nine month sabbatical. During those months I learned just how important it is to relax and sometimes, just sometimes, enjoy doing nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Timescale wise, you're still in the honeymoon phase of enjoying 80-100 hour weeks. Let's catch up in ten years time (which is how long I did those hours for), and see how well you're getting on, mentally.
Reply to Where The Bar is Set
'I think that a forty hour workweek is a joke. I NEVER go a day without doing some work, including weekends and holidays, and usually work for between eighty and a hundred hours every week.'
That doesn't read like you're making decisions for yourself, it reads like a judgement on everyone who doesn't work every day, who isn't pulling 100 hour weeks; something which studies have repeatedly shown to be dangerous to people's health. (There's a reason 'personal experience' (aka 'anecdotal evidence') isn't used in studies: it's unreliable and subject to many, many biases. I'd be surprised if you're anywhere near 100% productivity during those 'working' hours.
Most of what you write, Tynan, is interesting, sometimes inspiring (live life to the full, etc), but this post has, in my (and as someone who's been employed as well as run their own businesses etc) humble experience, crossed into the bad-influential territory (influential because I imagine a lot of your readers aspire to enjoy similar to your life experiences.)
I think you could put across the positive ethos without the additional condemnation...
Reply to Where The Bar is Set
Many studies have demonstrated that it's ineffective to work more than 40 hours/week (some say 35), and to consistently do so is potentially harmful.
Follow the trail (i.e. read that and the linked articles and studies) on http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/why-working-more-than-40-hours-a-week-is-useless.html.
Advising people to work hard is a good ethos, but what you're promoting here is seriously misguided.
Reply to A Frame-by-Frame Rebuttal to XKCD's Pickup Artist Comic
You say, 'I've shrunken it below', but it's actually about 4x the original size :)