What is it Thomas Edison who said "genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration"?
The Wizard of Menlo Park is credited with coming up with that particular quote, but you can find any number of similar sayings that encourage you to put your nose to the grindstone, work your fingers to the bone, burn the midnight oil, and get down to business.
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But how much perspiration should you devote to your inspiration? How much midnight oil can you burn before you burn out?
We hear so much about work-life balance nowadays, but the idea that people should limit the amount of time spent at work dates back to the manufacturing laws of the late 1800s, when the work hours of women and children were restricted.
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The Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 established a 44-hour workweek, although professionals such as doctors were assumed to be always on call.
The Women's Liberation Movement of the 1980s brought the concept of work-life balance back to the forefront. In fact, the term “work-life balance” first appeared in the UK during this time as a key element of the women’s movement.
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Flexible working schedules and maternity leaves were popularized to accommodate women in the work force. The concept was expanded to encompass professional men and women.
Still, some people still sing the praises of tipping the work-life balance heavily toward work.
For Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk it comes down to “simple math.”
“I work hard, like every waking hour,” said the chainsaw-wielding head of the Department of Government Efficiency. “If somebody else is working 50 hours [per week] and you’re working 100, you’ll get twice as much done in the course of a year as the other company."
During the commencement address at USC’s Marshall School of Business in 2014, Musk said "you need to work super hard."
“When my brother and I started our first company, instead of getting an apartment, we rented a small office and we slept on the couch,” he said. “We showered at the YMCA and were so hard up that we only had one computer, so the website was up during the day and I was coding at night.”
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But does that work for everybody?
A 2024 study by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 44% of the 1,405 surveyed US employees felt burned out at work, 45% felt “emotionally drained” from their work and 51% felt “used up” at the end of the work day.
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The billionaire philanthropist and corporate executive Manoj Bhargava has heard Musk's 100-hour concept and he respectfully disagrees.
"Actually it's not really true," said Bhargava, who founded 5-hour Energy drinks. "There are some of us who can work much longer hours. If you're doing rote work, you can do 10 hours or 12 hours. I drove a taxi for 12 hours a day. You can do that.
"But if you're working with your brain and actually being productive in terms of thinking, then you're probably productively 8 or 9 nine hours, 12 hours, tops."
Bhargava, majority owner of TheStreet's parent, The Arena Group (AREN) , discussed work and business in his recently launched The Business of Everything podcast.
"I think there's a misunderstanding of what business is to begin with," he said. "For example, business people think, 'oh, it's chasing profits, you got to make a lot of money,' when it really isn't."
"What really businesses is picking the right project and then doing it well and the result is profit or the result is success, because if you chase profits, you end up going bankrupt," Bhargava added. "You do dumb stuff that you shouldn't do."
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