on 90 hour work weeks and Identity-Work balance

Prelude

Lately, an older generation of founders have called in for younger people to work longer hours, 80-90 hour work weeks. Their argument is up to the brim on morality, dash of patriotism. Naturally, I am repulsed at this harkening of glory days made by insanely rich gentlemen (women, in general are smarter). But instead of following my natural instinct of ridiculing their statements immediately and questioning their intentions, I wanted to study this subject a bit. I wanted to look around and see how individuals see their work, their working hours and how much is it all dependent on their identity. I have worked 90 hours a week voluntarily, and I have worked 30 hours too, what changed for me between those two stages ? And if I could come up with a hypothesis, would that help people make sense of where they are in their career. And decide for themselves how they want to feel about working longer hours.

The following is what I have come up with - Identity-Work alignment, how various sections of society place in the matrix, how age and stage in life impacts our identity and therefore working hours, and similarly how financial freedom changes our identity.

Identity Work Alignment

Identity-work alignment refers to the degree to which individuals integrate their professional work into their core sense of self and purpose. High identity-work alignment occurs when people view their occupation or professional role as a fundamental part of who they are, rather than simply what they do. This alignment manifests in seeing work as a primary source of meaning, personal fulfilment, and life purpose, often leading to a blurred boundary between professional and personal life.

Key aspects of identity-work alignment include:

• The extent to which individuals define themselves through their work
• How much they derive their sense of purpose from their professional activities
• The degree to which work success or failure affects their self-worth
• How central work is to their life narrative and future vision

The effect of identity alignment to working hours, I posit, is direct and other parameters like skill or talent do not make a difference.

The scatter plot above depicts how working members of society can be divided into roughly 4 sections. (Usual caveats on borders and grey areas, exceptions exist etc). Let's start from the top.

High Effort and Low WI Alignment

The green cluster.

• These individuals show high effort (70-80 hours/week) but low work-identity alignment
• They represent people who work long hours out of necessity rather than choice
• Examples might include:

They might be saying things like:

• "I'm working to live, not living to work"
• "I need all these hours to pay the bills"
• "I wish I could work less, but I can't afford to"

The green cluster suggests economic necessity driving long hours despite low identification

The middle ground

The purple cluster.

1. Traditional professional careers where:

• People have some investment in their professional identity
• Standard expectations are for somewhat above-average hours
• Examples might include middle management, established professionals, skilled knowledge workers

2. People who are:

• Balancing career ambitions with other life priorities
• Somewhat engaged with their work but not completely defined by it
• Working extra hours but not to an extreme degree

These workers might say things like:

• "My career is important to me, but it's not everything"
• "I put in extra hours when needed, but I have boundaries"
• "I care about my work, but I also have other interests"

The purple represents a professional and economical middle ground

Low Effort High WI Alignment

The orange cluster.

• Highly skilled senior professionals who:
• People in roles where:
• Personal time limits like:

A part of this cluster seems to challenge the assumption that high work-identity alignment automatically leads to overwork. Instead, it suggests that some people can be deeply invested in their work identity while maintaining healthy work-life boundaries. Most likely though (based on limited data) these are individuals who are financially independent, or are forced to work lesser hours due to domestic or physical conditions. And perhaps it also includes people with more seniority and leverage - a group of semi-retired individuals.

Mavericks - High Alignment And High Effort

The red cluster likely represents what we might call "work-identity merged" individuals. These are high-agency people who:

1. View their work as their primary life purpose or calling
2. Have largely merged their personal identity with their professional role
3. May find it difficult to separate their self-worth from work performance
4. Often work in roles that society views as "vocations" - perhaps founders, researchers, artists, or other professions where the line between "work" and "life" is naturally blurred.

These individuals put in substantially more hours than the average 40-hour work week, suggesting that their high identity-work alignment leads them to voluntarily extend their working hours. This isn't necessarily because they're forced to work these hours, but because their work is so fundamentally intertwined with who they are that they may not view it as "work" in the traditional sense.

A key characteristic might be that these individuals often say things like:

• "I would do this work even if I wasn't paid"
• "My work is who I am"
• "I don't have a job, I have a calling"

The effect of age in our identity

For the green, purple and orange clusters, the identity of individuals changes with age and events in life. These 4 stages are -

• Before Kids - normally individuals have very low outside-of-work dependents and they tend to be able to spend more time at work. This is where most people have identity aligned to work.
• After Kids - individuals with dependent children tend to prefer to spend more time with them if they are able to. The identity of a parent starts changes the alignment with work. Arguably more so for women.
• 50s - health issues creep up, compared to younger people the amount of effort people want to spend at work becomes lower. The identity change here is normally based on physical limits.
• (Semi)Retirement - after individuals are deemed retired because of a government specified age limit, or choose for themselves. People in this stage identify with having run the race, but still want to contribute to society as best as they can.

The red cluster on the other hand - of Mavericks, remains the same throughout. It is a group of individuals who do not change much regardless of their age, till they decide to retire and pick up the orange cluster as a good place to retire. When they have kids, they find a way to co-parent or care less about parenting. They identify age as a detriment and push for better health in their 40s, so they can continue as long as they can.

The effect of financial freedom to our identity

This is perhaps the more controversial part, and I will keep it brief. Without data it is hard to prove/disprove this, but this is intuitive and based on individuals I have recorded around me.

As individuals gain financial freedom, for people in the areas outside of the Maverick zone, alignment to work reduces.

• With people in the purple and green zones, their working hours reduce as their spending power increases. They spend more time on non-work aspects of their life.
• With people in orange zone, increased financial independence increases their working hours - they can hire house help and pursue a career, for eg.
• With people in the red zone, not much changes in working hours.

Contrariwise, the degrowth case - we should also examine the impact of getting paid lesser than peers continuously -

• With people in the green zone, their working hours increase to make for the deficit.
• With people in the purple zones switch jobs, become negative and drop in performance.
• With people in orange zone, not much changes.
• With people in the red zone, not much changes in working hours to a limit. When sustenance becomes a problem, they give up and go back the purple zone. (Given the rarity and their impact, it is extremely important that such individuals are paid well.)

A better call to action

For founders then, who want people working with them for as long as they do, what is a better way than standing atop their bully pulpits and yelling out in general about how long hours are needed to build nations etc ? I think they are better off if they -

1. Understand how to get the best from people based on their Identity not their Job Role.
2. Work on "alignment" - make individuals understand why their work is important and how it makes an impact. High alignment will come with more work, so move more people to this cluster. This in many ways is the primary job of a founder.
3. Identify the high identity-work alignment crowd during their hiring process. High agency is a very clear sign of such people.
4. Commit to paying people proportionate to what you reckon as a measure of alignment - if you see outcomes as the measure, gives bonuses on outcomes; if you see input hours as a measure, pay well for overtime.