Prateek's Musings

On 30th August 2022, Shantanu Deshpande, the founder and CEO of Bombay Shaving Company, wrote this in a LinkedIn post -

When you are 22 and new in your job, throw yourself into it. Eat well and stay fit, but put in the 18 hour days for at least 4-5 years.

I see a LOT of youngsters who watch random content all over and convince themselves that 'work life balance, spending time with family, rejuvenation bla bla' is important.

It is, but not this early.

That early, worship your work. Whatever it is. The flex you build in the first 5 years of your career carries you for the rest of it.

Don't do random rona-dhona. Take it on the chin and be relentless. You will be way better for it.

As expected, the post went viral on social media pretty soon for the wrong reasons. The backlash started coming in thick and fast, and pretty quickly became about the person and the work culture at his company. Two days later, he made another post stating that it will be his last LinkedIn post and talking about the abuse his parents received from people. And that's when I thought that I need to jump on the bandwagon and give my worthless opinion.

Work 18 hours a day

I'll start by telling something related to IIMA, where I got my MBA. Term 1 at IIMA is very hectic due to the triple whammy of academics, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities and preparation for summer placements. That's why aspirants get to hear things like people not getting more than four hours of sleep a day. As someone who has been there and done that, I can assure you that this is not true. A better way to say this would be that there are a few occasions when some people don't get enough sleep due to all these commitments. The same could happen at work. There could be occasions when you are just about to finish up your work at the end of the day, when you get called into some firefighting situation by someone three levels above you and you end up working for as many hours until things get handled. You definitely can say no, but you cannot predict the response and have to be prepared to work anyway. And after you finish your work, you have to be ready to start working as per your regular work hours on the next day. If you start your own venture, these situations will arise pretty often, especially in the early days. And to add to your woes, you will have very little help!

No system is without a bottleneck, and with bottlenecks come inefficiencies which compound and create these firefighting situations. They can be predicted to some extent with some success, but they cannot be avoided. If one has built the resilience to deal with such situations, the physical and mental impact wouldn't be as severe. Does that mean you should work for 18 hours every day? Not at all! I'd rather suggest enhancing your own productivity by identifying what workflow works best for you in case of both individual and collective tasks. That way, you might not be the bottleneck.

Random content all over

The rise of advertising as the force behind all media forms has motivated everybody to become an "influencer". These influencers with their clickbait thumbnails and tag lines could fool you into buying any worthless crap for steep prices (read ad revenues). Many concepts cannot have a standard definition, and are pretty contextual. You cannot just leave Gurgaon on Friday evening, spend a couple of days in Manali and come back to Gurgaon in the wee hours of Monday every other weekend because an influencer who does the same got a million views on his Shimla Insta reel. Learn to filter information, investigate, try things and then decide whether they really fit in your definition of work-life balance. If you don't enjoy spending every weekend with your family, say it to them upfront! Identify what helps you to rejuvenate, not what someone else tells you.

Worship your work

Most of us don't find our work to be rewarding emotionally or materially. That might be because discovering one's true calling doesn't happen overnight. It takes a really long time and a lot of experience before one finally realises their true passion, and even when that happens they might not end up pursuing it if affects their earning potential. Employees will always feel that they don't get paid in line with the money they make for their employers, and the imperfect nature of performance measurement systems deepens this disillusionment. If you are a founder, you would probably be heavily drawn to the idea, the process of scaling it and the monetary and pseudo-monetary returns. That could definitely drive you to work for long hours.

So how can you worship your work? The closest you could get to worship is by displaying integrity and honesty. All of us are salespeople in some way, and all salespeople are scammers, i.e. they reveal incomplete information about the product or service they intend to sell. If this mentality could be curbed and information asymmetry could be reduced to some extent, which is quite difficult in the capitalist world, things might improve. Keep the lines of communication open, get a clear understanding about expectations associated with each task and share genuine information about your progress, the quick wins and the challenges encountered along the way.

Take it on the chin

There is no person who has never experienced failure of any magnitude at any stage of their lives. Things almost never go to plan, and when they don't the outcomes usually tend to be sub-par. If one loses their drive to succeed because they encountered failure, they might never be able to achieve the success they set out for. As a frequent overthinker who enjoys feeling miserable about my smallest failures, I know the physical and emotional toll it takes on a person. In this competitive world, mental health has become very fragile. If we could objectively analyse, discuss and work on what went wrong whenever we failed, it will definitely make us strong enough to empower the people around us.

Final thoughts

Our culture relies a lot on implicit communication. But we get to interact with people from cultures with primarily explicit communication, and that could cloud our judgement with respect to identifying and segregating what is stated and what is implied. In my opinion, Shantanu faltered with his choice of words, but I tried to make sense of what was implied in parts of his statement. I strongly detest the personal attacks on him and his parents. But to quote his words, I hope he takes it on the chin and stays relentless!