The Urban Legends: Entrepreneurs can…

1. sleep 4 hours per day.
2. work 72 hours straight without any sleep.
3. eat nothing but beans for a whole week.
4. sleep, eat and work inside a space of 3 square meters.
5. work continuously without any means of entertainment.

… and a lot more of such legends. In my opinion, there may be certain people who are physically and mentally capable of achieving such feats. But is it true that anyone who do exactly like that would become a successful entrepreneur? I don’t really know.

CC attribution MichaelMarlatt@flickr

I, also, yearn for being able to do just like those urban legends. There are times that I really did the same things. Even now, sometimes I might end up becoming an ultra workaholic. But most of the time, I find these to be much more common practices:

Real Life Practices:

1. Sleeping 4 hours a day can make one becomes more cranky than usual. This can affect human relations in&out-side the startup. Not something to do daily and for a long time.
2. 24 hours without sleep would damage thinking ability, 48 hours without sleep would cause heavy headaches and 72 hours without sleep would damage the brain pretty much.
3. With too little nutrition in the body, everything around you looks more eatable than they normally do.
4. Too little space can prevent the mind from thinking creatively.
5. Too little relaxation can cause deep depression and stress.

In the end, I think there are always balance in life. It’s important to live life to the fullest and sometimes get into a frenzy of working and thinking. But generally, there must be times when we need to reward ourselves and get back to the balanced state of body and mind. For almost anyone, this sounds pretty normal. But I believe for entrepreneurs and entrepreneur minded folks, this can be a hard learnt lesson.