A couple days ago Micah Baldwin was kind enough to pay us a visit in KC at the Sprint Accelerator powered by Techstars. It was awesome. He covered lots of topics, and one was the importance of being on a mission. To succeed as a founder you must have the passion, the drive, a mission because startups are so fucking hard you’re gonna need every ounce of conviction to get through the tough times. And I agree 100%.

It got me thinking: what should “being on a mission” look like? Working 16 hours a day, seven days a week? To me that’s obsession, mission’s vampire cousin that sucks the life from you and your loved ones. How about a 40-hour work week, spending every night and weekend with friends and the fam? Nice thought, but it instantly puts you behind your competitors who are busting their asses every day to win.

Brad Feld also spoke to our startups about some of the same things. His main topic was work-life, and he was very careful not to call it “work-life balance”. I’ve seen some founders put illogical limits on their hours – like no more than 50/week – because they see “work-life balance” everywhere. There’s no perfect work-life balance in a startup. The reason why both Brad and Micah came up with certain strategies – doing one thing for yourself each day; giving yourself some time first thing in the morning – is because they know from experience startup life is a shit-ton of work. And you should want to put in the time. But if you completely ignore yourself or loved ones you’ll eventually implode.

(Aside: the main reason I love listening to Brad and Micah is their 100% honesty. No bullshit, no ulterior motives. Pure awesome.)

So it makes sense that if you’re hell-bent on startup success, 40-50 hours a week isn’t gonna cut it and 100 will likely destroy you. Somewhere in between, find the maximum possible workload that lets you maintain your health and relationships. If you can do this – great! You only have 1,000 other things you need to get right.

Now get back to your mission!