Aristocrat Hours: Work Like a Lion Part Deux

I’m a big believer of 996 and crazy work hours. Especially if you are in your twenties and thirties. 

When I hear a twenty-something talk about work-life balance, I think they are stupid, probably deluded and maybe even retarded. WTF? You have the energy and the whole life ahead of you. 

You literally don’t know anything about how the world works and you have to prove yourself. Prove yourself to yourself and to others. These are foundational: the skills, the reputation and relationships. So you have to grind when you are younger. That is the way the world works. 

But this is different when you get into your mid-late 40s. At least it was for me. You probably know more. You have less energy, despite biohacking, exercise and other things. So you have to be more strategic and focused. I heard the term “Aristocrat Hours” from my friend Arjun. Basically 10 am to 3 pm. Hours where you work. The rest of the time it’s yours to spend on whatever you want to do. Reading, writing, family time, exercise, walks in nature. It’s about sustainability. It makes sense to me. I want to work till the end of my life. My retirement plan is death. That means I need to be able to do this for at least another 40 years. I might add you can’t do this as an employee, only if you are self employed or run a business.

In my business it’s about staying relevant and understanding what is happening in technology, startups and geopolitics and global macro. That means like investors of old, you have lots of downtime to read, write and think. To parse the signal from the noise as they say. Finding the reality. This is critical to stay on top of things and get new ideas. Or at minimum understand what is going on and how to position yourself and business accordingly.  

That doesn’t mean I don’t grind or turn it on when I need to. You work like a lion as I wrote about before. There are days and weeks (sometimes even months, like in the summer) of relatively low activity, followed by periods of intense activity and work weeks. Like 100-120 hour work weeks, just like in my good old days. Aristocrat hours enable this, slow pace for a while as you build knowledge and energy that gets expended on the right activities in a short period of time. Rinse and repeat. 

I’ve learned a lot of this mindset and tips from Lux Life Style Labs: https://luxlifestylelab.substack.com/. I highly recommend them. As they wrote, it’s about effectiveness, not efficiency. 

“We have been sold the lie of “Productivity.” We are obsessed with doing things faster, better, and cheaper. But if you are moving at 200 mph in the wrong direction, your efficiency is just accelerating your failure. Most people spend their lives optimizing tasks that shouldn’t exist in the first place. This is “Busy-Work” dressed in high-end software.

The Thesis in One Line: It is better to do the right thing slowly than the wrong thing at the speed of light.

The curator doesn’t manage time; they manage Leverage. They refuse to participate in the “Efficiency Race.”

The concept of Aristocrat Hours helps you sustain and become more effective in life.