Over the last few days, several of the technology-oriented blogs that I read have included some spirited debates about the work/life balance and whether or not loving your work essentially equates to a workaholic devotion to it.  This is an issue that I have spent a lot of time thinking about and working out for myself during my career and that has even contributed to something of a career change several years ago.

The online discussion was prompted by a recent blog post by Jason Calacanis, the founder of "human-edited" search engine Mahalo.com.  The post focused on various cost-savings tips for people running technology start-ups.  Most of the items in the post were pretty innocuous suggestions about things like office furniture and equipment, but there were a couple entries that could easily be interpreted as saying that a start-up should have no use for anyone that would in any way prioritize their personal life over their work life.

The most controversial item was the following:

“Fire people who are not workaholics…. come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. go work at the post office or stabucks if you want balance in your life. For realz.”

He later attempted to soften it a bit by changing "are not workaholics" to "don’t love their work" and then crossing out "it’s not a game" and "if you want balance in your life. For realz."  He also wrote a pretty lengthy follow-up post that did help to clarify his view a bit and also shared his own general approach to his work.  Particularly in that follow-up post, he seems to be basically suggesting that unless you let your work largely dominate your life, then you must be working only out of necessity rather than actually loving what you do.

Even though my experience with working at start-ups is limited to a short stint at a tiny game developer that ended up folding pretty dramatically about 4 months after I started,   I believe that Calacanis is almost certainly correct that a pretty intense career focus is probably necessary to survive during the very early years at most start-ups.  Where I take exception is his apparent view that pretty much total devotion to work is a requirement to be able to say that you "love" your work.  I don’t believe that having a life balance and actually loving what you do are mutually-exclusive.

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I’m not a football fan.

I have found that making that simple statement can sometimes cause people to brace for an expected tirade on various perceived evils of that sport and professional sports in general.  That isn’t going to come from me, though.  My views really are as simple as the statement.  I don’t have a dislike or moral objections to the sport.  I’m just not that interested in it and generally tend to get bored pretty quickly when watching it.

For me, Super Bowl Sunday has never been that big a deal.  To be honest, I pay so little attention to the sport that I often don’t even realize the championship game is coming up until the last minute.  There have been a number of years where I didn’t even know who was playing by the time the game started or, occasionally, even until I read about the results.

That isn’t to say that I consciously avoid the game at all.  Some years, I have watched all or part of the game, although usually while doing other things and basically paying only a bit of attention to the game.  There have even been a couple years that I have gone to Super Bowl parties, but mainly for the socializing rather than the game.    If I’m around the house, I’ll often have the game on in the background, although it is pretty rare that I’m at home all afternoon on a Sunday.

Although I don’t always think of it, I also will usually set the DVR (or in the distant past, the VCR) to record the game, just in case something interesting happens.  If nothing else, there are usually some neat commercials that air during the game, so it is fun to go back and look at the ones that got some attention.  Of course, that is not as big a deal now that they have started making all the commercials available online after the game.

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I’ve seen something recently with regards to American flag etiquette that bothers me, although I have to admit I kind of feel bad for feeling bothered about it. I have noticed that this week all the Carl’s Jr. fast food locations in my area have been flying their flags at half-staff. I do understand the reason for it as the chain’s founder, Carl Karcher, just passed away.  This is something they have decided to do on their own, though, and all other flags in the area are at normal height.

I certainly do understand and empathize the company’s strong desire to pay tribute to their founder. I can imagine that the gesture probably means quite a bit to his family, friends, and long-time employees. The problem is, though, that flag etiquette calls for the lowering to half-staff only under very specific circumstances to honor individuals that had a pretty broad scale impact. As I understand it, the flag should only be placed at half-staff when the president or a state’s governor issues an order calling for it. In those cases, the order is meant to be applied either country-wide (for a presidential order) or statewide (for a gubernatorial order) and not only at specific businesses or locations.

I believe that a lot of the emotional impact of flying flags at half-staff comes from the sense of shared mourning generated from the generally universal participation.  When everyone in the country, or at least a community or state, has lowered their flag, that is a very visible and powerful message.  That power is diluted when businesses or individuals choose to use that same method to mourn their more personal losses.  I certainly don’t mean to diminish Karcher’s death, or anyone else’s, but I do feel that the lowering of the flag to half-staff should remain a rare celebration of lives, or occasionally tragic events like 9/11, that truly had a broad, wide-ranging impact on the entire country or state.

I do feel that flag etiquette should be a set generally accepted rules and shouldn’t carry the force of law. I don’t believe that Carl’s Jr. is or should be subject to any kind of legal consequences for their decision. I absolutely believe that Carl’s Jr. is right to pay tribute to their founder, but I don’t really feel that they picked the right way to do it.