However, having been there, that didn't work for me. The amount of time that isn't spent coding seems fairly consistent as a percentage, leaving aside a small constant factor. When I ran my small business, I would sometimes deliberately work fewer hours a week to try to increase productive time, and after falling below a (fairly high) number of hours per week, the productive time was cut at least as much as the non-productive time.

early on, i think it was pretty hard to figure out when we were going to be productive, and when we weren't. partially because some of the stuff you do (email, research, etc) doesn't feel particularly productive, even though it needs to get done. let's put it this way: we had no cable, gaming system, or anything of the like -- we most definitely were not wasting time, it was more like 8 hours a day of solid, uninterrupted coding, surrounded by 8 hours of email, meals, catching up on the news, etc.

the one benefit to being very committed early on: we did occasionally have weeks that were (usually by necessity) insanely productive, where we'd accomplish some absolutely unbelievable task, something that would have otherwise taken a month, usually because of a strict deadline. if you refuse to work more than 4 x 8, a la 37 signals, that's just not going to be possible.

believe it or not, though, i was actually trying to provide an example of a positive work-life balance :)

I do actually believe that 40 work weeks are artificial, and not conducive to either good work or a good life outside of work. When it's time to be enthusiastic and produce something, rigid hours should not get in the way. But, on the same theme, when it's time to take a break, a two day weekend often won't do, nor will arbitrarily scheduled holidays, or even 2-3 weeks of vacation.

I was just making an observation, from the perspective of someone who has no work-life balance, and is occasionally jealous of the people who put their work away at 5pm and have families, houses, friends, etc.