It's reasonable to suggest that certain folk have a greater capacity to work longer before burnout. However, that choice will always come at a cost, depending on your current position in life. If you are a young single individual this may work for you well and you may get ahead to a certain extent, at the expense of other fruitful activities that would enrich your youth and allow to develop into a well rounded individual. If you are married and have a family, chances are your lifestyle will seriously impact your family life.

The other point to consider is that work longer does not mean working smarter. I would chose the latter, and I personally work hard at finding ways to be smarter at what I do without working 15 hour days. I also believe that outside activities, other hobbies, socializing provides less obvious but valuable benefits to your skill.

I don't think anyone disagrees with you that there may be an outlying segment of the general human population that can "outwork" others in certain, specific circumstances.

However, I don't think this advantage is genetic, and is more likely a function of age and lifestyle, both of which will change over time. Not only that, these outliers are often below average in other important areas like fitness, communication with others, and personal integrity.

You make a pretty bold claim here that working more days in a year is a significant competitive advantage. Well actually you specifically say razor thin distinctions but go on to further claim that in things like entrepreneurship they mean big differences.

Both are pretty bold claims actually and I'd be surprised to see someone back them up, but I'm pretty dubious there is any merit to them.

I suppose to me it seems pretty intuitive that holding all else equal, the person who puts more work in (days per year) will have a better outcome. There isn't always a trade off, some people can just work more before losing capacity. There are those people in every industry; and that is my point, the mere existence of these people as your competition means they will be able to outwork you if you have a lower stress tolerance.

The standard counter is that some X-factor like a creativity multiplier comes into play that the "overworked" person doesn't have. I have also heard/read the "Over x amount of hours worked per day productivity drops." I think that holds for most people but not for the outliers who choose not to take vacations.

Interesting interpretation as well about markets as all of the examples I gave were decidedly not entrepreneurial in nature so I don't agree with your assessment that I made that "bold" claim, however I would probably extend the theory there as well.

Nothing you've said backs up the claim that more days per year = more profit or output for the business, or that these so-called outliers exist. Never heard the adage "work smarter, not harder"? If I was going to take outliers it would be on the intelligence and creativity scales, not the physiological hardiness scale.

This idea of more work is better is intuitive only at a completely trivial level and one that's unlikely to bear out in an environment of any sort of complexity.

Sure, I suppose if you're talking about a widgit factories where people repeat a task and have quotes, maybe more hours is better. (Though even then maybe not if on the whole you have higher burnout rates.)

You appear to take this at face value without even doing much digging. There is a myriad of evidence to support the contrary to your claim. Heck try Googling: "Working more hours is more productive" and you'll only find articles supporting the contrary.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=working+longer+hours+is+more+...