It sounds like your question is more "How do I not let my desire for sex get in the way of getting stuff done." and has nothing to really do with relationships. A relationship with the right person would only increase your own creativity and productivity.

I guess I'm extremely fortunate to have a relationship with someone who encourages me when I feel worn out and wants to give up and who understand when I have to put in time to get stuff done. I'm a big believer that the right person for you inspires you to do better and makes you feel like you can achieve anything. I double my efforts because I want to create something of value so that we can both share and enjoy the things we want to do with our lives.

I'm more productive the more active, engaged, and social I am. This can come from a variety of sources: Anything that gets my mind engaged, gets me to do more things, gets me out and about more, gets me to meet people, gives me things to plan and things to do.

So, for example, I'm more productive when employed than unemployed, even on projects unrelated to work, even you'd think I'd have more time for those when unemployed. Part time work, or multiple contracts and gigs of very different sorts (such as a political campaign and a sysadmin contract) is even more effective than a single every-day job.

Relationships generally have these kinds of effects on me: I plan outings, trips, and dates. I meet her friends, and go to things she likes. Interaction with her is mentally engaging. So, Relationships make me more productive.

I'm not sure what you mean by "unattached casual sex" - if you mean it literally, then I don't have very much experience with it. However, I do have plenty of non-relationship sex, with friends. "Quality women" are definitely not universally opposed to this, and it does improve the richness of a bond with someone even without a committed relationship. It also does some of the things I described above (for example, greater motivation to travel to see someone, as well as a greater variety of people-connections) so that also probably increases my mental engagement and productivity.

A roundabout way of looking at it: Do a survey of all the people you admire for their productivity (by your own definition).

You'll probably find there are womanizers, monogamists, recluses, etc, etc. i.e. All types.

It's a leap of a conclusion - But I'd say either it's not correlated, or it's totally unique for every individual.

I've been in a friends-with-benefits situation for the better part of a year. I wasn't the one who suggested it, and I was initially reluctant, but it's been pretty awesome. This is very different from unattached casual sex, mind you. We're very good friends, we care about each other and so forth. But we've been able to keep this up long term with no romantic attachment at all. Technically we're both free to see other people, but since we're both busy and pretty satisfied with the arrangement that hasn't happened I guess.

I agree with another commenter that a relationship would increase your productivity, but it's a little more subtle than that. When you start dating someone, initially it's going to be a huge time sink, but once you get over that hump and you're in a stable relationship it's probably going to leave you better off than being single. But you have to accept that a significant initial effort is needed into building the relationship and also accept the risk of breaking up and having to deal with getting over them, and so on. Nevertheless, I'd rather be in a committed relationship; but if work productivity is the only criterion, my current situation works great.

So here's my "solution": find someone who's as busy with work as you are, and find a way to be in a low-key, long-term relationship. Long-term is important; trying to find someone to sleep with every once in a while is probably the most time-wasting strategy of all. (Never tried it.)

in my observation, quality women are pretty much universally opposed to casual sex

I'm not advocating anything here, but have you really found that to be true? I've known plenty of people of both genders who aren't exactly chaste, and I wouldn't consider them low quality people.

Forming a good relationship is also hacking - it needs creativity, thinking out of the box (with the head of the opposite sex), and it's challenging. It also needs some transcendent, higher thinking, just like every hacking. And it's extremely rewarding. If you can find yourself a real partner, who is not just your sex partner (like I could), it improves your creativity greatly. It makes you feel more balanced, more focused. If you have the right partner for it, who can live together with your habits - and of course, if you take your time to look after the relationship.

The correlation of relationships and achievement probably varies from profession to profession. As I understand it, physicists nearly always do their best work before marriage, while businessmen often do theirs after. There are a bunch of related effects that would have to be teased out to make the correlation clean (eg., physicists tend to do their most interesting work very young, and tend not to get married young), but it seems solvable.

One thing I wouldn't rely on in trying to answer this question is asking people whether having a relationship makes them happier/more creative/more productive. Anything related to reproduction is probably viewed in an unrealistically positive light, and probably has a bunch of taboo protection. ( for example, see http://www.newsweek.com/id/143792 for people's reactions to a sociologist who wrote that having children doesn't make people happier. ) It's in our genes' best interests for us to think that having kids is a tremendous joy, whether it is or not, and the same is probably true for relationships.

I'd imagine the research has already been done for whatever field you're in, so you can just look it up.

I don't think this subject can be generalized about. Every person is different, every one of that person's partners are different, and you're a different person today then you were six months ago. That is a lot of variation. Some people's relationships are literally torture. Others can carry on two or three happy relationships at the same time and still get things done.

All you can do is follow your nose. Local optimization is your friend. If you think to yourself "gosh, my plan to live like a celibate monk is making me cranky and depressed", perhaps you need to change something in your life. (Get out of the office!) It doesn't matter whether or not (e.g.) other people are happier and more productive as celibate monks, or whether there is some Grand Unified Theory of Productivity that prescribes monkhood. Those people are not you, and that theory may not apply to you. Even the best theories of human behavior can only describe averages, and it's unlikely that you are average in every respect. Just because the average human walks on two legs doesn't mean that one-legged humans can't walk.

The initial phase of being in love or going through a breakup, I can't concentrate and my work suffers. When a relationship is working, it has a positive influence on my well-being and that in turn positively affects my creativity and productivity.

I'm going to assume by relationship you mean a normal loving relationship, with its up and downs, the normal fights but not abusive or lacking or with a cheating partner.

If that is the case, I can say that it improves my programming, both at work and at home. Yes you have fights, but when you know that you have someone you care about and s/he cares about you it drives you harder to do it. Sure it takes some time from your programming time, but well defined boundaries can be easily set.

In a stable and good relationship, my work is dramatically better in quality, even if the quantity of hours spent on work is slightly lower than when I'm single and not bothering to "chase".

During past bad relationships, or phases when I was "racking up a number", my work was definitely impaired.

How did I prevent it? I suppose I didn't, but I mostly just worried about being a decent human being to people I know, and not sweating whether casual sweating was immoral.

Side note: once you get to about 30, I don't think anyone talks in terms of your number, and your ability to find a "quality woman" (itself an error-prone reduction of many dimensions to one) will not be changed by even a few score of scores. I sense that your philosophy may lean towards the Christian from your finding consensual casual sex immoral, so your fitness function for quality woman might be way different from mine, and the women who rate highly over that function might actually care about your "number". IMO, if you're still single at 30, no one ought to shocked that your number is well into double digits.

Welcome to the messy, illogical thing called life. No one has exactly the "right" answer.

I would point out that a good relationship should enhance your life rather than diminish it. Maybe you are dating the wrong kind or pursuing the wrong kind?

My last relationship would sometimes significantly reduce my desire to create anything.

The good times were great and of course programming was the last thing on my mind. The bad times were simply draining and I'd lose the drive to make progress on my goals.

When I was single I hacked for hacking's sake. Really hard sexy problems. Didn't care for the world. That also meant keeping a dull, soul sucking job for the sake of bills, and rushing home in the afternoons to do what I love.

Now that I'm in a loving, supportive relationship; we decided to pool our resources and each of us pursues our dreams. I am working on my start up, she is a singer, we have money coming in and we're saving allot. Sometimes I freelance on the side, other times she does a corporate gig. It's good to have someone coming home to you to ask you "honey how was your day".

time_management:

Find somebody that is your best friend and turns you on both physically and emotionally. This person should also enhance your creativity and productivity. The relationship should make you feel freer, not like a prisoner.

After that, then you can start learning about relationships. It'll be hard work in which you put the other person's interests first and spend the time working to love them. (Yes, sometimes loving somebody requires effort. It's not like in the movies) Getting to a good understanding should take about -- 50 years or so.

Let us know when you've reached some conclusions.

I'm of the opinion that men and women are wired differently and that the struggle to nurture a relationship between these two different worldviews is what causes both sexes to mature as they grow older.

"quality women are pretty much universally opposed to casual sex and would look down upon it if I racked up a number when young, so that sort of behavior would limit my options in the long term."

Where do you live, Utah? I don't know any women who are opposed to casual sex. Maybe you need to meet more people, and broaden your worldview. It's also self-destructive to limit what you're doing now for the sake of what you assume you'll want to have done in the future.

I am taking a Consumer Happiness class right now, and we spent an hour talking about creativity and sexual release. Expressing yourself creatively (programming, playing music, creating art, designing, etc) is a sexual release and, if done passionately and wholly, can be an alternative to sex. I am a full believer that sex is very healthy for us to have on a regular basis, but I also believe that the next time you are up late and have a huge sexual desire you should direct that towards a creative outlet. Distract yourself and go to bed exhausted, yet relieved.

It depends. I have heard from the graduate students at my school that the ones with wives work much harder and usually always finish on time. I imagine this is because they probably aren't allowed to spend more than 40 hours a week at school, else their wives would kill them. Near limitless time (which most graduate students think they have) can be a huge burden. I have no idea how this would translate for a startup, but a marriage can be a huge net gain fora PhD student.

Simply a common sense thought : listen to your heart.

Love does not have to be "For your productivity" or something like that. I think it has to be good for your life in general. The relation that i have with my girlfriend has a positive effect on my life. And a by-product of this is a greater productivity.

A good working relationship - be it with family, friends or spouse will keep you happy from the start of the hour to making you feel good at the end of the day no matter what.

Now the involuntary chain is - Relationships (good ones) -> Happiness -> Better productivity.

Now there is a bit of back and forth dependencies with all 3, which needs to be maintained voluntarily. Essentially you ensure you are not wasting time so that u can be happy and satisfied abt your results, you ensure your spouse/parents/friends are feeling great too so that they in return the same spirit back to you, which will make you happy and so on.

In conclusion, its all how you drive. Involuntary chain does help.

Love is all you need.

If you're just looking for ass n' tits, hit up the strip club, get wasted at a frat party and score some bitches, hell - order a hooker.

Otherwise, most of the time, viewing a relationship as a hinderance on your productivity is viewing the relationship as an excuse. There really is no concrete solution to your problem because the problem is all in your head. Chances are, you just haven't found the right person to be in a relationship with. And yeah, the good ones are scarce...

I have been a single college hacker for quite a while. I've had my ass n' tits stage. I'm currently in an amazing relationship, see my girl almost every day, and still have plenty of time on my hands. She boosts my mental health in most ways I can think of: creativity, happiness, open-mindedness, etc... About to see how working full-time in the "real world" (vs student) will affect us.

Trust yourself and your judgement, and find yourself someone who compliments you. Otherwise, you're stuck with a mess in your head and seeking advice on HN... which will probably still leave you with a mess in your head ;)

It really depends what your goals in life are. If you're like me, and at some point want to have sex with many very beautiful women (before maybe getting married at some later point) then being single pushes me to work extra hard. I know that in order to have relationships, encounters and just a great time with high-quality, intelligent and good looking women, you need to be on the top of your game. And I believe the more successful you are in your business, the more witty you'll become, the more confident etc. In fact I think these things are correlated; You'll be more successful business-wise if you are more confident and have better social skills.

So I think you need to figure out what you really want in life. (Wealth, Abundance of hot women, Fame, spiritual fulfillment, intellectual fulfillment, friends etc). Then do the things that in the LONG TERM will bring you those things.

A working relationship can be one the best things that ever happened to you; maybe that's worth being financially successful one or two years later.

After a number of relationships with women all over the creative spectrum, ie. a working artist to someone who could care less about any creative endeavor; I can say that the deciding factor in my productivity has always been me. This is despite my best efforts to abdicate the responsibility many times when things aren't going right (productivity or personal). Creativity needs inspiration, if you can't get it one place then get it from another.

As for being productive, a relationship is like any other engagement that takes up time. It works best if you can block off time for it, then actually do something in that time for the relationship. Just sitting around and watching tv with your honey-doo is neither productive for your work nor the relationship - go out and take a walk together or something. Just my 2 cents, not that I would dare claim I know enough about women to make a definitive answer on the subject.

One comment that I've seen made is that running a startup is a lot like being in love. So a related question is whether, if you're not in love with someone, you're more likely to totally obsess over your startup (and whether that changes your chances of success)...

But as to the original question, it varies so much on who you're in a relationship with, what you're working on, and how the two fit together. From a startup PoV, is he always demanding you 'stop work' to pay him attention? Is he intrusive rather than supportive? Is he able to deal with you having a spontaneous, flexible schedule that might change at a minute's notice? Is he OK with the fact you don't earn any money? Is he going to scream if you decide you have to move to a different city to succeed? Does he yell at you for getting up in the middle of the night and furiously typing? I could go on all day, and mostly from experience. ;-)

I find it can either harm or help. One tends to be happier in a relationship, which makes one do better work. But it also takes time away from work. So the best case (for work) is a relationship that makes you happy but doesn't take up too much time.

Relationships and productivity/creativity are not directly correlated. The amount of time spent in the relationship (much like the time spent with a family) is important because ti decreases the amount of time available to the startup.

Relationships are like startups when they first start out. You need to give it time initially and then spend time to maintain them. It depends on the person, but some people can do fine with a romantic relationship during a startup (many YC companies have that), while others require more high-touch relationships.

My personal opinion is you need to prioritize and find out what matters, and make something work with that in mind.

In my experience, relationships seem to be a net negative to productivity.

Then you aren't doing it right. My productivity has shot through the roof since settling down in to a stable relationship. As you get older, relationships can provide true meaning and inspiration. Good relationships are symbiotic.

Of course, you might be under 25 or so, in which case just partake in casual sex until it feels right to pursue a mutually beneficial long term relationship.

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happy relationships certainly do improve productivity/creativity for sure... however unhappy do not, it's just so simple

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I dunno about about sex but sometimes I find it very disturbing when my girl friend (& some other girls ;) ) call me & making looong conversations.

And if I feel like going to a pr0n site, then I know I'm really bored of tech stuff & etc.

in my experience, relationships improve creativity and reduce productivity :-)

time_management has a history of posting misogynistic, and generally sexist (for both sexes) comments. One needs to take this into account when responding.

Just read his comments here about 85% of women in the US being too low-quality, etc., etc. before you upvote.

Facts and reason are all well and good, folks, but it pays to remember where they're coming from, and what agenda a person has.

Fact content enough does not counter the agenda of a person who is deliberately setting up a discussion for subversive means.

You cannot consider only what a person says for truthfulness, you must also consider why they are saying it, for intent.

I rest my case.

6 hours later...

Wow, I didn't expect this thing to fly so far off-topic. That was not my intention.