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stereotactic

Highlights

Come Saturday night, I’d be super-frustrated. Not only did I not complete the task because I was exhausted and my heart wasn’t in it, but I also didn’t use the time to recharge
We were just as effective running Zulip, and Zulip also had a great exit (in fact, it was an even better exit.)
Truly urgent is “the site is down” or “a big prospect wants to buy today and is waiting for your proposal.” Truly urgent is tomorrow morning’s VC partner meeting. In general, “truly urgent” is driven by an important external stakeholder or forcing function.
At my first company, Ksplice, I fell into the trap of working nonstop. In the early days of the company, our official policy was literally twelve hour days, six days a week, with Saturday as the day off. (Side note: in retrospect, this was an awful official policy.)
To maintain my sanity, I have one rule: Either be working or be actively not working. The case you most need to avoid is “trying to work, but just staring at your screen or mindlessly scrolling through LinkedIn.”