After working on a few startups, my experience is that when you operate in crunch mode for a long period of time the line between "crisis" and "normal" blurs and you simply can't distinguish or effectively scale your effort to the situation. This is especially harmful for entrepreneurs when they have to deeply consider their strategic options or programmers when they are trying to refactor code.
I can't tell you how many hours of development I've wasted simply because I didn't want to spend an extra hour thinking through the implications and instead tried to "get 'er done."
I DON'T agree that this means you have to work less than 35 hours a week and take long walks on the beach. I've had really productive times working 100 hours a week. But when you feel burned out or stressed, when you have trouble prioritizing your efforts, when everything feels like it's "way behind" you are going to make mistakes and put effort in the wrong place. It's important to stay balanced, but "balanced" means different things to different people at different points in their career.
I can't tell you how many hours of development I've wasted simply because I didn't want to spend an extra hour thinking through the implications and instead tried to "get 'er done."
I DON'T agree that this means you have to work less than 35 hours a week and take long walks on the beach. I've had really productive times working 100 hours a week. But when you feel burned out or stressed, when you have trouble prioritizing your efforts, when everything feels like it's "way behind" you are going to make mistakes and put effort in the wrong place. It's important to stay balanced, but "balanced" means different things to different people at different points in their career.