The Ghost of Dirty Dishes

Hello Predictable Revenue community,

VClist update: I got my first paying customer! I was checking the finance plan with my Controller and she was confused by the payment, turns out some hero liked it enough to put a credit card in. Thank you Jason! I just ran the January scraper and found ~10k new investment events from the last 90 days. Those aren’t deduped so it’s probably closer to ~2500. If you’re raising and want the freshest data set to build your list of investors, join the waitlist here.

I also have a super exciting update coming for it next week, especially if you care about seeing which investors you’re already connected to 😉. Stay tuned for more.

Onto the newsletter…

Yes, today is Saturday, not Friday like I usually send my emails.

Do you ever have one of those weeks where it's 4:37pm on a Friday afternoon by the time you realize it's Friday? And you were supposed to do a thing before 9am on Friday?

I had one of those weeks.

It wasn't a particularly bad week. There was just a large volume of stuff that all seemed to happen, and this newsletter was one of the things that slipped.

I considered sending my backup post. The one I wrote over the holidays and kept in my back pocket for days like this. But I didn't even have time this morning to get it wired up and queued out to everybody.

Fortunately, I had something else I wanted to talk about.

Work.

The 996 Question

I was listening to Brian Halligan's podcast, A Long Strange Trip. One episode in particular caught me. The one with Nikesh from Paolo Alto Networks.

Brian asked him about 996.

If you're not familiar, 996 comes from China's tech industry. It means 9am to 9pm, six days a week. The Chinese government tried to ban it because it was leading to such overwork by young tech workers. But Silicon Valley has picked it up as a hustle culture trope.

Nikesh's comment was something along the lines of it being a great year for a Porsche, but a terrible idea for working.

I have mixed feelings on the subject.

Two Jobs

When I first started out as an entrepreneur, I felt like I had two jobs.

I had my startup job, which was moving the ball down the field for voltageCRM. That was a full time job, however you want to define that from an hours perspective.

And then I had this hobby that was very time consuming, probably a part time job, which was figuring out how to be a startup founder.

Between the two of those, I was probably working anywhere from fourteen to sixteen hours a day. Air quotes around "working."

I didn't know any better.

My last role before my startup, I worked for an entrepreneur who put in crazy hours. It was never expected of me, but when the team's struggling, you want to pull your weight. I saw what the founder did and I wanted to match it.

I remember having lunch one time and thinking it's hilarious that I've already put in eight hours. That used to be a full day. Now it's only halfway through.

The Ghost

That became my baseline when I started voltageCRM.

It's also what earned me the nickname "The Ghost of Dirty Dishes" from my wife (girlfriend at the time). 

I'd be gone before she woke up. I'd come home after midnight, eat dinner, and leave dishes on the counter (like an asshole) because we didn't have a dishwasher. Then I'd sleep for a few hours and repeat.

Looking back, I've wondered: was this smart? Was it a good decision?

Here's what I've concluded: for a short term, a week or two, maybe a little longer, you can sustain an incredible workload. As long as it's temporary.

The problem is I just got in the habit of working that amount. There were times when I was probably only accomplishing a 10 or 12 hour day's worth of work. But I was in the habit of working 14s or 16s, so I would just take 16 hours to do it.

That's embarrassing to admit. It wasn't intentional. But you establish a habit and then you just follow it blindly.

When I look at the quality of decisions, the quality of the work I was doing, it was not my best work.

The Real Math

Here's what I think about 996 now:

Having the capacity to do it for two weeks is fantastic. Any longer than two weeks and you're probably compromising your decision making ability.

Because as a founder, it's our job to chart the course. It's not about the volume of work that we do. It is about the quality of the decisions that we make.

If I can make the right decision in a short period of time, then I'm going to do that. I don't feel the need to work 16 hours to prove to myself that I can do it.

In fact, I've probably seen an inverse correlation between the amount of time I spend working and the quality of thought.

How I Actually Work

In the name of transparency, I'll share how I structure my week.

Three main focuses: the book/newsletter, Predictable Revenue, and ReplyLoop. Currently, Predictable Revenue takes up 70% of my week. ReplyLoop takes 20%. The book and newsletter take the remaining 10%.

I start every day at 6am and walk away from my computer at 5pm. Right around 55 hours a week. I don't typically work evenings or weekends, although occasionally there's a thing to catch up on or get ahead of.

Every day I take 10 minutes to make lunch, then 20 minutes to throw the TV on and watch something totally unrelated to work. I put my phone down and try to lose myself in whatever I’m watching. It’s a nice relaxing way to clear the context from my previous task so I can focus 100% on the next one. 

I also try to work out 3-4 times a week for 45 minutes each. I like working out at 5pm because my work brain is typically out of juice and it’s a nice reset before family time. 

In the summer, I trade one or two of the workout sessions for a bike ride. I prefer to cycle in the mornings which means I end up working 2 to 4 hours less every week. 

Here's what I noticed: I get really high quality time to process thoughts and ideas when I'm away from the office. That cycling time is often more important from a work perspective than getting those two additional hours in.

I haven't figured out how to replicate that in the winter. I do ride in the winter but not as frequently. Probably because it's currently 1C (38F) and 91% humidity. When it's raining in conditions like that, I find myself a little soft. 

The Real Test

The capacity to work long hours is useful. But it’s just one tool in my toolkit.

But it's a tool for sprints, not marathons.

The real skill isn't how many hours you can work. It's knowing when those hours actually matter, and when you're just filling time out of habit.

Collin