I once cried in a meeting because someone on another team reused a bit flag in a struct for a different purpose than I had intended. Luckily this was the day be

I once cried in a meeting because someone on another team reused a bit flag in a struct for a different purpose than I had intended. Luckily this was the day before a three week vacation, my first in several years. Thankfully it was in the time before cell phones and ubiquitous email so it was a real vacation. The vacation didn't "fix" me but it did give me enough time to see that I was broken and needed to make changes. The lesson for me was to never put in a day, week, … or year of work that I couldn't sustain because being able to get through the next day, week, …, year might be even more important than the current one. This was especially true as my startup started to grow. The first year had been stressful with just two of us working flat out, but once we got a payroll, yikes the pressure was multiplied. There are circumstances where a do-or-die effort is required but usually sustainability is much more important.