Never Work A Day In Your Life
Things are really starting to pick up at Cake Health. We have an enthusiastic group of beta users and we’re letting in more people every day from our ever-growing wait list. We’re adding support for more providers and plans, and we haven’t stopped building features either.
I saw a question on Quora recently that asked whether “weekends exist” when you’re working on a startup. It reminded me of the “punchcard” graph on GitHub that I had taken a snap shot of a while back. It’s an approximation for when I’ve been writing code for Cake Health. Here’s that same graph, updated (bigger circles = more code):
Big chunks at 9 and 10 pm. At least some code written during every hour from 9 am to 1 am except Saturday, when I get started at 11 am - it wasn’t a huge stretch to realize that this was because Saturday mornings are reserved for long runs. If this graph is any indication, my answer to that question on Quora is pretty clearly “no.”
It’s not so simple though. I’m the first to advocate for making sure that you’re staying healthy and not becoming a martyr for the sake of your company (or at the very least, not wearing it as a badge of honor). You’re going to have to sustain this over years, not months or weeks. But if you’re doing it right, you’re also working on something that you actually want to be thinking about for the majority of your waking hours. I’ve never once felt like I had to be pushing code, or woken up dreading what I was going to do that day.
Lastly, as a side note (I swear this wasn’t the original purpose of this post), we’re hiring - let me know if you would also like to never work a day in your life.