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0 pointstadmilbourn11y ago0 comments

You're right. Those were my choices. Fortunately, over the past few months, the servers have stayed up and my daughter hasn't had a need to go to the hospital. Those are holy shit moments.

But most of life is lived in a more mundane day-to-day way. Those days are filled with your choices about where and how you spend your time.

I wrote this post to detail how I go about making these decisions because I know there are others out there in a similar position. Just hearing another perspective is helpful.

Someone just pointed me to this post from Change.org's COO and I greatly appreciated her take: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141022041002-407452...

On the scalable startup or not...we wouldn't have gotten into YC if we didn't have a plan.

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startup_life_11y ago· 1 in thread

I really appreciate this article and the way you've handled some of these comments.

My wife is expecting our first child soon and one thing it has really done is change my perspective. I've actually become a more dedicated employee and have also realized the glass and rubber ball metaphors.

There's bugs that have to be fixed right now and projects that have to be completed on time -- but there's also a personal life.

I'm no longer killing myself because of some minor bug that can wait, but at the same time I'm finding that when I am "on," I'm actually "on" instead of the half-on all the time.

It's been a life changing experience and it's very hard to describe in an understandable way to people who haven't gone through it, but this article is coming close.

tadmilbournOP11y ago

Thanks! I experienced a similar thing the first time around. I enjoy my work. But pre-kid, I found myself spending longer days where I wasn't actually "on."

Post-kid, there's far more meaning to whether you're at work or not. All of the sudden, I was getting done in 8 hours what I used to do in 10 or 12 (or in 12 hour what used to be 16).

Congrats on the upcoming child! Best of luck!

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