Reflections on startup life: Week 60

By the end of last week both Alex and I were tired. We were pushing through, getting things done and stuffing up along the way. With the exception of Christmas Day and a little bit on New Years Eve, we’ve both been putting in anywhere from 12–16+ hours per day, trying to implement new features, fix bugs and generally “catch up”.

Poor me. Actually that’s not really the point, the reflection is on what that was doing to us. We were pushing features with bugs because we hadn’t tested them and causing ourselves to have to chase around and fix things that were broken because we broke them.

So Friday evening around 8PM we called it quits — this weekend just gone, we both stepped away and gave ourselves some time off. Yup, there’s all that stuff about spending time with my family (which was great) and I don’t want to trivialise that, but what I found really interesting is the time it gave me to actually THINK.

I’ve been so buried in the trenches that I haven’t actually given myself time and space to think about where we are going. Of course we didn’t leave Trunk.ly completely alone, I still monitor the feedback, follow up on things people say and deliver some customer support, but I didn’t code and focus on a single problem.

By walking away, I feel like not only did I recharge the batteries a bit and get some well needed rest, but more importantly, I gained the time and space needed to get some perspective on where things are at and consider features and priorities not in terms of the next fire that needs to be put out, but more strategically in terms of where we are heading overall.

Highlights

* New connectors and major features

* Big blog post in China which drove usage and sign ups

Lessons Learnt

* From the department of the obvious, tired people make silly mistakes. Better to take a break sometimes.

Goals this week

* For me personally, a little bit more time on the strategy of what we are doing and building the roadmap.

* Admin catch up

* PR related activities.