After 18 years in design, I’ve grown the most when I protected my energy — this year I set a hard 35‑hour cap and shifted critiques to mornings to cut late-night churn. How are you pacing your growth so you’re still proud of the work in five years, not just five sprints?
I added a 15‑minute “shutdown sweep” before I log off — clear Slack, jot a quick retro, and write tomorrow’s top 3 — which killed most of the late‑night churn and helps me honor a “35‑hour cap.” If a sprint spikes, I’ll let one evening run long but trade the next morning for admin so the creative muscle still recovers. Did moving critiques to mornings change the quality of feedback or just the stress level?
I treat ‘protect your energy’ with a quarterly energy budget: choose three growth bets and block a weekly no‑meetings recovery day so the work periodizes like training. The cap is gold, but when crunch hits I pre‑commit what I’ll drop first to prevent stealth overtime. If it’s relevant, I’d love to hear if anyone runs a monthly scope audit to prune goals before they sprawl.
But building on @levi57, I keep a 10% ‘sprint tax’ — deliberately unbooked time each week. If fires pop, it absorbs them; if not, I spend it on one growth bet (skill spike or doc), like leaving white space in a layout. On crunch weeks I trim to 5% but never zero; what would your 10% fund next quarter?