Working Nights and Weekends

Last Saturday I was debugging something at midnight, not because a deadline was looming, but because I couldn't stop thinking about it. I'd tried to watch TV. I couldn't. The problem was more interesting than the TV. So I went back.

The next day my friends invited me for a cricket session. Too tempting. I played for a bit, but my mind lingered on the problem I had been spending time on. So I went back yet again.

I work nights and weekends. I don't have to. No one asks or forces me. Sometimes it is simply the most alive thing going on.

There's a debate that comes up constantly in tech circles about whether you should do this. On one side: grind culture, the 10,000-hour gospel, founders tweeting about sacrificing sleep. On the other: burnout warnings, boundary-setting, PMs pushing their peers to get work done so targets are met, the research showing that past a certain point extra hours produce nothing. Both sides are mostly right, which is how you know neither one is telling you something useful.

The real question isn't how many hours you work. It's why you're doing what you do.

I've learned to ask myself a few things before staying late or opening the laptop on a Sunday. Is there something real in this for me, something I'm building, learning, or making better? Do I have any control over what I'm working on and how? Will I actually be proud of what comes out? The last one cuts deepest: what am I giving up, and can I live with it?

When the answers come back hollow, it's worth listening to. I have felt burnt out several times, but those weren't always the most demanding stretches I have faced. They were the ones where I kept going and couldn't honestly answer those questions. Just executing. Just filling hours. The grind without a point. Work driven by motives that weren't mine.

Here's the thing people get wrong: they assume working nights and weekends is a personality type, or a commitment level, or a signal of how serious you are. It's not. Some of the most capable people I know shut down at 6pm and don't look back. They come back the next morning with clear heads and do better work than they would have grinding through the evening. More hours isn't more output. Often it's just more time in the chair.

What it actually is, when it's working, is a pull. A flow state. You stay because leaving would feel strange. The problem is still open. The thing isn't finished. You want to see what happens next. It engulfs your brain. That's different from discipline. It's closer to curiosity that forgot to check the clock.

I built a side project recently: something small, a tool for a problem I kept running into myself. No deadline, no one waiting on it. I sat down on a rare holiday afternoon to sort out one piece of it, and the next time I looked up it was past midnight. I hadn’t forced myself to stay, I'd just kept pulling the thread. One thing led to the next; the map tiles were rendering wrong, then the route data needed cleaning, then I wanted to see the whole thing work end to end; somewhere in there the hours disappeared. That's the version of this I'm talking about. You don't notice time passing because you're not watching for it.

When I'm grinding for the grind's sake, I'm not being dedicated. I'm just burning something I won't get back.

I am from the software-techbro-grindmaxxing world where there's a habit of answering "how are you?" with overwhelmed or can't-even-breathe-busy, like occupancy is the same as aliveness. I've said it too. But I've started adding a few words: "...but I'm having so much fun."

When I can't honestly finish that sentence, I pay attention. It means something has gone wrong and the thing driving me has lost its point somewhere. The fun is just not there.

So should you work nights and weekends?

If the work pulls you, if you'd be thinking about it anyway, if you'd miss it when it's gone, then yes, when the moment calls for it. That's what it looks like when something has you. It doesn't make you better than the people who choose not to follow that pull.

But if you're doing it to keep up, to prove something, to outrun some fear you haven't named yet: stop. You won't find what you're looking for at the end of those hours.

The people who protect their evenings aren't behind. They've made a different and entirely defensible choice. The only question worth asking is whether your choice is actually yours.

I had no choice to write this down at 2am or my mind wouldn't have let me sleep.