You can call it crunch time, the last push, the final mile, etc, etc – whatever works for you.

In the end it is still overtime.

Whether it is paid or not is irrelevant.

If I pay you time and a half to work 16 hours for the next four months but the third month you will be burnt out with nothing left to give. What you will be contributing to the project will be declining returns as you start to make mistakes you don’t normally make, making the extra pay worthless.

After those four months, after you have shipped, you will immediately go into the next cycle of development which might be a nice return to normal but you will not get the rest needed to make an impact in that release.

We all need to release the Kraken now and again in everything you do, the problem is in software we try to do this for too long. Do it for the remaining few weeks as you push to get all those bugs in. You can sustain the burn for that long without doing damage to yourself or your team.

Anything else is not worth it.

Here’s the article that prompted this post.

Want more? Check out my book Code Your Way Up – available as an eBook or Paperback on Amazon (CAN and US).  I’m also the co-host of the Remotely Prepared podcast.

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