precipitated complete organizational collapse. In any case, many of us exhibited signs of mild post-traumatic stress, and there were some full-on nervous breakdowns.
That’s about how hard it is possible to crank: a bit over 400 reasonably high-quality hours of effort per month. The price is significant risk to the individual’s well-being and drastic destruction of organizational capability. Frankly, you can’t sacrifice that much to a short-term goal if you have any long-term goals at all.
My experience suggests that there is always a balance between shorter-term goals and longer-term goals. You balance dinner with your family tonight against risk of a schedule slip costing you your board’s confidence. You balance working all night to hit a deadline against days of fuzzy thinking. In the end, you balance what you want out of life this very instant against what you want for the rest of your life and what you want your family and community to have after you’re gone.
Rarely, those things all come down on the same side, and you work in a state of peace and flow. Mostly, we struggle to reach receding poles. The only balance we can have is to allow these things to stretch us without pulling us apart.
