In May 2025, four months after launching Convert, I couldn't get out of bed.
Not metaphorically. Literally. My alarm went off at 7am and I stared at the ceiling until noon. The thought of opening Xcode made me want to throw my laptop out the window.
This is the part of the indie dev journey nobody tweets about.
How I Got There
The math was simple. I had savings for 12 months of runway. Every day mattered. Every hour not working was an hour closer to running out of money.
So I worked. A lot.
January through April, I averaged 70-hour weeks. Some weeks hit 85. I tracked it because I thought it was impressive. Evidence of hustle. Proof I was taking this seriously.
My schedule looked like this:
- Wake up 6:30am, at desk by 7am
- Code until lunch, eat at desk while reviewing analytics
- Code until dinner, eat quickly, back to desk
- Work until midnight or later
- Weekends: same thing, maybe slightly shorter
I told myself this was temporary. Once the app launched, I'd ease off. Once revenue hit X, I'd take a break. Once, once, once.
The "once" never came. There was always another feature, another bug, another marketing task.
The Warning Signs I Ignored
Looking back, the signs were obvious. At the time, I rationalized every single one.
Dreading the Work
Building Convert used to be fun. By month 3, I was dragging myself to the keyboard. I told myself it was just a rough patch. Normal founder stuff.
It wasn't a rough patch. It was my brain telling me something was wrong.
Snapping at People
I got short with friends. Dismissive with family. A support email with a slightly critical tone would ruin my whole day.
I blamed them. They didn't understand the pressure. They weren't supportive enough.
They weren't the problem.
Physical Symptoms
Headaches most afternoons. Trouble sleeping even though I was exhausted. Back pain from sitting 14 hours a day. A weird eye twitch that wouldn't stop.
I took ibuprofen and kept working. Bodies are supposed to hurt when you're building something important, right?
Wrong. Bodies hurt because they're breaking.
Work Quality Dropped
By month 4, I was shipping bugs I would've caught in month 1. Spending hours on problems a rested brain would solve in minutes. Rewriting the same component three times because I couldn't think straight.
More hours didn't mean more output. It meant worse output over more time.
The Crash
May 3rd, 2025. A Saturday. I had planned to finish a widget feature.
I woke up and couldn't. Just... couldn't. My body refused to cooperate with my brain's demands.
I spent the weekend on the couch, cycling between Netflix and staring at nothing. Monday came and I called it a mental health day. Then Tuesday. Then the whole week.
I didn't touch code for 9 days. The longest break since I'd started.
And you know what? Nothing catastrophic happened. Convert kept running. Users kept converting. The world didn't end because I took a week off.
What I Changed
Coming back, I knew I couldn't go back to the old schedule. Here's what I implemented:
Hard Stop at 6pm
Not "try to stop around 6pm." Not "stop unless something urgent comes up." Hard stop. Computer closes at 6pm regardless of where I am.
At first it felt irresponsible. All that unfinished work! The app would fail!
It didn't fail. The work waited. It was still there in the morning. And morning-me was way more effective than exhausted-evening-me.
No Work Weekends
Saturday and Sunday are off. Completely. I don't check revenue. I don't peek at analytics. I don't "just fix this one bug."
This was the hardest change. Weekend work felt like free hours. Like I was getting ahead while competitors rested.
The reality: weekend work was borrowing from Monday's energy. I was getting "ahead" and then crashing the following week. The net result was less output, not more.
Exercise as Non-Negotiable
30 minutes of movement every day. Running, gym, even just a long walk. If I skip it, something's wrong.
Before burnout, exercise was what I did when I had "extra" time. Which meant never. Now it's as mandatory as eating.
Ship Slower
I used to aim for major features every 2-3 weeks. Now it's more like 4-6 weeks. The app improves more slowly. But it improves consistently.
Sustainable shipping beats unsustainable sprinting. Every time.
The Uncomfortable Math
Here's the thing I didn't want to admit:
Those 70-hour weeks weren't 70 hours of productive work. They were maybe 30-35 hours of real work stretched across 70 hours of desk time. The rest was fake productivity — refreshing analytics, reorganizing Notion, "researching" competitors.
Now I work maybe 45 hours a week. And I ship about the same amount. Because focused hours beat zombie hours.
The hustle culture math of "more hours = more success" is just wrong. At least for me. Your brain has a limited amount of creative output per day. Pushing past that limit doesn't create more output. It just creates worse output and ruins tomorrow.
What I Tell Myself Now
When the guilt creeps in — and it still does — I remind myself:
I'm building for years, not months. This isn't a sprint. If I burn out again, there is no app. There is no studio. There's just me, broken, wondering what happened.
Working sustainably isn't lazy. It's strategic. It's treating yourself as a limited resource that needs maintenance.
The founders who last decades aren't the ones who worked 100-hour weeks at 25. They're the ones who figured out how to work 40 effective hours for 30 years.
I'm still figuring this out. Some weeks I slip. Some deadlines "require" late nights. But the baseline is different now. The default is sustainable.
And Convert keeps growing. Slowly. Sustainably. The way it should.
