When I first moved to San Francisco, I sat next to a VC. 

One day I asked him why he didn’t have a monitor.

He dropped his voice: “A lot of my work is confidential.”
Then he eyed my screen: “You have an old Apple monitor.” 

Days before, I had bought a secondhand iMac for $140. I loved old iMacs. They reminded me of how beautiful technology can be. I didn’t need a screen that was 2% faster and 10x more expensive.

To me, it was a no-brainer.
To him, it was suboptimal.

Smart people, I’ve noticed, often optimise for the wrong thing.

They look at seconds, not seasons.  

They shave minutes off meetings.
They eat at their desks so they can ship faster.
They stay up to 3AM and still set the alarm for 8AM.

But the real danger isn’t shaving off seconds from a task.
The real danger is shaving off years of your life without realising it. 

And I’m not above it.

In the early years of building DreamLab, I happily worked 12-16 hour days and took no holidays. I traded joy for trajectory. Comfort for growth. I was so deeply fulfilled by the work that I’d skip dinner with friends. I’d pick hardcore gym classes so I could sweat more, in less time. 

I’d optimise for seconds, not seasons. 

After three years, something in me shifted. I felt dissatisfied. 

At first, I didn’t understand why. I had loved building DreamLab. Eventually, I realised the tradeoffs I made for the season had hardened into unwanted identity. Urgency stopped being a strategy and started becoming who I was. Slowness felt unsafe. Rest felt indulgent. I had to keep moving to feel like me.

Summer had arrived. Yet I was still optimising for Spring. 

So I started closing my laptop by 7pm.
Not every night. But enough to notice the difference.

You see, the problem was never the season. It was forgetting I could change it. Somewhere along the way, the milestone becomes the horizon. And horizons move. Series A becomes Series B. Series B becomes IPO. IPO becomes exit. 

The real question is whether you're choosing it, or whether it's choosing you.

With love,
Joumana