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šŸš­ Can makers afford bad habits?

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When you work a regular office job, you have some natural boundaries.

You finish work on Friday, and thereā€™s a whole weekend ahead.

Maybe you have a few drinks on Friday night, stay up late, skip your workout, or just do whatever you want.

And that's fine.

But I wonder if it's different when you're a maker.

When you're building your own product, there is always something to do.

So the ā€œI'll take care of myself this weekendā€ approach can become a little dangerous when there is no real weekend from the work.

Inside our team, we try to pay attention not only to the health of our product, but to our own health too. We remind each other about getting enough sleep, eating well, organize running challenges that last for weeks, and some teammates have even given up smoking or alcohol.

And I wonder how other makers deal with this.

Do you think the maker lifestyle makes it easier to develop bad habits - simply because the work never really stops?

Or is taking care of yourself actually part of being a sustainable maker?

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Haha, Adana, love this topic.
I even have a ā€œBad Habitsā€ todo list. šŸ˜„

Thereā€™s always something on it that Iā€™m trying to remove from my life - sometimes immediately, sometimes step by step. Being healthy is important to me in its own right, but at the same time, every habit I change is also a way of proving to myself that I can overcome difficult periods and keep moving forward while continuing to build.

In 2016, I got a new project in my studio and wanted to make sure I could give it my absolute best, so I quit smoking. That gave me more energy and focus, and it also pushed me much harder into triathlon, eventually leading me to become a multiple-time Ironman.

That period once again proved to me that discipline is built through small decisions, repeated over time - and that once you experience the benefits of changing one habit, it becomes easier to tackle the next one.

So yes, I do think the maker lifestyle can make bad habits easier to develop. But I also think taking care of yourself can become another part of the maker journey - youā€™re not only building the product or company, youā€™re building yourself along the way.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience! As Iā€™ve been lucky enough to walk a long way with your company and help develop a product, I can say that a good example is a really strong motivation for the whole team and the environment around it. You always show us how strong we can be through the way you lead and work. Good luck with all your projects =)

I think the lack of a clear off switch is the bigger point. when you're responsible for everything, it's easy for work to quietly fill every gap, so having some boundaries probably matters a lot.

Ā But do you think that not having clear boundaries can actually lead to bad habits? Or is it more about how each person manages their work and personal life?

Bad habits are often a symptom of having no reliable off switch. When work can expand into every free hour, sleep, exercise, and proper meals become the easiest things to postpone.

The sustainable approach is to treat health as part of the operating system, not something to recover on weekends.

Maker bad habits get reinforced when the business has no explicit coverage model. If a founder is still the fallback for customer calls, support, or approvals, every workout or night off feels like a gamble, so the body learns to stay half-on even when the laptop is closed. The sustainable version is not just discipline, it is designing an off switch: who catches urgent things, what waits until morning, and what signal proves nothing is silently burning while you are gone.