Dru's Notes

Some nights I'd binge until 3am, sometimes 5, then wake up ashamed. For a long time I read those nights as a discipline failure.

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Some nights I'd binge until 3am, sometimes 5, then wake up ashamed. For a long time I read those nights as a discipline failure.

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Dru Riley
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What is Dru's Notes?

One mental model each day in a few minutes. Habits, business, building products and thinking clearly. From Dru Riley, founder of Trends.vc.

"It will not always be summer, build barns."
Hesiod

Some nights I'd binge until 3am, sometimes 5, then wake up ashamed. My phone, a chess app, YouTube. The harder the day, the worse it got.

For a long time I read those nights as a discipline failure. I threw more willpower at them. The binges kept coming.

The real problem was simpler: some days demanded more than I could give. By night I had nothing left, so I binged.

So the obvious fix was to do less. Run fewer things.

I never did.

I still run five products.

The fix was habit banking: on a strong day I do some of tomorrow's work early and bank the surplus. When a hard day comes, it spends that reserve instead of breaking the run.

No single day runs me into the ground anymore.

The binges stopped.

The fix for too much wasn't doing less. The fix was building a buffer.

What could you get ahead on today so a harder day costs you less?