David Shapiro (L/0)

How do you feel about the Jensen Huang affair?

My blond baby

Like seriously is this a priority?

I'm such a terrible content creator.

I'll neglect poor Spotify for like a week and then upload 5 or 6 videos at once.

They still get hundreds of views and Spotify is finally starting to generate a tiny amount of revenue.

I apologize.

Maybe this is something I could automate.

Since getting more of my energy back, I gladly work 8 to 12 hours basically every day.

I usually wake up about 5am or 6am, but sometimes I sleep in until almost 7am.

I basically start working immediately.

I take a break to run to the deli to grab a coffee and breakfast burrito and then keep working.

I take another break to take my dog to the park, which is usually 1 to 2 hours.

Then I head home and keep working.

I often take a break around midday for exercise. Gym and/or hiking, sometimes both.

Then I get home and keep working.

Lately, I usually stop around 6pm. Sometimes later, like yesterday where it was around 7:30pm.

I'll take breaks to go socialize sometimes too, or run errands.

And I'm never working frantically or ignoring my physical needs.

After recovering from burnout and chronic illness, I would never have thought I'd do this.

But I genuinely enjoy it. I look forward to producing videos for YouTube, courses for my fans, and shitpoasting on X.

I've got some big paydays coming and I was thinking maybe I would take some time off to go on a road trip or something with my dog.

But who knows?

I've had some people ask if I'm at risk of burning out again, and I say know. I'm not working *hard* anymore. I'm working at a sustainable pace, but the most important thing is that I'm *having fun* every day.

The thing about burnout is that it is always driven by a spiritual wound. The core of burnout is always some pain that you're running from.

I spent the last few years tending to that pain and it is now mostly gone. Instead, I'm going towards something that feels generative, life-giving.

There's also the "founders paradox" or whatever people call it. Bryan Johnson has talked about this (and been accused of it). You work insanely hard to get to a point of comfort and success, and then continue to enjoy the dividends of nearly killing yourself.

Maybe it is all just part of the process. I nearly worked myself to death for a while there, just like so many others.

There was a question going around a couple years ago. People talking about exited founders like "If I had that money I'd just lay on a beach somewhere for the rest of my life!"

And the answer was simple: the kind of people who are likely to be successful entrepreneurs or exited founders are exactly the opposite of the people who will just lay on a beach. Idleness is hell.

And I get that now.