Some fires will burn you but many won’t. Slow down enough to gauge the heat and respond appropriately. When you determine something isn’t imminently dangerous, try to figure out how to extinguish the fire now and minimize the chance it’ll likely flare up again tomorrow. We've developed lots of guidelines for ourselves since starting our business—the last couple years of trial by fire. Almost all of these can be unified under a single theme: DUMB WORK MAKES MORE DUMB WORK. This is true tactically and seems strategically universal. You do not want to answer the same question 100 times when after the 10th time, you could take an hour to publish a well-written FAQ rather than fire off another 10min email response. You don’t want to half consider a design solution only to bust your ass trying to sell it with a hard pitch or forced to service it with an unending queue of complaints. Take a split second before tending the latest fire to ask yourself, can I solve this issue for tomorrow if I give it more of my time today. It’s a rare instance when it isn’t time well spent.
