Pay yourself first
TLDR
- DHH argues that doing meaningful work for yourself must come before reactive tasks like email, meetings, and check-ins.
Key Takeaways
- Reactive work (email, meetings, status updates) can fill an entire workweek indefinitely if you let it.
- DHH blocks time for programming, experimenting, and researching for personal intellectual satisfaction, not obligation.
- Solving your own problems and chasing your own curiosity builds motivation and elevates talent over time.
- Competency earned through self-directed work earns more privilege and autonomy, creating a reinforcing cycle.
- Putting personal priorities last means never reaching them; they must be scheduled first, even in small amounts.
Why It Matters
- Founders and operators running teams face constant pull toward coordination work, which crowds out the output that made them valuable.
- The principle applies at any seniority level: small early investments in self-directed work compound into skills and leverage.
- DHH frames privilege not as something to apologize for but as something to earn and expand deliberately.
DHH · 2025-10-04 · Read the original
