“It's that like hobby-slash-work barrier that's like get really dangerous where you're like oh like I'm working on this feature and it's a ton of fun and it's like 10pm... most great outcomes came through at least some period of like intense investment.”

Great products come from a period of obsessive intensity — that is not a warning

The work-life balance framing misses something about how great products get built. Apollo happened because Christian worked on it obsessively during a period when he had no commitments, no balance, just intensity. That phase is often necessary — not something to engineer away. The goal is to find the project that makes 10pm feel like fun.