I stop work at 3pm.

I run an agency, a software business and a newsletter. For a long time I didn't stop at all. I wrote down how that changed in a book called Home by 3pm.

Thirty hours in the attic

The day before a big launch, a new head of marketing added two sections nobody had planned for. I said yes. I worked from the attic office for thirty hours straight, until my hands weren't steady and I was reading the same line of code four times.

Around seven the light came up in the east window. My son, five, came looking for me and asked if I'd take him to kindergarten. I said no. We launched at 3pm. By every number it was a win. It felt like a loss.

A decade of building things

For 10 years I've built software and retention systems for US e-commerce brands. I've launched over two dozen projects, worked as a subcontractor for agencies and their clients, and ran a retail store with my wife. Plenty of it went well. Very little of it ended on time.

The wall is a fixed end to the workday. Everything that doesn't fit before it is information, not failure. Most mornings now I'm in the kitchen making coffee when my son asks if I'll take him to school. Of course I will.

What the wall taught me

1. 01
   Kill first

   The first question for any task is whether it should exist at all.
2. 02
   Automate without lying to yourself

   If it still needs you when you are off-grid, it isn't automated.
3. 03
   Delegate without recreating yourself

   Hand over the outcome, not a copy of how you do it.
4. 04
   Do without borrowing the evening

   What's left gets done before the wall, not after it.

The book · Out now

I wrote it all down.

11 chapters, from the night in the attic to the morning in the kitchen. No publisher, no editor, no ghostwriter. Written and illustrated alone, in short days.

Get Home by 3pm (opens in a new tab)

After 3pm I'm a husband and a father of two. We visit friends, play board games, and the plan is whatever we decide on the spot.