I was working 13-hour days. Then I started seeing my boss in my dreams.

It sounds funny when I say it out loud, but there were nights when I saw my boss in my dreams.

I was employed, working over 12 to 13 hours a day, and still missing things.

Work had become endless. I struggled to tell where to start, where to stop, or what would let me finish a day feeling that I had done enough.

Sometimes I had completed work that made relatively little difference while overlooking something that mattered more to a customer, a stakeholder or my management.

I would look at the hours I had put in and wonder how that could happen.

Then I would blame myself.

I should have worked harder. I should have worked longer. I should have been smarter.

The morning before a meeting

The mornings before weekly meetings were especially uncomfortable.

I would wake up scared about what might come up. Was there a commitment I had forgotten? Something someone expected that I had lost track of?

I never felt fully in control of what was done and what was still pending.

That uncertainty followed me into the meeting. I could have worked through a long list of things and still worry that the one thing someone would ask about was the thing I had missed.

Getting work done wasn’t giving me much satisfaction because I couldn’t confidently account for the work that remained.

Work came along on dates with my wife

I was married, and I remember being on dates with my wife without being fully present.

Part of my attention was still at work, trying to remember something.

What was I missing? What had I promised? What would someone ask me about next?

I don’t find that funny when I look back at it. I find it sad.

I wanted to be there with her. Instead, I was spending some of that time mentally searching through unfinished work.

The workday had ended, but I hadn’t found a way to put it down.

My answer was usually to keep working

At the time, I wasn’t thinking carefully about which commitments I needed to reduce, renegotiate or stop taking on.

I just kept doing the work.

I also hadn’t thought much about how to structure my day around different kinds of attention. I wasn’t deliberately protecting time for creative work, setting aside another part of the day for routine commitments, or closing the day with a clear account of what remained.

I moved from one thing to another, hoping that enough effort would eventually make me feel caught up.

It rarely did.

Looking back, I can see that I needed to reconsider how I was working. But “I should work smarter” was another thing I could use to criticize myself without knowing what to change the following morning.

I needed to know what I was carrying

One thing I struggled with was having a dependable picture of my commitments.

What had I agreed to do? What was complete? What still needed attention? Which unfinished item mattered most?

Without that picture, everything remained available to worry about.

Even after a long day, I could still imagine a forgotten obligation waiting in an email, a meeting or a conversation I hadn’t revisited.

Those were some of the experiences that inspired me to start Qubit.

I wanted a to-do list that could fill itself in from my work and help keep that record current as things changed. I had found it difficult to maintain that picture myself while also doing the work it described.

A clearer list would still leave decisions to make

Looking back, I can also see decisions I wasn’t making.

Some commitments needed a conversation about scope or timing. Some work deserved more attention than other work. Some things needed to come off my plate.

A to-do list couldn’t make all of those decisions for me.

But I wanted a clearer place to begin: knowing what I had committed to, what I had finished and what still needed a decision.

I can’t honestly turn that period into a neat story about having everything figured out. I remember working very hard, missing things anyway, and carrying that uncertainty into time I wanted to spend with my wife.

And I remember seeing my boss in my dreams.

That experience stayed with me when I started building Qubit.