weekends felt sacred until my first deal night. i slowly collected raw anecdotes from peers — one analyst blocked half of saturday for ‘deep work’ and made it clear they’d only respond to urgent deal threads; another rotated weekend coverage with a teammate and only took non-deal weeks off. those tactics worked sometimes and failed other times (surprise diligence kills rotations). learning: you can set rules, but protect them with visible rituals — calendar blocks, out-of-office notes, and a named backup teammate. curious what tradeoffs you made to actually keep weekends?
weekends are a social currency. if you use them, people assume you’re available. one guy i knew pretended to be unreachable: no slack, phone off, and his backups were briefed. got him zero promotions for ‘not being around’ even though his work was solid. sometimes you can protect weekends; sometimes you get penalized. decide which teams tolerate boundaries and then act accordingly. reality isn’t pretty, but it’s predictable.