You Ever Had a Fight With Your Boss at 3am?
How sleep deprivation turns minor issues into national emergencies, and how a solid team pulls you back from the edge.
You ever had a fight with your boss at 3am?
I have.
Wouldn’t recommend it.
Two weeks of 1am finishes, no sleep and an activation that was very much not going to plan had finally caught up with me.
Everything felt like it was falling apart. The activation was on its head, my brain had decided we were facing the end of civilisation, and I ended up having a full-blown argument with the CEO.
In that moment, I genuinely thought: I might actually quit.
The funny thing?
Turns out two weeks of sleep deprivation can make a minor issue feel like a national emergency.The “massive problem” I’d convinced myself we had wasn’t an easy fix
But I had my team.
A 15-minute walk, some fresh air and a reset later… we were back.
No sleep was had that night, but that’s the reality of this industry.
The best part? When things go wrong, everyone gets stuck in.
At one point we had our CEO painting skirting boards at 6am. Because titles don’t matter when you’re trying to get an activation over the line. Everyone gets their hands dirty.
The chaos, the meltdowns, the “how are we going to fix this?” moments… they’re all part of it.
And somehow, we always do.