Summary: If you try to put out every fire, you’ll only burn yourself out. The best entrepreneurs? They let fires burn. Knowing which problems not to solve is just as critical as knowing which problems must be solved. You won’t have time to sit down and assess every blaze burning around you. And good luck ranking your startup’s problems from most to least severe. The reality is problems flare up unexpectedly and on a daily basis — yesterday’s whisp of smoke might be today’s five-alarm fire. So you have to conserve energy for the biggest blazes, and learn how to sleep easy while other fires smolder around you. That means you can ignore emails, tolerate buggy code, risk server outages and even ignore customers until their complaints hit fever pitch.
