> Your startup will always send signals that it really needs you. Consider making a commitment to maintaining family/friendship/church/whatever ties so that you can maintain perspective on how much the bat signal going off really matters.
These signals are dangerous, because you can always find something that needs to be done. In fact, those somethings almost always find you, and it's hard not to deal with things as they come to you, even if that means from when you finish supper until two hours after you should be in bed.
Most of those things don't need your attention, at least not immediately. Set yourself working hours, stick to them. The mantra you're looking for is "quality (of work) over quantity (of time)". If you can't get everything you think you should do in 40 hours (or 50, or 60, but whatever number you set yourself) a week, take a moment and see what tasks or responsibilities are wasting your time.
My old boss would come in on evenings and weekends to solder PCBs when we'd get first prototypes in (which wasn't his responsability). He'd throw away an evening with his family and a good night's sleep, and gain what? The prototype could be handed on to the next person a couple hours sooner the next day, out of a multi-month production schedule. (Additionally, it's easier to make mistakes when you're tired or rushed, he was not as suited to do the work as I was, and I missed the opportunity to familiarize myself with the prototype I would be debugging later.)
Don't become so attuned to your company's needs (wants) that you miss out on your personal life or reduce your own value to the company.
In academic biology, it is pretty common to put in stupid long hours and a lot of weekend work. However, we always had a running joke that "weekend work never works".
Basically, that experiment you are running on the weekend - so you can get that critical data a few days quicker - will invariably fail to produce any data at all. It is doomed before you start. We were never sure if it was due to tiredness and fatigue, your mind subconsciously sabotaging you or the angry science gods.
But it never worked. You were guaranteed to waste your weekend doing something that had to be repeated on Monday.
So, I'm agreeing with patrickyeon. Is soldering that PCB board really important right now? Do you really need to run that experiment this weekend?
These signals are dangerous, because you can always find something that needs to be done. In fact, those somethings almost always find you, and it's hard not to deal with things as they come to you, even if that means from when you finish supper until two hours after you should be in bed.
Most of those things don't need your attention, at least not immediately. Set yourself working hours, stick to them. The mantra you're looking for is "quality (of work) over quantity (of time)". If you can't get everything you think you should do in 40 hours (or 50, or 60, but whatever number you set yourself) a week, take a moment and see what tasks or responsibilities are wasting your time.
My old boss would come in on evenings and weekends to solder PCBs when we'd get first prototypes in (which wasn't his responsability). He'd throw away an evening with his family and a good night's sleep, and gain what? The prototype could be handed on to the next person a couple hours sooner the next day, out of a multi-month production schedule. (Additionally, it's easier to make mistakes when you're tired or rushed, he was not as suited to do the work as I was, and I missed the opportunity to familiarize myself with the prototype I would be debugging later.)
Don't become so attuned to your company's needs (wants) that you miss out on your personal life or reduce your own value to the company.