I have my own software development company. My clients use a purpose-built framework for managing funding applications and grants online. As a sole operator my workload varies: when I add a new client, customisations can keep me at full capacity for several weeks, at other times maintenance can total less than twenty hours a week unless there are requested enhancements or I'm adding new features.

Late last year while my business hours were at a low ebb, I was asked if I could pitch in for six months as lead developer on a government web portal. I'd taken a similar contract two years before when my own business was ramping up, and not found it too taxing to meet the needs of my own clients on evenings and weekends. I didn't factor in two things: I now had twice as many clients, and a cynical dynamic called "Murphy's Law".

Almost as soon as I signed the government contract, clients began requesting (different) extensions to the framework. Without the contract I would have been at full capacity. I found myself starting work for my own clients at 4.00am every morning, then heading off to lead the web portal development team, then putting in more hours for my own clients at the end of the day ... plus weekends. This state of affairs continued with very little respite for the entire six months.

Knowing normal life will resume at a fixed future point is often enough to get through something like this. But my health suffered increasingly as time passed. In the last few weeks I was very sick indeed. I was asked to renew the government contract for a further six months but had the sense to turn that offer down. Two days after the contract finished I had to be admitted to hospital. I was seriously ill, and it has taken two months to get back to the level of health I usually enjoy.

Yes, I was foolish to accept that contract. I have learnt a lesson I won't forget.