>The best mindset is that you could be gone tomorrow.

Can't disagree more. At my last job, I was in a senior position for 7 years, one of the earliest engineering hires. I loved my team, my CEO, the direction of our company, and advertised us to friends.

Then, one Friday, a close coworker was let go without me having any warning or say over the matter. Not during a layoff, just fired one day. After that week, I was practically paranoid 24/7. My boss loved me and I was getting raises, but the anxiety of whether I'd be let go disabled my work progress.

I didn't want to risk "fucking it up" so I became ultra-conservative with my code pushes, review cycles exploded, and I just kept putting off cutting out/replacing features.

It was so stressful that I recognized my personal psychology was deteriorating weekly. My anxiety-driven depression further disabled my progress to a practical halt. I quit the job.

The best work I did was when I was thinking about the actual work, not survival instincts.