I thought there was an episode where they found out Warp Travel was doing damage to space in some areas, so they instituted a speed limit (unless it’s an emergency) to mitigate the impact.
There was, and then they had a couple technical changes to address it a bit, like Voyager's variable geometry nacelles, and then they handwaved it away with generic "advancements". I mean we see the Protostar drive and even Quantum Slipstream being used by a Federation Dauntless in Prodigy. And that takes place only like 5 years after Voyager makes it home.
Yes, but also maximum warp isn't the fastest sustainable cruise speed. We have many instances of a ship getting pushed to its limits and having to slow down after some time. The Enterprise-D is stated to be capable of warp 9.6 for up to twelve hours.
Pace yourself, because if you only ever worked at maximum capacity then they'd always expect maximum capacity. Always work at cruising speeds so when you need to go max speed you look like a miracle worker
When I was a supervisor I used to tell people on my team that. I didn't want them going above and beyond to make shit happen when we were short staffed because then the bean counters were gonna see that and determine we didn't need more people. I told them they should shoot to get "exceeds" on their metrics but nothing beyond that because that was all that was needed to max out their performance review at the end of the year.
Has literally happened where I work. The team is now 20% of the size it used to be and now they're thinking of getting rid of the team entirely and just having general office staff do the job.
I don't want to be a dog's body office worker, so I'm quitting, which means that they have managed to have a 100% staff turnover rate in 18 months. It's like they actively want to lose the contract.
I try to tell my brain that, but it doesnt understand. I have only two speeds apparently. 0 or 100. And my brain loves sitting at 0 until it has no choice but to go to 100 until whatever it is is done.
That is called racing to sleep iirc and is a valid cpu scheduling technique. It works on the assumption that doing nothing (sleeping is the term there) is much more energy efficient than doing anything even if slowly, so much so that you make up the energy spent to boost to top speed.
If it's a good reason then yeah. But that reason would probably mean 9.9 isn't the max anymore and some other higher number is. They get that extra speed by overloading the engines, which you can do for a brief time. I also assume there is some sort of fuel savings aspect. Aircraft and ships can go much faster than their cruising speeds, but at some point the extra speed isn't worth the extra fuel. Ships specifically will have a speed at which they're most efficient at because of the design of their hull, propellers, etc...
Another reason exists for Warp 5 specifically. In an episode of TNG they discovered high warp speed was wrecking subspace, so the Federation imposed a Warp 5 speed limit. They basically ignore this in later series and fans just assume that some new technology made warp more eco friendly.
Ah, but consider: Space and time and thought are not the separate things we imagine they are, and sometimes a Galaxy class starship can cross the entire universe on the power of belief.
So brew another coffee and keep on burning out, I suppose?
Only if you feel like you want to... sometimes it can be fun, but consider whether you would ask that of someone else, and then perhaps wonder why you do it to yourself?
My view is that life is a marathon where you set the pace. You can choose to sprint against others but sooner or later you'll quit that race by choice or by mortal exhaustion.
Or as Soft Play put it in their song "Cheer Up London":
Put another '0' on your paycheck, are you done digging your grave yet? Cheers up London, it's not that bad, cheer up London, you're already dead and it's not that bad.