It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

by Jason Fried

Sustained exhaustion is not a badge of honor, it’s a mark of stupidity.

Calm is meetings as a last resort.

But when you think of the company as a product, you ask different questions: Do people who work here know how to use the company? Is it simple? Complex? Is it obvious how it works? What’s fast about it? What’s slow about it? Are there bugs? What’s broken that we can fix quickly and what’s going to take a long time?

Much corporate anxiety comes from the realization that the company has been doing the wrong thing, but it’s too late to change direction because of the “Plan.” “We’ve got to see it through!” Seeing a bad idea through just because at one point it sounded like a good idea is a tragic waste of energy and talent.

Every day your workday is like flying from Chicago to London. But why does the flight feel longer than your time in the office? It’s because the flight is uninterrupted, continuous time. It feels long because it is long!

Effective > Productive

The best companies aren’t families. They’re supporters of families. Allies of families. They’re there to provide healthy, fulfilling work environments so that when workers shut their laptops at a reasonable hour, they’re the best husbands, wives, parents, siblings, and children they can be.

“What’s something nobody dares to talk about?”

“Are you afraid of anything at work?” or “Is there anything you worked on recently that you wish you could do over?” Or even more specific ones like “What do you think we could have done differently to help Jane succeed?” or “What advice would you give before we start on the big website redesign project?”

First, you can’t land a job at Basecamp based on your résumé. CVs might as well be tossed in the garbage. We don’t really care where you went to school, or how many years you’ve been working in the industry, or even that much about where you just worked. What we care about is who you are and what you can do.

You don’t have to let something slide for long before it becomes the new normal. Culture is what culture does. Culture isn’t what you intend it to be. It’s not what you hope or aspire for it to be. It’s what you do. So do better.

You have to keep asking yourself if the way you’re working today is the way you’d want to work in 10, 20, or 30 years.

What’s especially important in disagree-and-commit situations is that the final decision should be explained clearly to everyone involved. It’s not just decide and go, it’s decide, explain, and go.