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Instead, we ask people to write updates daily or weekly on Basecamp for others to read when they have a free moment.
This saves dozens of hours a week and affords people larger blocks of uninterrupted time.
Meetings tend to break time into “before” and “after.” Get rid of those meetings and people suddenly have a good stretch of time ...
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Time and attention are best spent in large bills, if you will, not spare ...
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The quality hour we’re after is 1 × 60.
It’s hard to be effective with fractured hours, but it’s easy to be stressed out:
Productivity is for machines, not for people.
We don’t believe in busyness at Basecamp. We believe in effectiveness.
How little can we do? How much can we cut out? Instead of adding to-dos, we add to-don’ts.
Being productive is about occupying your time—filling your schedule to the brim and getti...
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Being effective is about finding more of your time unoccupied and open for ot...
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What’s worse is when management holds up certain people as having a great “work ethic” because they’re always around, always available, always working.
It’s about doing what you say you’re going to do, putting in a fair day’s work, respecting the work, respecting the customer, respecting coworkers, not wasting time, not creating unnecessary work for other people, and not being a bottleneck.
Stop equating work ethic with excessive work hours. Neither is going to get you ahead or help you find calm.
Ask people where they go when they really need to get something done. One answer you’ll rarely hear: the office.
Modern-day offices have become interruption factories.
Merely walking in the door makes you a target for anyone else’s conversation, question, or irritation.
The major distractions at work aren’t from the outside, they’re from the inside. The wandering manager constantly asking people how things are going, the meeting that accomplishes little but morphs into another meeting next week, the cramped quarters into which people are crammed like sardines, the ringing phones of the sales department, or the loud lunchroom down the hall from your desk.
People aren’t working longer and later because there’s more work to do all of a sudden. People are working longer and later because they can’t get work done at work anymore!
The problem comes when you make it too easy—and always acceptable—to pose any question as soon as it comes to mind.
Most questions just aren’t that pressing, but the urge to ask the expert immediately is irresistible.
What’s worse, they don’t know when these questions might come up. You can’t plan your own day if everyone else is using it up randomly.
So we borrowed an idea from academia: office hours. All subject-matter experts at Basecamp now publish office hours.
But what if you have a question on Monday and someone’s office hours aren’t until Thursday? You wait, that’s what you do.
Office hours have been a big hit at Basecamp.
Getting on someone’s schedule at Basecamp is a tedious, direct negotiation, not an easy, automated convenience. You have to make your case. You can’t just reach into someone’s calendar, find an open slot, and plant your flag.
Taking someone’s time should be a pain in the ass. Taking many people’s time should be so cumbersome that most people won’t even bother to try it unless it’s REALLY IMPORTANT!
Meetings should be a last resort, especially big ones.
As a general rule, nobody at Basecamp really knows where anyone else is at any given moment. Are they working? Dunno. Are they taking a break? Dunno. Are they at lunch? Dunno. Are they picking up their kid from school? Dunno. Don’t care.
“But how do you know if someone’s working if you can’t see them?” Same answer as this question: “How do you know if someone’s working if you can see them?” You don’t.
The only way to know if work is getting done is by looking at the actual work. That’s the boss’s job.
But when everyone knows you’re “available,” it’s an invitation to be interrupted. You might as well have a neon sign flashing BOTHER ME! hanging above your head.
The expectation of an immediate response is the ember that ignites so many fires at work.
In almost every situation, the expectation of an immediate response is an unreasonable expectation.
Almost everything can wait. And almost everything should.
One where we not only accept but strongly encourage people not to check email, or chat, or instant message for long stretches of uninterrupted time.
Fuck that. People should be missing out!
That’s what we try to encourage at Basecamp. JOMO! The joy of missing out.
It’s JOMO that lets you turn off the firehose of information and chatter and interruptions to actu...
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It’s JOMO that lets you catch up on what happened today as a single summary email tomorrow morning rather than with a drip...
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One way we push back against this at Basecamp is by writing monthly “Heartbeats.”
Summaries of the work and progress that’s been done and had by a team, written by the team lead, to the entire company.
Companies love to declare “We’re all family here.” No, you’re not. Neither are we at Basecamp. We’re coworkers. That doesn’t mean we don’t care about one another.
Furthermore, Basecamp is not “our baby.” Basecamp is our product.
Their motive is rather more likely to be a unidirectional form of sacrifice: yours.
You don’t have to pretend to be a family to be courteous. Or kind. Or protective. All those values can be expressed even better in principles, policies, and, most important, actions.
You can’t credibly promote the virtues of reasonable hours, plentiful rest, and a healthy lifestyle to employees if you’re doing the opposite as the boss.
When the top dog puts in mad hours, the rest of the pack is bound to follow along. It doesn’t matter what you say, it matters what you do.
No, not a hero. If the only way you can inspire the troops is by a regimen of exhaustion, it’s time to look for some deeper substance.
The fate of most companies is not decided in fierce contests of WHO CAN DO THE LATEST CONFERENCE CALL or WHO CAN SET THE MOST PUNISHING DEADLINE.
