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.

We don’t compare. What others do has no bearing on what we’re able to do, what we want to do, or what we choose to do.

Goals are fake. Nearly all of them are artificial targets set for the sake of setting targets.

The opportunity to do another good day’s work will come again tomorrow, even if you go home at a reasonable time.

When you stick with planning for the short term, you get to change your mind often. And that’s a huge relief!

It was the discomfort of knowing two people doing the same work at the same level were being paid differently that led us to reform how we set salaries. That’s how we ended up throwing out individual negotiations and differences in pay, and going with a simpler system.

Companies spend their employees’ time and attention as if there were an infinite supply of both. As if they cost nothing. Yet employees’ time and attention are among the scarcest resources we have.

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.

Not doing something that isn’t worth doing is a wonderful way to spend your time.

A great work ethic isn’t about working whenever you’re called upon. 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. Work ethic is about being a fundamentally good person that others can count on and enjoy working with.

The person with the question needed something and they got it. The person with the answer was doing something else and had to stop. That’s rarely a fair trade.

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. You work on something else until Thursday, or you figure it out for yourself before Thursday.

Most people should miss out on most things most of the time. That’s what we try to encourage at Basecamp. JOMO! The joy of missing out.

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.

If the boss really wants to know what’s going on, the answer is embarrassingly obvious: They have to ask! Not vague, self-congratulatory bullshit questions like “What can we do even better?” but the hard ones like “What’s something nobody dares to talk about?” or “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?”

There’s no such thing as a casual suggestion when it comes from the owner of the business. When the person who signs the paychecks mentions this or that, this or that invariably becomes a top priority.

Respect the work that you’ve never done before. Remind yourself that other people’s jobs aren’t so simple.

Yes, sometimes emergencies require extra hours. And yes, sometimes deadlines can’t be moved and you’ll need to make an extra push at the end. That happens. And that’s okay because the exhaustion is not sustained, it’s temporary.

All-nighters are red flags, not green lights. If people are pulling them, pull back. Nearly everything can wait until morning.

The important part isn’t really whether you can afford to pay salaries based on the top city in your industry or at the top 10 percent of the market, but that you keep salaries equal for equal work and seniority.

Hiring and training people is not only expensive, but draining. All that energy could go into making better products with people you’ve kept happy for the long term by being fair and transparent about salary and benefits. Churning through people because you’re trying to suppress the wages of those who stay just seems like poor business.

Not a single benefit aimed at trapping people at the office. Not a single benefit that would make someone prefer to be at work rather than at home. Not a single benefit that puts work ahead of life.

All chat all the time conditions you to believe everything’s worth discussing quickly right now, except that hardly anything is. Almost everything can and should wait until someone has had a chance to think it through and properly write it up.

Unrealistic dates mired by ever-expanding project requirements. More work piles on but the timeline remains the same. That’s not work, that’s hell.

A deadline with a flexible scope invites pushback, compromises, and tradeoffs—all ingredients in healthy, calm projects. It’s when you try to fix both scope and time that you have a recipe for dread, overwork, and exhaustion.

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.

If you want to know the truth about what you’ve built, you have to ship it.

But why worry? Do your best, believe in the work you’ve done, and ship it. Then you’ll find out for sure.