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Sometimes you have to fight against the obvious. And sometimes you have to recognize that time in doesn’t equal benefits out. Doing nothing can be the hardest choice but the strongest, too.
We just needed to be fast enough and 15 minutes was fast enough.
All this isn’t to say that best practices are of no value. They’re like training wheels. When you don’t know how to keep your balance or how fast to pedal, they can be helpful to get you going. But every best practice should come with a reminder to reconsider.
Create your practices and your patterns.
Whatever it takes means sloppy work in the service of just delivering something.
The only way to get more done is to have less to do.
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
We’re forever on the lookout, and always on the hunt to track them down. Not so that we can check them off the list, but so we can throw them away.
We don’t throw more people at problems, we chop problems down until they can be carried across the finish line by teams of three.
Happiness is shipping: finishing good work, sending it off, and then moving on to the next idea.
No is calm but hard. Yes is easy but a flurry.
The smart bet is one where you get to play again if it doesn’t come up your way.
find ways to melt the monotony of work. People grow dull and stiff if they stay in the same swing for too long.
It’s a lot easier to do the right thing for the many when you don’t fear displeasing a few super customers.
Becoming a calm company is all about making decisions about who you are, who you want to serve, and who you want to say no to.
Real answers are only uncovered when someone’s motivated enough to buy your product and use it in their own natural environment—and of their own volition.
Promises pile up like debt, and they accrue interest, too. The longer you wait to fulfill them, the more they cost to pay off and the worse the regret. When it’s time to do the work, you realize just how expensive that yes really was.
When someone copies you, they are copying a moment in time. They don’t know the thinking that went into getting you to that moment in time, and they won’t know the thinking that’ll help you have a million more moments in time. They’re stuck with what you left behind.
Keeping the show running for the long term is a lot harder than walking onstage for the first time.
Don’t burn out early thinking the hard part is behind you.
When you deal with people who have trouble, you can either choose to take the token that says “It’s no big deal” or the token that says “It’s the end of the world.” Whichever token you pick, they’ll take the other.
