It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

by Jason Fried

There are surely dozens more things we don’t need to be doing at work. 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.

Nearly all product work at Basecamp is done by teams of three people. It’s our magic number. A team of three is usually composed of two programmers and one designer. And if it’s not three, it’s one or two rather than four or five. 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.

Small, short projects quickly become big, long projects when too many people are there to work on them.

three reduces miscommunication and improves coordination. Three people can talk directly with one another without introducing hearsay. And it’s a lot easier to coordinate three people’s schedules than four or more.

That’s why rather than jumping on every new idea right away, we make every idea wait a while. Generally a few weeks, at least. That’s just enough time either to forget about it completely or to realize you can’t stop thinking about it.

No is easier to do, yes is easier to say. No is no to one thing. Yes is no to a thousand things.

Taking a risk doesn’t have to be reckless. You’re not any bolder or braver because you put yourself or the business at needless risk. The smart bet is one where you get to play again if it doesn’t come up your way.

Profit means time to think, space to explore. It means being in control of your own destiny and schedule.

Without profit, something is always on fire. When companies talk about burn rates, two things are burning: money and people. One you’re burning up, one you’re burning out.

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. It’s about knowing what to optimize for.

Putting everything we build in front of customers beforehand is slow, costly, and results in a mountain of prerelease feedback that has to be sifted through, considered, debated, discussed, and decided upon. And yet it’s still all just a guess! That’s a lot of energy to spend guessing.

Jean-Louis Gassée, who used to run Apple France, describes this situation as the choice between two tokens. 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.