It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

by Jason Fried

There are two primary reasons: (1) The workday is being sliced into tiny, fleeting work moments by an onslaught of physical and virtual distractions. And (2) an unhealthy obsession with growth at any cost sets towering, unrealistic expectations that stress people out.

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

The answer isn’t more hours, it’s less bullshit. Less waste, not more production. And far fewer distractions, less always-on anxiety, and avoiding stress.

Creativity, progress, and impact do not yield to brute force.

Entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be this epic tale of cutthroat survival. Most of the time it’s way more boring than that. Less jumping over exploding cars and wild chase scenes, more laying of bricks and applying another layer of paint.

Companies that live in such a zero-sum world don’t “earn market share” from a competitor, they “conquer the market.” They don’t just serve their customers, they “capture” them. They “target” customers, employ a sales “force,” hire “headhunters” to find new talent, pick their “battles,” and make a “killing.” This language of war writes awful stories.

We come in peace. We don’t have imperial ambitions. We aren’t trying to dominate an industry or a market. We wish everyone well. To get ours, we don’t need to take theirs.

What’s our market share? Don’t know, don’t care. It’s irrelevant. Do we have enough customers paying us enough money to cover our costs and generate a profit? Yes. Is that number increasing every year? Yes.

Mark Twain nailed it: “Comparison is the death of joy.” We’re with Mark.

The opposite of conquering the world isn’t failure, it’s participation. Being one of many options in a market is a virtue that allows customers to have a real choice.

We don’t mind leaving some money on the table and we don’t need to squeeze every drop out of the lemon. Those final drops usually taste sour, anyway.

We simply do the best work we can on a daily basis.

And if you must have a goal, how about just staying in business? Or serving your customers well? Or being a delightful place to work? Just

If you stop thinking that you must change the world, you lift a tremendous burden off yourself and the people around you.

Set out to do good work. Set out to be fair in your dealings with customers, employees, and reality.

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

Seeing a bad idea through just because at one point it sounded like a good idea is a tragic waste of energy and talent.

The idea that you have to constantly push yourself out of your comfort zone is the kind of supposedly self-evident nonsense you’ll often find in corporate manifestos.

Oftentimes it’s not breaking out, but diving in, digging deeper, staying in your rabbit hole that brings the biggest gains. Depth, not breadth, is where mastery is often found.

Most of the time, if you’re uncomfortable with something, it’s because it isn’t right.

On the contrary, if you listen to your discomfort and back off from what’s causing it, you’re more likely to find the right path. We’ve been in that place many times over the years at Basecamp.

Most people don’t actually have 8 hours a day to work, they have a couple of hours. The rest of the day is stolen from them by meetings, conference calls, and other distractions.

If you can’t fit everything you want to do within 40 hours per week, you need to get better at picking what to do, not work longer hours.

They guard so many things, but all too often they fail to protect what’s both most vulnerable and most precious: their employees’ time and attention.

Instead, we ask people to write updates daily or weekly on Basecamp for others to read when they have a free moment.

A fractured hour isn’t really an hour—it’s a mess of minutes.

No wonder people who work like that can be short- or ill-tempered.

When was the last time you had three or even four completely uninterrupted hours to yourself and your work?

When people focus on productivity, they end up focusing on being busy. Filling every moment with something to do. And there’s always more to do!

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 getting as much done as you can. Being effective is about finding more of your time unoccupied and open for other things besides work. Time for leisure, ti...

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

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. That’s a terrible example of a work ethic and a great example of someone who’s overworked.

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.

People are working longer and later because they can’t get work done at work anymore!

So we borrowed an idea from academia: 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.

Taking many people’s time should be so cumbersome that most people won’t even bother to try it unless it’s REALLY IMPORTANT!

“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

The common thinking goes like this: If I can write you quickly, you can get back to me quickly, right? Technically, right. Practically, wrong.

Waiting it out is just fine. The sky won’t fall, the company won’t fold. It’ll just be a calmer, cooler, more comfortable place to work. For everyone.

It’s work, it’s not news. We must all stop treating every little fucking thing that happens at work like it’s on a breaking-news ticker.

Such a blunt emotional appeal is only needed if someone is trying to make you forget about your rational self-interest.

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 worst thing you can do is pretend that interpersonal feelings don’t matter. That work should “just be about work.” That’s just ignorant. Humans are humans whether they’re at work or at home.

It takes great restraint as the leader of an organization not to keep lobbing ideas at everyone else. Every such idea is a pebble that’s going to cause ripples when it hits the surface. Throw enough pebbles in the pond and the overall picture becomes as clear as mud.

The problem, as we’ve learned over time, is that the further away you are from the fruit, the lower it looks.

Sleep-deprived people aren’t just short on brains or creativity, they’re short on patience. Short on understanding. Short on tolerance. The smallest things become the biggest dramas.

A great night’s sleep enhances every waking hour. Isn’t that what you’re looking for anyway?

We ask reasonable people to make reasonable choices, and the company will be reasonable right back.