It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

by Jason Fried

Calm is protecting people’s time and attention. Calm is about 40 hours of work a week. Calm is reasonable expectations. Calm is ample time off. Calm is smaller. Calm is a visible horizon. Calm is meetings as a last resort. Calm is asynchronous first, real-time second. Calm is more independence, less interdependence. Calm is sustainable practices for the long term. Calm is profitability.

for everyone in that tiny minority that somehow finds what they’re looking for in the grind, there are so many more who end up broken, wasted, and burned out with nothing to show for it. And for what?

The human experience is so much more than 24/7 hustle to the max. It’s also just bad advice. You’re not very likely to find that key insight or breakthrough idea north of the 14th hour in the day. Creativity, progress, and impact do not yield to brute force.

There are probably manual-labor domains where greater input does equal greater output, at least for a time. But you rarely hear about people working three low-end jobs out of necessity wearing that grind with pride. It’s only the pretenders, those who aren’t exactly struggling for subsistence, who feel the need to brag about their immense sacrifice. Entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be this epic tale of cutthroat survival.

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. That’s good enough for us. Doesn’t matter if we’re 2 percent of the market or 4 percent or 75 percent. What matters is that we have a healthy business with sound economics that work for us. Costs under control, profitable sales.

Do we want to make things better? All the time. But do we want to maximize “better” through constantly chasing goals? No thanks. That’s why we don’t have goals at Basecamp. We didn’t when we started, and now, nearly 20 years later, we still don’t. We simply do the best work we can on a daily basis.

Because let’s face it: Goals are fake. Nearly all of them are artificial targets set for the sake of setting targets. These made-up numbers then function as a source of unnecessary stress until they’re either achieved or abandoned. And when that happens, you’re supposed to pick new ones and start stressing again. Nothing ever stops at the quarterly win. There are four quarters to a year. Forty to a decade. Every one of them has to produce, exceed, and beat EXPECTATIONS.

if you label your own work as disruption, it probably isn’t.

We’re literally looking at what’s in front of us, not at everything we could possibly imagine.

We simply believe that you’re better off steering the ship with a thousand little inputs as you go rather than a few grand sweeping movements made way ahead of time.

The best information you’ll ever have about a decision is at the moment of execution. We wait for those moments to make a call.

if you listen to your discomfort and back off from what’s causing it, you’re more likely to find the right path.

Every day your workday is like flying from Chicago to London. But why does the flight feel longer than your time in the office? It’s because the flight is uninterrupted, continuous time. It feels long because it is long!

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

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 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.

Workaholism is a contagious disease. You can’t stop the spread if you’re the one bringing it into the office. Disseminate some calm instead.

By definition, pursuing low-hanging fruit should be a no-brainer for any business. An easy opportunity simply waiting to be seized. Little sweat, all reward! The problem, as we’ve learned over time, is that the further away you are from the fruit, the lower it looks. Once you get up close, you see it’s quite a bit higher than you thought. We assume that picking it will be easy only because we’ve never tried to do it before.

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. That hurts colleagues at work as much as it does the family at home. Being short on sleep turns the astute into assholes.

by focusing on the person and their work, we can avoid hiring an imaginary person. It’s really easy to fall for someone’s carefully crafted story. Great pedigree, great school, impressive list of previous employment. What’s not to love? This is how companies hire the wrong people all the time.

The same is true if they’re the kind of senior person who’s used to getting stuff done mainly by directing others to do it. At Basecamp, we all do the work, so influence is most effectively exerted by leading the work, not by calling for it.

work is mostly about the environment, anyway. Even if you had the most precious orchid planted in your garden, it would quickly die without the proper care. And if you do pay attention to having the best environment, you can grow your own beautiful orchids with patience. No need to steal them from your neighbor!

We’ve found that nurturing untapped potential is far more exhilarating than finding someone who’s already at their peak. We hired many of our best people not because of who they were but because of who they could become.

An unreasonable expectation of quality given the resources and time. “We can’t compromise on quality—every detail must be perfect by Friday. Whatever it takes.”

Constraints are liberating, and realistic deadlines with flexible scopes can be just that. But they require you to embrace budgets and shun estimates. Great work will fill the time allotted if you allow it to.

Don’t meet, write. Don’t react, consider.

You just can’t bring your A game to every situation. Knowing when to embrace Good Enough is what gives you the opportunity to be truly excellent when you need to be.

Week four of a six-week project should be about finishing things up and ramping things down, not coming up with big new ideas.

It’s not that new approaches or ideas are bad, but their timing may well be. Always keeping the door open to radical changes only invites chaos and second-guessing. Confidently close that door. Accept that better ideas aren’t necessarily better if they arrive after the train has left the station. If they’re so good, they can catch the next one.

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

The smart bet is one where you get to play again if it doesn’t come up your way.

Sell new customers on the new thing and let old customers keep whatever they already have.

Getting things off the ground is so hard that it’s natural to expect it’ll just get easier from here. Except it doesn’t. Things get harder as you go, not easier. The easiest day is day one. That’s the dirty little secret of business.

And if you don’t have the power to make things change at the company level, find your local level. You always have the choice to change yourself and your expectations. Change the way you interact with people. Change the way you communicate. Start protecting your own time.