It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

by Jason Fried

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.

If it’s constantly crazy at work, we have two words for you: Fuck that. And two more: Enough already.

Chaos should not be the natural state at work. Anxiety isn’t a prerequisite for progress. Sitting in meetings all day isn’t required for success.

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

How about something really audacious: No targets, no goals?

You can absolutely run a great business without a single goal. You don’t need something fake to do something real. 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 because these goals are harder to quantify does not make them any less important.

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

Set out to do good work. Set out to be fair in your dealings with customers, employees, and reality. Leave a lasting impression with the people you touch and worry less (or not at all!) about changing the world. Chances are, you won’t, and if you do, it’s not going to be because you said you would.

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 best information you’ll ever have about a decision is at the moment of execution.

Most of the time, if you’re uncomfortable with something, it’s because it isn’t right. Discomfort is the human response to a questionable or bad situation, whether that’s working long hours with no end in sight, exaggerating your business numbers to impress investors, or selling intimate user data to advertisers. If you get into the habit of suppressing all discomfort, you’re going to lose yourself, your manners, and your morals.

Being comfortable in your zone is essential to being calm.

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.

Most of what we think we have to do, we don’t have to do at all. It’s a choice, and often it’s a poor one.

You can’t expect people to do great work if they don’t have a full day’s attention to devote to it. Partial attention is barely attention at all.

Time and attention are best spent in large bills, if you will, not spare coins and small change. Enough to buy those big chunks of time to do that wonderful, thorough job you’re expected to do. When you don’t get that, you have to scrounge for focused time, forced to squeeze project work in between all the other nonessential, yet mandated, things you’re expected to do every day.

It’s sad to think that some people crave a commute because it’s the only time during the day they have to themselves.

It’s hard to be effective with fractured hours, but it’s easy to be stressed out: 25 minutes on a phone call, then 10 minutes with a colleague who taps you on the shoulder, then 5 on this thing you’re supposed to be working on, before another 15 are burned on a conversation you got pulled into that really didn’t require your attention. Then you’re left with 5 more to do what you wanted to do.

One thing at a time doesn’t mean one thing, then another thing, then another thing in quick succession; it means one big thing for hours at a time or, better yet, a whole day.

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!

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 aren’t working longer and later because there’s more work to do all of a sudden. People are working longer and later because they can’t get work done at work anymore!

If you don’t own the vast majority of your own time, it’s impossible to be calm. You’ll always be stressed out, feeling robbed of the ability to actually do your job.

Fuck that. People should be missing out! Most people should miss out on most things most of the time.

Because there’s absolutely no reason everyone needs to attempt to know everything that’s going on at our company. And especially not in real time! If it’s important, you’ll find out.

We must all stop treating every little fucking thing that happens at work like it’s on a breaking-news ticker.

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.

A leader who sets an example of self-sacrifice can’t help but ask self-sacrifice of others.

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

Posing real, pointed questions is the only way to convey that it’s safe to provide real answers.

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.

Balance is give and take. The typical corporate give-and-take is that life gives and work takes.

The quickest way to disappointment is to set unreasonable expectations.

Churning through people because you’re trying to suppress the wages of those who stay just seems like poor business.

“If it’s important, slow down.”

Behavior unchecked becomes behavior sanctioned.

Unwinding the new normal requires far more effort than preventing that new normal from being set in the first place. If you don’t want gnarly roots in your culture, you have to mind the seeds.

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.

When calm starts early, calm becomes the habit. But if you start crazy, it’ll define you.

Customers get the value when it’s ready wherever, not when it’s ready everywhere. So don’t tie more knots, cut more ties. The fewer bonds, the better.

What’s especially important in disagree-and-commit situations is that the final decision should be explained clearly to everyone involved. It’s not just decide and go, it’s decide, explain, and go.

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.

If you do one thing at 100 percent, you’ve spent 100 percent to get that one thing. If you spend 20 percent each on getting five things to 80 percent, well, then, you’ve done five things! We’ll almost always take that trade.

Being clear about what demands excellence and what’s perfectly okay just being adequate is a great way to bring a sense of calm into your work. You’ll worry less, you’ll accept more. “That’s fine” is such a wonderfully relaxing way to work most of the time.

If it’s never enough, then it’ll always be crazy at work.

Time-management hacks, life hacks, sleep hacks, work hacks. These all reflect an obsession with trying to squeeze more time out of the day, but rearranging your daily patterns to find more time for work isn’t the problem. Too much shit to do is the problem. The only way to get more done is to have less to do.

Big teams make things worse all the time by applying too much force to things that only need to be lightly finessed.

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.

You’ll often hear that people don’t like change, but that’s not quite right. People have no problem with change they asked for. What people don’t like is forced change—change they didn’t request on a timeline they didn’t choose.

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.