It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

by Jason Fried

And six, seven, or eight on a team will inevitably make simple things more complicated than they need to be. Just like work expands to fill the time available, work expands to fill the team available. Small, short projects quickly become big, long projects when too many people are there to work on them.

You can do big things with small teams, but it’s a whole hell of a lot harder to do small things with big teams.

Three keeps you honest. It tempers your ambition in all the right ways. It requires you to make tradeoffs. And most important, 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. We love three.

Try 3 dev platform

You might well wake up the next day to see what was the world’s best idea yesterday doesn’t seem quite as important now. Taking a breather gives you perspective.

When you say no to one thing, it’s a choice that breeds choices. Tomorrow you can be as open to new opportunities as you were today.

When you say no now, you can come back and say yes later. If you say yes now, it’s harder to say no later. 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.

Eyy

Until you’re running a profitable business, you’re always almost out of business. You’re racing the runway. Fretting about whether you’ll take off in time. Worrying about how to make payroll at the last moment if you don’t. Talk about a pressurized environment!

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.

The problem with per-seat pricing is that it makes your biggest customers your best customers.

It’s a lot easier to do the right thing for the many when you don’t fear displeasing a few super customers.

behemoths

Hyge monstrus creature

Because we don’t want to be a two-headed company with two cultures. Selling to small businesses and selling to enterprises take two very different approaches with two very different kinds of people.

So do your best and put it out there. You can iterate from there on real insights and real answers from real customers who really do need your product. Launch and learn.

That’s what promises lead to—rushing, dropping, scrambling, and a tinge of regret at the earlier promise that was a bit too easy to make.

Promises are easy and cheap to make, actual work is hard and expensive. If it wasn’t, you’d just have done it now rather than promised it later.

What people don’t like is forced change—change they didn’t request on a timeline they didn’t choose. Your “new and improved” can easily become their “what the fuck?” when it is dumped on them as a surprise.

For many customers, better doesn’t matter when comfort, consistency, and familiarity are higher up on their value chain.

Sell new customers on the new thing and let old customers keep whatever they already have. This is the way to keep the peace and maintain the calm.

Are you going to continue to let people chip away at other people’s time? Or are you going to choose to protect people’s time and attention?

Or are you going to choose to relieve people from the conveyor belts of information and give them the focus that their best work requires?

Are you going to continue to expect people to respond immediately to everything? Or are you going to choose contemplation and consideration prior to communication?

Or are you going to choose to give teams control over what can be reasonably accomplished given the time?

A calm company is a choice. Make it yours.