ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever

by Jason Fried

based on our experience. We’ve been in business for more than ten years. Along the way, we’ve seen two recessions, one burst bubble, business-model shifts, and doom-and-gloom predictions come and go— and we’ve remained profitable through it all. We’re an intentionally small company that makes software to help small companies and groups get things done the easy way. More than 3 million people around the world use our products. We started out in 1999 as a three-person Web-design consulting firm. In 2004, we weren’t happy with the project-management software used

own and starting a business. Maybe they don’t think

Plans are inconsistent with improvisation.

Plans more than a few pages long just wind up as fossils in your file cabinet.

premature hiring is the death of many companies.

once you get big, it’s really hard to shrink without firing people, damaging morale, and changing the entire way you do business.

Anyone who runs a business that’s sustainable and profitable, whether it’s big or small, should be proud.

Workaholics wind up creating more problems than they solve.

try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force.

Workaholics make the people who don’t stay late feel inadequate for “merely” working reasonable hours. That leads to guilt and poor morale all around. Plus, it leads to an ass-in-seat mentality—people stay late out of obligation, even if they aren’t really being productive.

If all you do is work, you’re unlikely to have sound judgments. Your values and decision making wind up skewed. You stop being able to decide what’s worth extra effort and what’s not.

Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way to get things done.

The easiest, most straightforward way to create a great product or service is to make something you want to use.

Ideas are cheap and plentiful. The original pitch idea is such a small part of a business that it’s almost negligible. The real question is how well you execute.

When you want something bad enough, you make the time—regardless of your other obligations.

Don’t let yourself off the hook with excuses. It’s entirely your responsibility to make your dreams come true.

A strong stand is how you attract superfans. They point to you and defend you. And they spread the word further, wider, and more passionately than any advertising could.

Strong opinions aren’t free. You’ll turn some people off. They’ll accuse you of being arrogant and aloof. That’s life. For everyone who loves you, there will be others who hate you. If no one’s upset by what you’re saying, you’re probably not pushing hard enough. (And you’re probably boring, too.)

When you don’t know what you believe, everything becomes an argument. Everything is debatable. But when you stand for something, decisions are obvious.

Seeking funding is difficult and draining. It takes months of pitch meetings, legal maneuvering, contracts, etc. That’s an enormous distraction when you should really be focused on building something great.

The start up is a magical place. It’s a place where expenses are someone else’s problem. It’s a place where that pesky thing called revenue is never an issue. It’s a place where you can spend other people’s money until you figure out a way to make your own. It’s a place where the laws of business physics don’t apply.

Huge organizations can take years to pivot. They talk instead of act. They meet instead of do.

Constraints are advantages in disguise.

When you put off decisions, they pile up. And piles end up ignored, dealt with in haste, or thrown out. As a result, the individual problems in those piles stay unresolved.

Whenever you can, swap “Let’s think about it” for “Let’s decide on it.” Commit to making decisions. Don’t wait for the perfect solution. Decide and move forward.

The problem comes when you postpone decisions in the hope that a perfect answer will come to you later. It won’t. You’re as likely to make a great call today as you are tomorrow.

Long projects zap morale. The longer it takes to develop, the less likely it is to launch. Make the call, make progress, and get something out now—while you’ve got the motivation and momentum to do so.

constantly look for things to remove, simplify, and streamline.

The core of your business should be built around things that won’t change. Things that people are going to want today and ten years from now. Those are the things you should invest in.

Remember, fashion fades away. When you focus on permanent features, you’re in bed with things that never go out of style.

When you impose a deadline, you gain clarity.

It’s easy to put your head down and just work on what you think needs to be done. It’s a lot harder to pull your head up and ask why.

If you’re constantly staying late and working weekends, it’s not because there’s too much work to be done. It’s because you’re not getting enough done at work.

Long stretches of alone time are when you’re most productive.

Find a judo solution, one that delivers maximum efficiency with minimum effort. Judo solutions are all about getting the most out of doing the least. Whenever you face an obstacle, look for a way to judo it.

Momentum fuels motivation.

To keep your momentum and motivation up, get in the habit of accomplishing small victories along the way.

When you’re tired, you lose motivation to attack the big problems.

Your ability to remain patient and tolerant is severely reduced when you’re tired.

Reality never sticks to best-case scenarios.

estimates that stretch weeks, months, and years into the future are fantasies. The truth is you just don’t know what’s going to happen that far in advance.

The solution: Break the big thing into smaller things. The smaller it is, the easier it is to estimate.

If something takes twice as long as you expected, better to have it be a small project that’s a couple weeks over rather than a long one that’s a couple months over.

Keep breaking your time frames down into smaller chunks. Instead of one twelve-week project, structure it as twelve one-week projects. Instead of guesstimating at tasks that take thirty hours or more, break them down into more realistic six-to-ten-hour chunks. Then go one step at a time.

Start making smaller to-do lists too. Long lists collect dust.

Long lists are guilt trips. The longer the list of unfinished items, the worse you feel about it. And at a certain point, you just stop looking at it because it makes you feel bad. Then you stress out and the whole thing turns into a big mess.

break a single list of a hundred items into ten lists of ten items. That means when you finish an item on a list, you’ve completed 10 percent of that list, instead of 1 percent.

Simply rearranging your tasks this way can have an amazing impact on your productivity and motivation.

Big decisions are hard to make and hard to change.

The more steam you put into going in one direction, the harder it is to change course.