Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell

It wasn’t micromanagement. It was holding people accountable. It was holding everything in my head at the same time. It was holding on for dear life amid the flood of everything I needed to remember. It started as a one-sheeter. Eventually it grew to eight pages, ten pages. It was labor intensive. Arcane. Never-ending. But it worked. And eventually my team grew to appreciate it. It kept me (relatively) calm. It helped me focus. And nobody ever had to wonder where my head was at. Everyone always knew what mattered to me—they had my priorities in writing, updated, every week. A lot of them have picked up the practice themselves, and the people who worked for them have done the same. Everyone dreaded the list, the email, the meeting—until they too had too much in their brains. Until they needed a way to manage it.