ReWork

by Jason Fried

You don’t have to work miserable 60/80/100-hour weeks to make it work. 10–40 hours a week is plenty.

Ignore the real world “That would never work in the real world.” You hear it all the time when you tell people about a fresh idea.

Learning from mistakes is overrated In the business world, failure has become an expected rite of passage. You hear all the time how nine out of ten new businesses fail.

You hear that failure builds character. People advise, “Fail early and fail often.”

What is it about growth and business? Why is expansion always the goal? What’s the attraction of big besides ego? (You’ll need a better answer than “economies of scale.”) What’s wrong with finding the right size and staying there?

Workaholism Our culture celebrates the idea of the workaholic. We hear about people burning the midnight oil. They pull all-nighters and sleep at the office. It’s considered a badge of honor to kill yourself over a project. No amount of work is too much work.

Working more doesn’t mean you care more or get more done. It just means you work more.

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.

Make a dent in the universe To do great work, you need to feel that you’re making a difference. That you’re putting a meaningful dent in the universe. That you’re part of something important.

When you build what you need, you can also assess the quality of what you make quickly and directly, instead of by proxy.

No time is no excuse The most common excuse people give: “There’s not enough time.”

There’s always enough time if you spend it right.

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

Draw a line in the sand As you get going, keep in mind why you’re doing what you’re doing. Great businesses have a point of view, not just a product or service. You have to believe in something. You need to have a backbone. You need to know what you’re willing to fight for. And then you need to show the world.

Embrace constraints “I don’t have enough time/money/people/experience.” Stop whining. Less is a good thing. Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make do with what you’ve got. There’s no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative.

Build half a product, not a half-assed product You can turn a bunch of great ideas into a crappy product real fast by trying to do them all at once.

Start at the epicenter When you start anything new, there are forces pulling you in a variety of directions. There’s the stuff you could do, the stuff you want to do, and the stuff you have to do. The stuff you have to do is where you should begin. Start at the epicenter.

Be a curator You don’t make a great museum by putting all the art in the world into a single room. That’s a warehouse. What makes a museum great is the stuff that’s not on the walls. Someone says no. A curator is involved, making conscious decisions about what should stay and what should go. There’s an editing process. There’s a lot more stuff off the walls than on the walls. The best is a sub-sub-subset of all the possibilities.

It’s the stuff you leave out that matters. So constantly look for things to remove, simplify, and streamline. Be a curator.

Sell your by-products When you make something, you always make something else. You can’t make just one thing. Everything has a by-product. Observant and creative business minds spot these by-products and see opportunities.

Just because you’ve still got a list of things to do doesn’t mean it’s not done. Don’t hold everything else up because of a few leftovers. You can do them later. And doing them later may mean doing them better, too.

Think about it this way: If you had to launch your business in two weeks, what would you cut out? Funny how a question like that forces you to focus. You suddenly realize there’s a lot of stuff you don’t need. And what you do need seems obvious. When you impose a deadline, you gain clarity. It’s the best way to get to that gut instinct that tells you, “We don’t need this.” Put

Reasons to quit 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. Here are some important questions to ask yourself to ensure you’re doing work that matters:

Interruption is the enemy of productivity 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. And the reason is interruptions.

Your alone zone doesn’t have to be in the wee hours, though. You can set up a rule at work that half the day is set aside for alone time. Decree that from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., people can’t talk to each other (except during lunch).

make the first or last half of the day your alone-time period. Or instead of casual Fridays, try no-talk Thursdays.

make sure this period is unbroken in order to avoid productivity-z...

Set a timer. When it rings, meeting’s over. Period. Invite as few people as possible. Always have a clear agenda. Begin with a specific problem. Meet at the site of the problem instead of a conference room. Point to real things and suggest real changes. End with a solution and make someone responsible for implementing it.

Good enough is fine A lot of people get off on solving problems with complicated solutions. Flexing your intellectual muscles can be intoxicating.

Find a judo solution, one that delivers maximum efficiency with minimum effort.

Don’t be a hero A lot of times it’s better to be a quitter than a hero. For example, let’s say you think a task can be done in two hours. But four hours into it, you’re still only a quarter of the way done. The natural instinct is to think, “But I can’t give up now, I’ve already spent four hours on this!” So you go into hero mode. You’re determined to make it work (and slightly embarrassed that it isn’t already working). You grab your cape and shut yourself off from the world.

If you already spent too much time on something that wasn’t worth it, walk away. You can’t get that time back. The worst thing you can do now is waste even more time.

Go to sleep Forgoing sleep is a bad idea. Sure, you get those extra hours right now, but you pay in spades later: You destroy your creativity, morale, and attitude.

Long lists don’t get done Start making smaller to-do lists too.

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.

Defensive companies can’t think ahead; they can only think behind. They don’t lead; they follow.

Do less than your competitors to beat them. Solve the simple problems and leave the hairy, difficult, nasty problems to the competition. Instead of one-upping, try one-downing. Instead of outdoing, try underdoing.

Start getting into the habit of saying no—even to many of your best ideas. Use the power of no to get your priorities straight. You rarely regret saying no. But you often wind up regretting saying yes.

Don’t believe that “customer is always right” stuff, either.

Your goal is to make sure your product stays right for you. You’re the one who has to believe in it most. That way, you can say, “I think you’ll love it because I love it.”

Welcome obscurity No one knows who you are right now. And that’s just fine. Being obscure is a great position to be in. Be happy you’re in the shadows.

build an audience. Speak, write, blog, tweet, make videos—whatever. Share information that’s valuable and you’ll slowly but surely build a loyal audience. Then when you need to get the word out, the right people will already be listening.

Teach and you’ll form a bond you just don’t get from traditional marketing tactics.

Teaching is something individuals and small companies can do that bigger competitors can’t.

There’s a beauty to imperfection. This is the essence of the Japanese principle of wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi values character and uniqueness over a shiny facade. It teaches that cracks and scratches in things should be embraced. It’s also about simplicity. You strip things down and then use what you have. Leonard Koren, author of a book on wabi-sabi, gives this advice: Pare down to the essence, but don’t remove the poetry. Keep things clean and unencumbered but don’t sterilize.*

Leave the poetry in what you make. When something becomes too polished, it loses its soul. It seems robotic.

It’s OK if it’s not perfect. You might not seem as professional, but you will seem a lot more genuine.

Hire when it hurts Don’t hire for pleasure; hire to kill pain. Always ask yourself: What if we don’t hire anyone? Is that extra work that’s burdening us really necessary? Can we solve the problem with a slice of software or a change of practice instead?

The right time to hire is when there’s more work than you can handle for a sustained period of time.

Resumés are ridiculous We all know resumés are a joke. They’re exaggerations. They’re filled with “action verbs” that don’t mean anything. They list job titles and responsibilities that are vaguely accurate at best. And there’s no way to verify most of what’s on there.