It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work Quotes

“Management scholar Peter Drucker nailed it decades ago when he said “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“If the only way you can inspire the troops is by a regimen of exhaustion, it’s time to look for some deeper substance. Because what trickles down is less likely to be admiration but dread and fear instead. A leader who sets an example of self-sacrifice can’t help but ask self-sacrifice of others.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“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.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“Imagine the day of an expert who frequently gets interrupted by everyone else’s questions. They may be fielding none, a handful, or a dozen questions in a single day, who knows. What’s worse, they don’t know when these questions might come up. You can’t plan your own day if everyone else is using it up randomly. So we borrowed an idea from academia: office hours. All subject-matter experts at Basecamp now publish office hours. For some that means an open afternoon every Tuesday. For others it might be one hour a day. It’s up to each expert to decide their availability. But what if you have a question on Monday and someone’s office hours aren’t until Thursday? You wait, that’s what you do. You work on something else until Thursday, or you figure it out for yourself before Thursday. Just like you would if you had to wait to talk to your professor.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“Modern-day offices have become interruption factories. Merely walking in the door makes you a target for anyone else’s conversation, question, or irritation. When you’re on the inside, you’re a resource who can be polled, interrogated, or pulled into a meeting. And another meeting about that other meeting. How can you expect anyone to get work done in an environment like that?”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“But the thing is, there’s not more work to be done all of a sudden. The problem is that there’s hardly any uninterrupted, dedicated time to do it.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“Stress is passed from organization to employee, from employee to employee, and then from employee to customer. Stress never stops at the border of work, either. It bleeds into life. It infects your relationships with your friends, your family, your kids.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

“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.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“When companies are in the red, employees worry about their jobs. People aren’t stupid—they know that burning cash means the good times won’t last. The possibility of layoffs is always nagging. CVs are always at the ready.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“Management scholar Peter Drucker nailed it decades ago when he said “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” Bam!”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“It was amazing that it could be done, but we had forgotten to ask whether it should be done.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“The same thing is true with weekday nights. If work can claim hours after 5:00 p.m., then life should be able to claim hours before 5:00 p.m. Balance, remember. Give and take.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“And between all those context switches and attempts at multitasking, you have to add buffer time. Time for your head to leave the last thing and get into the next thing. This is how you end up thinking “What did I actually do today?” when the clock turns to five and you supposedly spent eight hours at the office. You know you were there, but the hours had no weight, so they slipped away with nothing to show.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“business battles serve as financial-page porn.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“when you think of the company as a product, you ask different questions: Do people who work here know how to use the company? Is it simple? Complex? Is it obvious how it works? What’s fast about it? What’s slow about it? Are there bugs? What’s broken that we can fix quickly and what’s going to take a long time?”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“People can’t get work done at work anymore. That turns life into work’s leftovers. The doggie bag. What’s worse is that long hours, excessive busyness, and lack of sleep have become a badge of honor for many people these days. Sustained exhaustion is not a badge of honor, it’s a mark of stupidity.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“Whoever managed to rebrand the typical open-plan office—with all its noise, lack of privacy, and resulting interruptions—as something hip and modern deserves a damn medal from the Committee of Irritating Distractions.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

“But when you think of the company as a product, you ask different questions: Do people who work here know how to use”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

“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”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

“When calm starts early, calm becomes the habit. But if you start crazy, it’ll define you. You have to keep asking yourself if the way you’re working today is the way you’d want to work in 10, 20, or 30 years. If not, now is the time to make a change, not “later.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“Comparison is the death of joy.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“Being comfortable in your zone is essential to being calm.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“The future is a major abstraction, riddled with a million vibrating variables you can’t control. The best information you’ll ever have about a decision is at the moment of execution.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“The further away you are from something, the fuzzier it becomes.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“You have to keep asking yourself if the way you’re working today is the way you’d want to work in 10, 20, or 30 years. If not, now is the time to make a change, not “later.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“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.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

“Things get harder as you go, not easier. The easiest day is day one. That’s the dirty little secret of business.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“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. Your “new and improved” can easily become their “what the fuck?” when it is dumped on them as a surprise.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“Promises are easy and cheap to make, actual work is hard and expensive.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work

“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.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work