Book by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried.
Below are the excerpts that were most significant to me at the time of reading.
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Learning from mistakes is overrated
People who failed before have the same amount of success as people who have never tried at all.
Evolution doesn’t linger on past failures, it’s always building upon what worked. So should you.
Planning is guessing
There are just too many factors that are out of your hands: market conditions, competitors, customers, the economy, etc. Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you can’t actually control.
Call plans what they really are: guesses.
You have to be able to improvise. You have to be able to pick up opportunities that come along.
Give up on the guesswork. Decide what you’re going to do this week, not this year. Figure out the next most important thing and do that. Make decisions right before you do something, not far in advance.
It’s OK to wing it.
Why grow?
Lock in lots of expenses and you force yourself into building a complex business — one that’s a lot more difficult and stressful to run.
Workaholism
If all you do is work, you’re unlikely to have sound judgements. Your values and decision making wind up skewed. You stop being able to decide what’s worth extra effort and what’s not. And you wind up just plain tired. No one makes sharp decisions when tired.
Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up.
Make a dent in the universe
If you’re going to do something, do something that matters.
Start making something
The most important thing is to begin.
The real question is how well you execute.
No time is no excuse
The perfect time never arrives.
If you constantly fret about timing things perfectly, they’ll never happen.
Draw a line in the sand
You have to believe in something. You need to have a backbone. You need to know what you’re willing to fight for.
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.
You need less than you think
You need less than you think.
Start a business, not a startup
Start a business, not a startup.
Building to flip is building to flop
If you do manage to get a good thing going, keep it going.
Good things don’t come around that often.
Less mass
Less mass.
Embrace constraints
Southwest — unlike most other airlines, which fly multiple aircraft models — flies only Boeing 737s. As a result, every Southwest pilot, flight attendant, and ground-crew members can work any fight. Plus, all of Southwest’s parts fit all of its planes. All that means lower costs and a business that’s easier to run. They made it easy on themselves.
See how far you can get with what you have.
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.
Getting to great starts by cutting out stuff that’s merely good.
Ignore the details early on
Getting infatuated with details too early leads to disagreement, meetings, and delays.
When we start designing something, we sketch out ideas with a big, thick Sharpie marker, instead of a ball-point pen. Why? Pen points are too fine. They’re too high-resolution. They encourage you to worry about things that you shouldn’t worry about yet. You end up focusing on things that should still be out of focus.
The big picture is all you should be worrying about in the beginning.
Making the call is making progress
Whenever you can, swap “Let’s think about it” for “Let’s decide on it.”
Decide and move forward.
You can’t build on top of “We’ll decide later,” but you can build on top of “Done.”
Be a curator
Be a curator.
Stick to what’s truly essential.
Throw less at the problem
The menus at failing restaurants offer too many dishes.
Tone is in your fingers
You just don’t need the best gear in the world to be good. And you definitely don’t need it to get started.
What really matters is how to actually get customers and make money.
Use whatever you’ve got already.
Sell your by-products
Sell your by-products.
Everything has a by-product.
*Ford Charcoal was created by Henry Ford, later renamed Kingsford Charcoal now still the leading manufacturer of charcoal in America today.
Illusions of agreement
Do everything you can to remove layers of abstraction.
Reasons to quit
Some important questions to ask yourself to ensure you’re doing work that matters:
Why are you doing this?
What problem are you solving?
Is this actually useful?
Are you adding value?
Is there an easier way?
What could you be doing instead?
What can’t you do because you’re doing this?
If you’re stuck on something for a long period of time, that means there are other things you’re not getting done.
Interruption is the enemy of productivity
Just shut up and get to work.
Meetings are toxic
When you think about it, the true cost of meetings is staggering. Say you’re going to schedule a meeting that lasts one hour, and you invite ten people to attend. That’s actually a ten-hour meeting, not a one-hour meeting. You’re trading ten hours of productivity for one hour of meeting time.
If you decide you absolutely must get together, try to make your meeting a productive one by sticking to these simple rules:
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 change.
End with a solution and make someone responsible for implementing it.
Good enough is fine
Maximum efficiency with minimum effort.
When good enough gets the job done, go for it. It’s way better than wasting resources or, even worse, doing nothing because you can’t afford the complex solution. And remember, you can usually turn good enough into great later.
Quick wins
Quick wins.
Your estimates suck
Break the big thing into smaller things.
Long lists don’t get done
Break that long list down into a bunch of smaller lists.
Put the most important thing at the top.
Make tiny decisions
When you make tiny decisions, you can’t make big mistakes.
Just fix it.
The best way to achieve those big things is one tiny decision at a time.
Don’t copy
Imitation can be a helpful tool on the path to discovering your own voice.
Pick a fight
Taking a stand always stands out. People get stoked by conflict. Passions are ignited.
Underdo your competition
Do less than your competitors to beat them.
Solve the simple problems.
Do a few simple things and do it well.
Say no by default
If I’d listened to customers,
I’d have given them a faster horse.
- Henry Ford
Let your customers outgrow you
Small, simple, basic needs are constant.
Be true to a type of customer more than a specific individual customer with changing needs.
Don’t confuse enthusiasm with priority
The enthusiasm you have for a new idea is not an accurate indicator of its true worth.
Be at-home good
You’re aiming for a long-term relationship, not a one-night stand.
Don’t write it down
The requests that really matter are the ones you’ll hear over and over. After a while, you won’t be able to forget them. Your customers will be your memory.
The really important stuff doesn’t go away.
Build an audience
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.
Out-teach your competition
Out-teach your competition.
They’ll trust you more. They’ll respect you more. Even if they don’t use your product, they can still be your fans.
Teaching is your chance to outmaneuver big companies.
Emulate chefs
They share everything they know.
Get over it.
What do you do? What are your “recipes”? What’s your “cookbook”? What can you tell the world about how you operate that’s informative, educational, and promotional?
Go behind the scenes
People are curious about how things are made.
Letting people behind the curtains lets them see you as human beings instead of a faceless company.
Nobody likes plastic flowers
We like real flowers that wilt.
Don’t worry about how you’re supposed to sound and how you’re supposed to act. Show the world what you’re really like.
There’s a beauty to imperfection. This is the essence of the Japanese principle of wabi-sabi.
Leave the poetry in what you make. When something becomes too polished, it loses its soul.
Talk like you really talk.
Press releases are spam
Do something meaningful. Be remarkable. Stand out. Be unforgettable. That’s how you’ll get the best coverage.
Drug dealers get it right
Give customers an easily digestible introduction to what you sell that makes them come back with cash in hand.
Marketing is not a department
Marketing is something everyone in your company is doing 24/7/365.
It’s the sum total of everything you do.
The myth of the overnight sensation
No one cares about you. At least not yet. Get used to it.
Slow, meaningful growth.
Start building your audience today.
Do it yourself first
You should want to be intimately involved in all aspects of your business. Otherwise you’ll wind up in the dark, putting your fate solely in the hands of others. That’s dangerous.
Hire when it hurts
Don’t hire for pleasure; hire to kill pain.
The right time to hire is when there’s more work than you can handle for a sustained period of time. There should be things you can’t do anymore. You should notice the quality level slipping. That’s when you’re hurting. And that’s when it’s time to hire, not earlier.
Resumés are ridiculous
You want a specific candidate who cares specifically about your company.
Check the cover letter.
Trust your gut reaction.
Years of irrelevance
The real difference comes from the individual’s dedication, personality, and intelligence.
How long someone’s been doing it is overrated. What matters is how well they’ve been doing it.
Hire managers of one
Managers of one are people who come up with their own goals and execute them. They don’t need heavy direction.
Hire great writers
Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. Great writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand.
Test-drive employees
Some people sound like pros but don’t work like pros. You need to evaluate the work they can do now, not the work they say they did in the past.
Speed changes everything
Speed changes everything.
Getting back to people quickly is probably the most important thing you can do when it comes to customer service.
How to say you’re sorry
You can’t apologize your way out of being an ass.
Take a deep breath
When you rock the boat, there will be waves.
People are creatures of habit.
Sometimes you need to go ahead with a decision you believe in, even if it’s unpopular at first.
People often respond before they give a change a fair chance.
Make sure you don’t foolishly backpedal on a necessary but controversial decision.
When people complain, let things simmer for a while.
You don’t create a culture
Real culture is patina.
You don’t create a culture. It happens.
Culture is the by-product of consistent behaviour.
Decisions are temporary
Most of the things you worry about never happen anyway.
The decisions you make today don’t need to last forever.
If circumstances change, your decisions can change.
Optimize for now and worry about the future later.
Pay attention to today and worry about later when it gets here.
Skip the rock stars
Environment has a lot more to do with great work than most people realize.\
Great environments show respect for the people who do the work and how they do it.
They’re not thirteen
When you treat people like children, you get children’s work.
Failing to trust your employees is awfully expensive.
Send people home at 5
You don’t need more hours; you need better hours.
If you want something done, ask the busiest person you know. You want busy people. People who care about more than one thing.
Sound like you
Being honest about who you are is smart business.
Talk to customers the way you would to friends.
Forget rules. Communicate!
Inspiration is perishable
If you want to do something, you’ve got to do it now.
When you’re high on inspiration, you can get two weeks of work done in twenty-four hours.
Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator. But it won’t wait for you. Inspiration is a now thing. If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work.
