Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

Rework is filled with so many gems and nuggets, it’s really not practical to narrow them down to only three fundamental lessons.  As a result, I will list the few (or many) ideas and questions that stood out for me as I was reading the book. The manner in which Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson challenge the status quo in Rework reminded me so much of anther book I wrote about recently, I Moved Your Cheese, by Deepak Malhotra.

These visionaries will expand your thinking to a whole new dimension.

• The “real world” isn’t a place, it’s an excuse.

  It’s a justification for not trying.

Ignore the so called “real world.”  It may be real for others

but that doesn’t mean you have to live in it.  Someone else’s opinion of you doesn’t have to become your reality, as Les Brown says.

• Learning from Mistakes is overrated.

Evolution doesn’t linger on past failures,

it’s always building on what works.  So should you.

• Planning is Guessing

Give up on the guesswork.  Decide what you’re going to do this week, not this year.  Figure out the next important thing and do that.

• If you’re going to do something, do something that matters.

To do great work you need to feel that you’re making a difference.  You want your customers to say, “This makes my life better.”  You want to feel that if you stopped doing what you’re doing, people would notice. My favorite quote from Seth Godin says, "Do Work That Matters, For People Who Care!"

• Scratch Your Own Itch

The easiest, most straightforward way to create a great product

is to make something you would want to use.  You know the problem and the value of its solution intimately, and you can easily assess whether the product or solution is any good.

• Start Making Something

Ideas are cheap and plentiful. 

The real question is how well you execute. 

What you DO is what matters, not what you think, say or plan.

• No time is no Excuse

There’s always time if you spend it right. 

Don’t let yourself off the hook with excuses. 

It’s entirely your responsibility to make your dreams come true. 

If you constantly fret about timing things right, they’ll never happen.

• A business without a path to profit is not a business,

  it’s a hobby.

Every business is governed by the same market forces.

Revenue In, Expenses Out.  Turn a profit or wind up gone.

• Start at the epicentre

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.

• 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.

• Keep in mind why you’re doing what you’re doing.

  Great businesses have a point of view, not just a product

  or service. Standing for something isn’t just about writing

  it down.  It’s about believing it and living it.

• Tone is in your Fingers

Use what you’ve got already or can afford cheaply.  It’s not the gear that matters; it’s playing what you’ve got as well as you can. 

What really matters is how to get customers and make money.

• When you invite ten people to attend a 1-hour meeting,

  that’s actually a ten hour meeting. You’re trading ten hours

  of productivity for one hour of meting time.

• End every meeting with a solution and make someone responsible for implementing it.

• Don’t copy. Copying skips understanding – and understanding

  is how you grow.  You have to understand why something works or why something is the way it is.  When you just copy and paste, you miss that.

• Prioritize Visually. Put the most important thing at the top. When you’re done with that, the next thing in the pile becomes the most important thing.

• You can’t paint over customers’ bad experiences

  with good advertising or marketing.

• Don’t be afraid to show your flaws.

  Imperfections are real, and people respond to real.

• If you want to get someone’s attention, it’s silly to do the same thing everyone else is doing. You need to stand out.

• Everything is marketing. Marketing isn’t just a department –

  or a few events – it’s the sum total of everything you do.

• Experience - How long someone’s been doing it - is overrated. What matters is how well they’ve been doing it.

• Culture is action, not words – you don’t create a culture,

  it happens. Culture is the by-product of consistent behavior.

• We’re all capable of bad, average, and great performance.

  The environment has a lot to do with great work

  than most people realize.

• A good apology accepts responsibility and seeks to make things right. It has no conditional “if” phrase attached.  And then it provides real details about what happened and what you’re doing to prevent it from happening again.

• When you treat people like children you get children’s work.

  Yet, that’s exactly how a lot of companies and managers treat their employees.  Employees need to ask for permission

  before they can do anything.

• When everything needs approval, you create a culture

  of non-thinkers. You create a boss-vs-worker relationship

  that screams, “I don’t trust you!”

• When everything is high priority, nothing is.

  Reserve your emergency language for true emergencies.

There’s many more impressive ideas in Rework. I’ve just selected a few that resonate with me deeply. Read the book for yourself

and let me know what you think.