live the questions now

Jump to Comments

Jason Fried is the founder of 37signals.com — an innovative technology company that has made some simple and awesome web-based productivity apps, like basecamp and campfire. He gave an amazing talk about productivity and collaboration (‘stuff we’ve learned”) — this is a list of advice I”d kind of like to memorize.

-red flag words: need, can’t, easy, only, fast

-”be successful and make money by helping other people be successful and make money” — people are more willing to pay for things that help them — spot chain reactions and be the catalyst for making them happen

-minimize the chance for competition from entrenched players — e.g., build tools that provide just the simple solutions of what people need (vs. the products that are overkill for most people “nonconsumers”)

-question your work regularly — remember that you don’t know everything:
Why are we doing this?
What problem are we solving?
Is this actually useful?
Are we adding value?
Will this change behavior?
Is there an easier way?
What’s the opportunity cost?
Is it really worth it?

-it’s really important to ask what you can’t do because you”re taking on something else?

-many sites don’t just suffer from bad design, they suffer from bad copy that don’t make sense to anyone — PAY ATTENTION TO THE WORDS YOU USE TO CONVEY MESSAGES TO USERS. Words that need fixing are a much cheaper problem to solve than technical ones.

-err on the side of simple — start with the easy way of doing things and see if it satisfies what you wanted to do

-get three things done in one week, instead of one thing done in 3 weeks — ‘the longer it takes to develop something, the less likely you are to launch it”

-resist the urge to try to do more the next time around

-invest in what doesn’t change — what are the core things about the business that are important now and will still be important ten years from now?

-”what’s your cookbook?” — Celebrity chefs as a metaphor (they don’t try to keep their recipes a secret out of fear that people will open copy-cat restaurants). Figure out what expertise you can share, and share it — don’t be afraid that people will overtake and steal your business — your business is sharing what you build.

-interruption kills productivity — having people around you who interrupt you makes you not get stuff done. Try to combat this with passive communication (wikis, IM, email, etc) — these tools let the other person hear from you when you”re ready, not when they think you”re ready

-be open, honest, public, and responsive — people would much rather hear the truth, even in crisis.

-break problems down to the atomic level — “when you make tiny decisions you can’t make big mistakes”

-everything you do should matter — don’t do stuff that doesn’t matter!

-hire by looking for people who are honest/have good character, curious (most important), and do interesting things outside of work

-use what you build, and then you will know when it works