Book Summary: Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (via Readitforme)
Today’s Readitforme book summary is Rework, which according to the book, “shows you a better, faster, easier way to succeed in business. Read it and you’ll know why plans are actually harmful, why you don’t need outside investors, and why you’re better off ignoring the competition.”
I had become a fan of Jason Fried, of Basecamp (formerly 37 Signals) after hearing him on various podcasts and reading articles that he has written. Jason also has a Medium channel, which I follow.
I bought this book a while back but got distracted and didn’t finish it. That’s another reason I’m really loving Readitforme: it reminds me of the core concepts of books, and often encourages me to get back to reading them.
Back to the review.
From Steve at Readitforme, “We live in a world where we are taught that business must be professional, and that people don’t speak to the world, brands do. Here’s the problem with that thinking — it leaves out the only thing that your competitors can’t copy — you. When you inject what you believe and your personality into the business, you’ve created something that your competitors can’t replicate. They can try, but they’d fail because pretending to be something you’re not is exhausting.”
Do more with less. Among other things, Rework offers the idea that you can, in fact, do more with less. Most professionals have been asked to tighten the belt or do more with less. Rework suggests that “it’s more likely that you’ll create something great with a shoestring budget,” citing the example of how Jason and David created Basecamp, their main product.
Be more productive. Another concept I like is to be more productive by making room to allow you to get work done — the “alone zone.” As Readitforme summarized,
You can do this during the day, and just set up the rules so that there are no distractions for a few hours at a time. That includes email, phone calls, social media, or anything else that might take your attention off the task at hand. At first it will seem weird and you might even feel the exact opposite — that you can’t possibly be getting anything done because there is no “action”. But believe me, at the end of the day when you look at the scoreboard and see how much you’ve accomplished, you’ll be astonished.
About meetings, Rework suggests that you avoid them at all costs because the ROI (amount of information the convey per minute) is tiny, and they cost you a lot of money (multiply the hourly rate of everyone in the room).
If you must have meetings, make them as short as possible, always have a clear agenda, address specific problems, and end with a solution and make it clear who is responsible for implementing the solution.
Check it out.
There is a lot more great stuff in this book and in the summary. You can read a summary of this book today. You’ll need to create a free account first: https://readitfor.me/knowmore
Or you can buy the whole book at Amazon, here: http://amzn.to/2j5IPhL
Why?
Why did I write this? Readitforme is a service that summarizes books into short articles and 10–12 minute audio and video files. I was convinced to subscribe after trying it a few times on a free trial basis. They send an email each day (M-F) with a new summary. One of my goals in 2017 is to read and/or listen to each book summary each day. By sharing them here, it helps me accomplish that goal, and it helps me process and remember the information in the book summary.
Enjoy!
