Rework

More than a year ago, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson published Rework (excerpt). A lot has been written about it, but — as it often happens — the people who should know it, aren’t aware of the book.

If you haven’t read it, you should. In short, it’s about how work can be made fun and productive again. Trust me, you will be through in one afternoon, but it’s worth it. Fried writes occasionally on the blog of his company, 37signals. He has become some kind of web celebrity (that gets his own tumblr blog which makes fun of his statements).

Here’s a gist of some points he’s praying in the last years:

My customers have always been my investors. My goal has always been to be profitable on Day One. [source]

Unless you’re sending people into space you can fix problems later. Get your product launched and work on the details later. You won’t be able to foresee everything anyway. Ignore details early on. [source]

People work in teams of three, but there are really no true leader in those teams necessarily. […] Like the product is what leads you. It’s got to be good. [source, source]

We rarely have meetings. I hate them. They’re a huge waste of time, and they’re costly. It’s not one hour; it’s 10, because you pulled 10 people away from their real work. Plus, they chop your day into small bits, so you have only 20 minutes of free time here or 45 minutes there. Creative people need unstructured time to get in the zone. [source]

I don’t believe marketing is a department. I think marketing is in everything you do. It’s from the error message in your product when something goes wrong […] [source]

Another literature along those lines would be Making Ideas Happen by the founder of Behance, Scott Belsky. I won’t judge about the differences because the book is still on my reading list.