• The answer isn’t more hours, it’s less bullshit. Less waste, not more production. And far fewer distractions, less always-on anxiety, and avoiding stress. (p. 4)
  • A company is like software. It has to be usable, it has to be useful. And it probably also has bugs, places where the company crashes because of bad organizational design or cultural oversights. (p. 10)
  • Mark Twain nailed it: “Comparison is the death of joy.” (p. 22)
  • Don’t Change the World The business world is suffering from ambition hyperinflation. (p. 28)
  • If you label your own work as disruption, it probably isn’t. (p. 30)
  • If you stop thinking that you must change the world, you lift a tremendous burden off yourself and the people around you. (p. 30)
  • Every six weeks or so, we decide what we’ll be working on next. And that’s the only plan we have. (p. 32)
  • Most of the time, if you’re uncomfortable with something, it’s because it isn’t right. (p. 35)
  • If you can’t fit everything you want to do within 40 hours per week, you need to get better at picking what to do, not work longer hours. Most of what we think we have to do, we don’t have to do at all. It’s a choice, and often it’s a poor one. (p. 42)
  • Being productive is about occupying your time—filling your schedule to the brim and getting as much done as you can. Being effective is about finding more of your time unoccupied and open for other things besides work. Time for leisure, time for family and friends. Or time for doing absolutely nothing. (p. 50)
  • Modern-day offices have become interruption factories. (p. 54)
  • So we borrowed an idea from academia: office hours. All subject-matter experts at Basecamp now publish office hours. For some that means an open afternoon every Tuesday. For others it might be one hour a day. It’s up to each expert to decide their availability. (p. 57)
  • Taking someone’s time should be a pain in the ass. Taking many people’s time should be so cumbersome that most people won’t even bother to try it unless it’s REALLY IMPORTANT! Meetings should be a last resort, especially big ones. (p. 63)
  • Give it a try. Say something, then get back to work. Don’t expect anything. You’ll get a response when the other person is free and ready to respond. (p. 68)
  • Fuck that. People should be missing out! Most people should miss out on most things most of the time. (p. 70)
  • JOMO! The joy of missing out. (p. 70)
  • The best companies aren’t families. They’re supporters of families. Allies of families. They’re there to provide healthy, fulfilling work environments so that when workers shut their laptops at a reasonable hour, they’re the best husbands, wives, parents, siblings, and children they can be. (p. 78)
  • Posing real, pointed questions is the only way to convey that it’s safe to provide real answers. (p. 85)
  • Sleep-deprived people aren’t just short on brains or creativity, they’re short on patience. Short on understanding. Short on tolerance. The smallest things become the biggest dramas. That hurts colleagues at work as much as it does the family at home. (p. 94)
  • What we don’t do are riddles, blackboard problem solving, or fake “come up with the answer on the spot” scenarios. We don’t answer riddles all day, we do real work. So we give people real work to do and the appropriate time to do it in. (p. 102)
  • Someone who’s a superstar at one company often turns out to be completely ineffectual at another. Don’t go to war over talent. (p. 106)
  • Unlimited vacation is a stressful benefit because it’s not truly unlimited. Can someone really take five months off? No. Three? No. Two? One? Maybe? Is it weeks or months? Who’s to know for sure? Ambiguity breeds anxiety. (p. 123)
  • Most deadlines aren’t so much deadlines as dreadlines. Unrealistic dates mired by ever-expanding project requirements. More work piles on but the timeline remains the same. That’s not work, that’s hell. (p. 136)
  • It’s critical that the scope be flexible on the downside because almost everything that can take six months can also be done in some other form in six weeks. Likewise, small projects balloon into large projects all the time if you’re not careful. (p. 137)
  • Constraints are liberating, and realistic deadlines with flexible scopes can be just that. But they require you to embrace budgets and shun estimates. Great work will fill the time allotted if you allow it to. (p. 138)
  • Friday is the worst day to release anything. (p. 141)
  • Later is where excuses live. Later is where good intentions go to die. (p. 149)
  • Being clear about what demands excellence and what’s perfectly okay just being adequate is a great way to bring a sense of calm into your work. (p. 156)
  • That’s really the answer to new ideas that arrive too late: You’ll just have to wait! (p. 158)
  • It’s easier to fuck up something that’s working well than it is to genuinely improve it. (p. 159)
  • Doing nothing can be the hardest choice but the strongest, too. (p. 160)
  • When you stop discussing costs, you know they’re going to spiral. (p. 171)
  • The only way to get more done is to have less to do. (p. 172)
  • “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” (p. 172)
  • Any conversation with more than three people is typically a conversation with too many people. (p. 174)
  • Just like work expands to fill the time available, work expands to fill the team available. (p. 175)
  • So give it five minutes, keep your energy focused on finishing what you’re working on now, and then decide what to do next once you’re done and ready to take on new work. (p. 177)
  • The worst customer is the one you can’t afford to lose. (p. 194)
  • Promises pile up like debt, and they accrue interest, too. (p. 201)
  • Sell new customers on the new thing and let old customers keep whatever they already have. (p. 208)
  • Things get harder as you go, not easier. The easiest day is day one. That’s the dirty little secret of business. (p. 210)