I came across the work of Jason Fried and DHH (David Heinemeier Hansson for those who don't know) about 2 years ago when I was a postgrad. Didn't read anything in detail, probably just a Twitter post or something on John Gruber's Daring Fireball (tbh I don't remember). But I learnt what Basecamp is. Jason and DHH's software company 37signals are the developers of Basecamp - a web-based project management tool which it's been so successful that their company got renamed to Basecamp probably because of it.

Anyway since early last summer, when they launched Hey! email (probably learnt that through another Daring Fireball post), I've been following them on Twitter and other online platforms - and I'm finding their content to be 'refreshing' and super interesting to read - whether that's a business advice or opinions on privacy. The latter is what really captured my attention and convinced me to ditch Gmail - but that's a story for another day! With these in mind I highly recommend to give them a follow on Twitter and Clubhouse, if you're into business productivity.

A few weeks later I found out that they also published a few books - namely, Rework: Change the Way You Work Forever, Remote: Office Not Required and It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work. The idea of reading their books and being able to learn more about these two, their approach to building up a software company where their colleagues are working remotely (very topical) and their advice on business plans and software development really intrigued me. So today I'm writing about what I learnt from Rework including advice if you're into the early stages of your professional career. I hope you'll enjoy it 😊

My undergraduate professor at Keele, Dr Peter Knight, kept reminding us before project submissions and essay exams the following phrase:

So Rework for me is a business productivity book that offers simple, to the-point advice, that's easy to follow and even easier to go back to when you need a reminder. It's just below 300 pages and the subchapters are only 2-3 pages long, so referring back to them is super easy. Also, for the first time whilst reading a book, I had been taking notes and summarising each chapter or sub-chapter on a post-it note, which admittedly helps a lot to write this post. So let's dive into it.

You would thing that before making a big decision or forming your own company, you'd need a carefully planned strategy, raising a lot of money or understanding what the competition does. This book is not about these! In fact they suggest the opposite - detailed plans are harmful, start simple without raising a lot of money from investors and you'll probably be better off ignoring the competition, just focus on your abilities and the development of the product/service. An advice from the early chapters was:

The last part of the quote above, on making the change you want to see, is at core to their software as a service (SaaS) business model. They developed Basecamp because they needed this project management tool. They found a problem they faced and created a great product that they would want to use all the time.

Another interesting approach to business, that DHH also shared recently on social media, is the idea of having superfans to support you. Whilst developing something keep in mind the reason why you're doing this, have a backbone and truly believe in it, don't just create a service or a product just for the sake of making money. This mindset attracts superfans who will support you and follow you in the future, which subsequently serves you better than advertising. Be proud of your product! 

So now to new plans - the book emphasises on not focusing and ignoring the details early on but come on, let's admit it, we've all been there right(?). Too many details lead to disagreements, lots of meetings and delays. So nail the basics and worry about the specifics later. One cool suggestion, to demonstrate that, was to use a big thick Sharpie when making new plans as it only allows you to write big letters, boxes and lines making it impossible to write down all the details - the big picture is only what should matter in the beginning!

Sometimes you need to be a quitter and not hero - pretty catchy, right(?)! Jason and DHH are absolutely right here. From a personal experience in the last few weeks at work, when you think that a task needs 4 days and you already spent 6 and are a quarter of the way there, QUIT! The worst thing you can do now is waste even more time, let alone have greater overhead expenses. 

Another advice and one of my favourite topics (if you know me I brag about all the time) is to never underestimate sleep. Forgoing sleep is such a bad idea - okay there are extra hours in your day but you destroy your creativity, morale and attitude! You're even more irritable - patience and tolerance levels decrease dramatically when you're tired. I can keep going on about the importance of sleep but let's leave that for another day (possibly I can share what I learnt from Matthew Walker's book Why We Sleep).

As mentioned before, don't spend energy and resources to understand your competition - and don't be a copycat either. It's a formula for failure. It can easily be comprehended I believe - think about it, by following someone else you can never keep up, you can never lead and you'll always be a follower. This means you'll produce a service or a product that's inferior to the others'. 

And the last topic, which excites me the most these days as I'm planning a few webinars for my team's work, is Out-teaching your competition. Instead of out-spending trying to attract potential new customers and simply presenting work you can do or did in the past, a better solution is to go behind the scenes and create something a bit more educational - in a way emulate chefs by creating your own recipe book - what I mean here, is to create some material of how you actually do things - in my case to go into the details of the steps I followed to carry out a piece of work, yes I even mean the code behind it. The main message here is don't be afraid to share your knowledge, it's not competitive sports - share it and you will build your audience, your superfans if you like who will develop a deeper level of understanding and appreciation for the work you do.

I truly have found this book so refreshing despite that it was written more than a decade ago. I'm still early in my career and inexperienced in some areas and sometimes finding the best way to approach new things - whether that's kicking off a new project, brewing new business ideas or even learning a new programming language - can seem daunting at times. I'm convinced that this book has helped me recently at work, and will continue to in the future, both in my professional career as a GIS Consultant or even if I decide to start something on my own. I shared some bits from the book that are applicable to me so if you want to learn more, get your own copy - I can’t recommend it enough if you want to explore and adopt some exciting ideas in your life.

Hope you had fun and that this will become a new habit 📓🤓