It took me a while to fully realize the value of something my company achieved years ago, and continues to savor today. It’s one of our greatest quiet advantages, full stop. It’s not something you hear much about in business circles. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone spend much time on the topic, or even bring it u...

In the course of building products, you’ll make a thousand common decisions, but only a handful of directional decisions. While a common decision may alter a specific feature, design, or implementation, a directional decision remaps the fundamental trajectory of the entire product. Make a directional decision and you’re now pointed thi...

You know, it's really easy to publish short form content on a variety of social platforms. And individual blog posts on a number of other platforms. These are solved problems. But it's surprisingly challenging to publish books on the web in nice, cohesive, tight, easy-to-navigate HTML format. A collection of 20 essays can be a book. Or...

Failure is a word worth eliminating from your vocabulary. There’s no reason to think about things that didn’t work out as failures. Yet, it’s especially pervasive in entrepreneurial circles. It’s almost as if failure has been fetishized. Nearly worshipped as a right of passage, a prerequisite, a required step on the way. I’m not here t...

One of my favorite things about designing software is designing the defaults. The defaults define the experience for everyone out of the box. And, therefore, for most people in perpetuity. Convention over configuration rules the day. To me, everything it could possibly do is less interesting than what it does right now, factory fresh. ...

Just listened to Lex Fridman and Sara Walker talk about the origins of life, the search for life, what is life, etc. It was a wonderfully refreshing, nourishing conversation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwhTfyX9J34 It made me want to spill out some random thoughts on the subject. I’m unqualified, but I’m curious. Our search for lif...

I recently took up drumming. Again. One of the first things you realize, other than you suck, is that you’re gripping the sticks too hard. A tight grip denies certain degrees of freedom, limits subtlety, and ups the fatigue factor. Plus you give up the gift of bounce the drum heads happily offer. It’s like you’re constantly paying inte...

In my experience, a key skill to develop is the ability to separate one thing from another. To prevent the small from becoming the all. Take a policy, for example. Could be a government, or a school, or a home owner’s association, or something at work. Whatever it is, you don’t like it. You don’t agree, you don’t like the decision make...

I’ve been doing this for 25 years, so I’ll often be asked why I’m still in it and how I stay motivated. It ain’t the money, as I’ve been fortunate enough to make more than I’ll ever be able to spend. I enjoy the work and we have a great crew, each a true pleasure to work with. I remain filled with ideas. So that’s part of it. But it’s ...

Osmo Wiio was a Finnish researcher of human communication. His laws of communication are the human communications equivalent of Murphy’s Laws. Wiio's laws state... • If communication can fail, it will. • If a message can be understood in different ways, it will be understood in just that way which does the most harm. • There is always ...

Some of the most rewarding features to add to products are ones that don’t increase surface area, but increase depth. This is how you continue to make a product a whole lot better without it feeling like it got a whole lot bigger. Basecamp’s new References feature is a great example of this. Video + write-up: https://updates.37signals....

I can fake enough. I can fake a lot. But I’ve noticed there’s one thing in particular I can’t fake: Motivation. And in the end, at least for me, it all comes down to motivation. I may have the talent, I may know the tricks, I may be able to go through the motions. But if I deeply don’t want to do it, it won’t be good. Simple as that. I...

One of the reasons we work in six week cycles, is that it gives us a different definition of later. When you work on really long projects — say 3, 6, 9 month projects — or projects that don’t have any end in sight, “we can do that later” typically means you’ll get to it eventually, as part of the current project. Long time frames give ...

Strangely, a recent bathroom renovation crystalized my perspective on product development. When being asked to choose between towel hooks or a towel bar, the choice was obvious: Hooks, of course. Hooks take up no space. Towel bars suck up space. Hooks hold towels no matter how you place them. Towel bars require towels to be balanced le...

Imagine teaching guitar without putting an instrument in someone’s hands. Or teaching ceramics without having people work with clay. Or teaching tennis without swinging the racket and hitting balls. I’m sure there’s some way to teach those things without doing those things, but come on, we all know you have to do those things to really...

Have you ever been asked "What do you wish you knew then that you know now?" I have. And I hate the question. It's usually framed in a way that encourages you to pretend to place yourself in the nascent days of your career, or early adulthood. Back when you didn't know much, when you were trying to figure things out. Essentially it's a...

As you build your business, you'll end up delegating plenty. Much of what you did before is now better done by someone else. To make more progress, you release your grip and allow. But there’s one thing you should hold tight and never let go. It’s the thing that should never be delegated. It’s your voice. Speak for yourself. Don’t let ...

Now you have the data. Thousands of responses from a survey with dozens of questions. You worked hard to come up with questions that painted the picture you felt you needed to make the decision with the data you gathered. And now you've got it. Comprehensively. Quantitatively. You're data driven, and now you have the stuff that drives ...

One of my greatest pleasures at work is trying to find that point where everything feels just right. Nothing more, nothing less, but right there in the pocket. It's almost fractal. It's there in every component, in every feature, in every flow, in every sequence, in every product, in every decision, inside everything across the company...

20 years ago today I wrote a blog post that changed my life. I'd never really launched a product before, so posting to our blog was only way I knew how to do it. And social media hadn't even been invented yet, so where else was I supposed to put it? In fact, guess what else happened to launch the same day as Basecamp? Facebook. So we'r...

Enough feedback comes quick. Invite 100, get 10, 5 probably tell you all you need to know. Or at least 80% of it, which is all you need to know. Another 10, 20, 50+ will end up telling you mostly the same as those core five. And you'll find yourself repeating yourself — explaining the same thing you already explained, just to new peopl...

It's all a judgment call. Every human decision is a gut decision. The decision itself is the messy integration of many disparate pieces of information, experiences, instincts, stories, and unknowns. Data may inform, but as long as a human is making the decision, it's ultimately a judgment call. If you're just going by the data, then yo...

The thing that excites me most about the Apple Vision Pro is the ability to capture someone's point of view. General purpose vision tracking at this scale and resolution, in a consumer device, is entirely new thing. And I think it has the potential to alter the course of the human experience. Cameras can record a scene. Video cameras c...

Imagine a vast swimming pool 25 miles long, 50 miles wide, and 25 feet deep. Swimming this pool is akin to running a business. And how you swim this pool is akin to how you run the business. Everyone starts at the beginning, but you decide how close to the center or the edge you swim. There’s only one rule: You can’t turn around, there...

I've consulted. I've done client work. I've advised. I've served on boards. I've invested. I've written books. I've spoken on the circuit. I've blogged for years. I have to say, I've found no greater professional joy than working with a tight group of people to ship and support our own products. And for those products to find people wi...

I’m going to draw a parallel that isn’t quite straight, but it’s close enough. It’s between old (analog) cars and new (digital) cars, simple (analog) businesses and complicated (digital) businesses. Lately I’ve been driving two distinctly different cars. One from 1970, and the other from 2023. They essentially have nothing in common ot...

In the course of building products, you'll likely experience moments when you're unsure of a certain screen, flow, condition, label, idea, whatever. Maybe this button doesn't feel right. Or the name of this feature feels unresolved. Or some color is jarring, but kind of interesting nonetheless. Or the way something gets set up seems a ...

Once a product category proves popular, it's common for more companies to enter the market. Eventually, many options appear that are essentially mostly the same. Now we've got something that quacks like a commodity. Once we've got a commodity, generics eventually follow. Devoid of fancy packaging, marketing, and advertising, prices fal...

Hey there! Here’s the 16th installment of my popular Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something series. So, what do we have this time... Heard Something Lately I've been enjoying listening to discussions about free will. Do we have it? If so, how much? Always? Sometimes? Never? Is it real or an illusion? I find the concept fascinat...

I have a theory. One of the reasons companies have a hard time moving forward is because they've tangled themselves in the near past. Eyes aimed backwards rather than ahead, staring at the dark, feet in their own concrete. They've trapped themselves looking for certainty where there isn't any. Searching for actionable advice where ther...