“"But how do you brainstorm remotely? Or riff remotely? Or collaborate creatively remotely? Isn't it better when you're in a room, tossing ideas back and forth?"” I hear some version of this fairly often from people who aren't used to making things with others from far away. There's an assumption that four walls, a whiteboard, a table,...

In business, maximization is the minimization of joy. I can’t imagine anything less interesting in business than maximizing shareholder value. Yet this is what public companies are pressured — if not legally required — to do. A lot of non-public companies follow the same path towards performance and results. To take it further, maximiz...

Attend enough business conferences, read loads of LinkedIn posts, or listen to enough motivational speakers and you’ll hear one piece of advice repeated over and over again: You’ve got to love what you do! If you don’t love what you do, you might as well stay home. No less a giant than Steve Jobs famously told Stanford’s 2005 graduatin...

In business, moving is one of the hardest things to do. People think change is hard. It is. But moving is harder. Morphing from thinking and talking to actually doing and moving is the hardest. It's hard because talk is easy. Theorizing is easy. Imagining is easy. Waiting is easy. Second guessing yourself is easy. Third and fourth opin...

Alto.com is a wonderful pharmacy that offers same day delivery. I have nothing but great things to say about them. But they're following a pattern I'm seeing far too often these days. They're trying to track everything, and asking people to attribute "experience" to things that are mere, routine happenings. Most things just don't need ...

The longer you do something, the more you'll be asked "what keeps you motivated?" People are typically looking for a goal-based answer. Or some big mission. Or some sort of target you just haven't hit yet. The question is often aimed at revealing a deep, purpose-filled motivation. The assumption is that you're still doing it because yo...

This weekend I was riding my stationary exercise bike when I noticed a sharp poke in my pocket. I reached in, pulled out a house key, and looked for a place to put it. But since I was on a bike, there's really no where for it to go other than not here. So I tossed it on the ground, broadly aiming — without accuracy or expectations of p...

Comparing warning labels on gym equipment. From the 80s on the left, from the 2000s on the right. The one from the 2000s says a lot more, but the one from the 80s means a lot more. -Jason

Low, medium, high. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Must have, should have, could have, don't need. These are various forms of priorities. People seem to love them. I've always hated them. Especially when it comes to product development. When it comes to choosing what to do, it's always binary for me. Yes or no. Now or not now. Do or don’t. What about m...

Look around YouTube at car reviews, and you’ll see a lot of people standing in front of cars. Below I’ve snapped captures of early frames in three car reviews. These represent the first time the car is shown whole, in profile. Who’s on review here? The car reviewer or the car? Get out of the way people! Take it from Doug DeMuro. His re...

Over the last few days, a few department heads at 37signals got together for an offsite gathering, lead by Bill Joy from The Joy Group. We've worked with Bill in a somewhat different capacity in the past. This time he was here to help us understand some truths about how we really run the business, make decisions, and value what's worth...

Stick with me on this one. I've been spending more time watching birds, squirrels, and insects lately. Nature has always fascinated me, and the longer I observe, the more I notice. And one thing I've noticed in general is that birds, squirrels, and insects stop and start a lot. They're headed somewhere, but context plays an enormous ro...

We all know it’s important to work with people. That’s collaboration. But it’s perhaps even more important to learn how to work around people. To uncollaborate. Not by ignoring them or dismissing them. But moving without them because they simply aren’t available to move with you. This isn’t about avoidance, it’s about “ah, you’re busy,...

Hey! Back again with another installment of Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. So, what do we have this time... Heard Something Really enjoyed this heady Making Sense episode that asks "Do you really have a self?" Theoretical conversations like these feel like a massage for the mind. They get down to root assumptions upon ...

This weekend I took a long walk with a fellow founder/CEO. We talked on the phone before, but never met in person. We found ourselves in the same city, so it felt like it was time to shake hands and catch up IRL. He runs a company that's an order or magnitude larger than 37signals, so his experiences, responsibilities, and perspectives...

Procrastination is often tagged as a negative. If you're putting something off until the last minute, it's assumed it's because you don't want to do it, or it's too hard, or you've been avoiding it for some other reason. Maybe I'm making excuses, but lately I've found procrastination can be aimed to your advantage. Not always, but more...

Ever find yourself about to ship something that isn't good enough? You know it, you feel it, but you still want to get it out there because regardless of outcome, lots of work went into it. You want something to show for it. You can often make yourself feel a lot better by wrapping the uneasiness with a statement like "We can always co...

When we launched our company in 1999, we were called 37signals. We started out as a web design firm that ultimately transitioned into a software company. As 37signals, we made a bunch of products over the years including Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire, Highrise, and others. We wrote a number of books, and blogged like crazy too. We were ...

Hey! Back again with another installment of Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. So, what do we have this time... Heard Something My friend Bob Moesta is out with a new podcast on product development and innovation, and this 27-minute episode is an especially good one. By the end, you'll have a new framework for thinking abo...

We've worked remotely for nearly 20 years, but we've sustained the distance by lining up intense, one-week-together-in-person bursts twice a year. Over the last 10 years, we've mainly held these bi-annual all-company meetups at our Chicago office. But the combination of the pandemic, and an expiring office lease in July of 2020, conspi...

A friend of mine is pissed off. He hired someone to replace a bunch of windows at his house. The guy did the work. Poorly. And now it turns out he needs to have everything redone. Given how badly the job went, he's going to work with someone else to get it done right the second time. What's there isn't really salvageable. Even the wind...

As someone who's been hiring people for 23 years, I've seen, read, and reviewed tens of thousands of job applications. The ones that typically rise to the top are the ones that demonstrate effort to get this job, and not just any job. We recently hired our first Email Marketing Manager. Nearly 400 people applied for the position. As ap...

Way back when, we used to release new software on Fridays all the time. That often meant working Saturdays and Sundays to fix an urgent problem with the new stuff, wrecking the weekend for whoever did the release. It was stupid yet predictable, because we kept setting deadlines at the end of the week, as most naturally do. But Friday i...

Over the past few months I've been taking guitar lessons from a friend of mine who happens to be an exceptional teacher. I got lucky. I used to play years ago, but probably only retained 10% of what I knew, so I was as close to starting from scratch as any barely-experienced player could be. Basically, I could dabble and play some chor...

Hey! Back again with another installment of Heard Something, Read Something, Saw Something. So, what do we have this time... Heard Something While this is a video, it's really about sound. If you like cars, or simply dig physics, I bet you'll find this video (and audio) fascinating. I sure did. Why do engines sound they way they do? I ...

Here’s something that should be obvious: People don’t like to have their grievances downplayed or dismissed. When that happens, even the smallest irritations can turn into an obsessive crusade. Imagine you’re staying at a hotel, and the air conditioning isn’t working right. You call the front desk to mention it, and they say, oh yeah, ...

As a general rule, nobody at Basecamp really knows where anyone else is at any given moment. Are they working? Dunno. Are they taking a break? Dunno. Are they at lunch? Dunno. Are they picking up their kid from school? Dunno. Don’t care. The vast majority of the time, it just doesn’t matter. What matters is letting people design their ...

Pessimism can spark an idea. Annoyance can drive ingenuity. Disappointment can redirect effort towards change. But creativity requires optimism. Creativity isn't about starting something. It's about making something. Making requires sustained effort, and sustained effort requires fuel. That fuel is optimism. When you run out, momentum ...

A few weeks ago I shared how we write Heartbeats at Basecamp. Heartbeats are written by team leads that summarize their team's work over the past 6-week cycle. They are published to Basecamp, and shared with everyone at Basecamp, so everyone knows what's happening across the company. The post was really well received, and people have b...

Making something new takes patience. But it also takes faith. Faith that everything will work out in the end. During the development of most any product, there are always times when things aren’t quite right. Times when you feel like you may be going backwards a bit. Times where it’s almost there, but you can’t yet figure out why it is...