Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson is one of the best business books that I have read this year. To echo Seth Godin’s blurb on the jacket, “Ignore this book at your peril”.

Rework is a collection of short essays on business, but it is more than that. The essays turn into something greater than the sum of their parts – because they point out that the world has changed. The business environment has changed, and the old way of doing business is essentially gone. The companies that cleave to the “old way” are going to get crushed by faster, smarter, more agile companies that do business the “new way”.

Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson are the founders of 37signals, the software company behind Highrise HQ and Basecamp (and more), and the book is enhanced by the work of illustrator Mike Rohde. Here Rohde talks about how Basecamp‘s “View all of these images at once” made reviewing the illustrations a snap.

Once a batch of inked illustrations were completed in Photoshop, I would export lower-res versions of the pieces as JPG files, and post them to the Basecamp project for Jason’s review. Basecamp’s handy “View all of these images at once” feature allowed Jason to scan an entire batch and approve or suggest tweaks…Illustrating REWORK was a fun, interesting and challenging project from start to finish. It’s amazing what we were able to produce in just 16 weeks, all while I worked nights and weekends and had a baby in the middle of the project. Our constant communications and use of Basecamp really made the difference.

Yes, they talk about their products. Yes, they talk about their actual practices. That is a big part of what makes this book so valuable, they walk the walk (and the 37signals products are really good). The real value of the book is in its structure as a collection of essays that are tied together but aren’t necessarily sequential. You can pick up this book, open it anywhere, and find something useful. Or peruse the table of contents for the section that you need to read right now.
For instance, are you feeling bogged-down in your work? In the Productivity section there are 11 essays:

Productivity

* Illusions of agreement
* Reasons to quit
* Interruption is the enemy of productivity
* Meetings are toxic
* Good enough is fine
* Quick wins
* Don’t be a hero
* Go to sleep
* Your estimates suck
* Long lists don’t get done
* Make tiny decisions

Here is a short piece from “Don’t be a Hero“:

“A lot of times it’s better to be a quitter than a hero.
For example, let’s say you think a task can be done in two hours. But four hours into it, you’re only a quarter of the way done. The natural instinct is to think, “But I can’t give up now, I’ve already spent 4 hours on this!”
So you go into Hero mode … sometimes that kind of sheer effort overload works. But is it worth it? Probably not. The task was worth it when you thought it would cost 2 hours, not 16…”

There is a lot more of this common-sense-yet-counter-intuitive information in Rework. Get this book. Read it. It will make your business better.

Here is my Amazon link, thanks for supporting this blog.

[Editor's note to the FTC: I bought this book myself, the only potential compensation is 4% of any Amazon sales through the above link.]

Be Sociable, Share!

•