Jason Fried Quotes

The longer it takes to develop, the less likely it is to launch.

The best designers and the best programmers aren’t the ones with the best skills, or the nimblest fingers, or the ones who can rock and roll with Photoshop or their environment of choice, they are the ones that can determine what just doesn’t matter. That’s where the real gains are made.

Find a judo solution, one that delivers maximum efficiency with minimum effort. When good enough gets the job done, go for it.

Besides, the perfect time never arrives. You’re always too young or old or busy or broke or something else. If you constantly fret about timing things perfectly, they’ll never happen.

It’s not worth trading sleep for a few extra hours at the office. Not only will it make you exhausted, it’ll literally make you stupid

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.

Release yourself from the 9am-to-5pm mentality. It might take a bit of time and practice to get the hang of working asynchronously with your team, but soon you’ll see that it’s the work — not the clock — that matters.

When someone wants to demonstrate a new feature they’re working on at 37signals, often the easiest way is to record a screencast and narrate the experience. A screencast is basically just a recording of your screen that others can play back later as a movie. It can be used in several ways, including for presenting the latest sales figures or elaborating on a new marketing strategy.

If no one’s upset by what you’re saying, you’re probably not pushing hard enough. (And you’re probably boring, too.)

If you run your ship with the conviction that everyone’s a slacker, your employees will put all their ingenuity into proving you right.

Following group chat at work is like being in an all-day meeting with random participants and no agenda.

Working more doesn’t mean you care more or get more done. It just means you work more.

As a business owner, you should share everything you know too. This is anathema to most in the business world. Businesses are usually paranoid and secretive. They think they have proprietary this and competitive advantage that. Maybe a rare few do, but most don’t. And those that don’t should stop acting like those that do.

When you force yourself to focus on just the person and their work, not their glorified past, you also end up giving more people a chance. There’s no GPA filter to cut out someone who didn’t care for certain parts of their schooling. There’s no pedigree screen to prevent the self-taught from getting hired. There’s no arbitrary “years of experience” cut to prevent a fast learner from applying to a senior position. Great people who are eager to do great work come from the most unlikely places and look nothing like what you might imagine. Focusing just on the person and their work is the only way to spot them.

We don’t want reactions. We don’t want first impressions. We don’t want knee-jerks. We want considered feedback. Read it over. Read it twice, three times even. Sleep on it. Take your time to gather and present your thoughts — just like the person who pitched the original idea took their time to gather and present theirs.