The solution: Break the big thing into smaller things. The smaller it is, the easier it is to estimate. You’re probably still going to get it wrong, … - Jason Fried

In almost every situation, the expectation of an immediate response is an unreasonable expectation. Yet with more and more real-time communication tools creeping into daily work — especially instant-messaging tools and group chat — the expectation of an immediate response has become the new normal.

Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way to get things done.

Imagine the day of an expert who frequently gets interrupted by everyone else’s questions. They may be fielding none, a handful, or a dozen questions in a single day, who knows. What’s worse, they don’t know when these questions might come up. You can’t plan your own day if everyone else is using it up randomly. So we borrowed an idea from academia: office hours. All subject-matter experts at Basecamp now publish office hours. For some that means an open afternoon every Tuesday. For others it might be one hour a day. It’s up to each expert to decide their availability. But what if you have a question on Monday and someone’s office hours aren’t until Thursday? You wait, that’s what you do. You work on something else until Thursday, or you figure it out for yourself before Thursday. Just like you would if you had to wait to talk to your professor.