Rework (Summary)
Why should you emulate a drug dealer? Because they have a product so good, they can give the first hit away for free, knowing you'll come back and pay for more. This is the new model for business: make your product so addictive in its quality and utility that customers can't live without it. Forget everything you know about marketing budgets and complex sales funnels.
Meetings Are Toxic
Most meetings are a massive waste of time and money. They break up the workday into small, unproductive chunks, drift off-topic, and rarely result in a concrete decision. They should be a last resort.
A one-hour meeting with ten attendees isn't a one-hour meeting; it's a ten-hour meeting. It consumes ten hours of company productivity. Before scheduling one, ask yourself: is this problem really worth a full day-and-a-quarter of a single person's work? Often, a quick email or chat message is far more efficient.
Planning Is Guessing
Long-range business plans are fantasies. You have the least amount of information at the very beginning of a project, making detailed plans an exercise in fiction. Instead, make decisions just-in-time.
Instead of writing a 50-page business plan, the authors advocate for simply deciding what to work on this week. This approach allows a business to be nimble and adapt to real-world feedback, like a pilot adjusting course based on actual weather conditions rather than sticking to a flight plan made days in advance.
Build Half a Product, Not a Half-Assed Product
Don't try to do everything at once. It's better to have a product with fewer features that all work exceptionally well than a bloated product where every feature is mediocre. Cut back to the essentials.
When building their flagship product, Basecamp, the team had to decide whether to include detailed time-tracking features. They realized they couldn't make them great without significant effort, so they cut the feature entirely to focus on making the core functions—like to-do lists and messaging—perfect. The result was a simpler, more powerful product.
Workaholism Is Counterproductive
Working more hours doesn't mean you get more done; it often means you get less done. Workaholics don't save the day, they just burn out, creating more problems than they solve and setting an unhealthy precedent.
A workaholic who stays late to 'solve' a problem is often just creating a more complex, poorly thought-out solution due to fatigue. This 'hero' actually becomes a bottleneck, as their tired, convoluted work often has to be untangled and fixed by a well-rested colleague the next day.
