Nearly A Nerd.com

Failure, Planning, Interruption, Inspiration, Immutability and Selling your By-Products

Business lessons from Jason Fried

Jason Fried of 37signals.com spoke at BIG Omaha in 2009.  His talk hit home hard.  Here’s a sort of summary of what Jason said there. Listen to it if you’d like. (Approximate time: 20 minutes.)

• Failure
  • “Fail early, fail often.” rarely makes sense.
  • Failure only instructs on what NOT to do next time.
  • Focus on what is going right and focus on your successes.
• Planning
  • “Plans are guesses.”
  • “Through away plans.”
  • Have a rough idea but don’t waste time on a 30-day plan, 90-day plan, etc.
  • ‘Where are you going to be in 10 years’ does not matter.
  • What matters is what you are doing right now.
  • You’ll have more information tomorrow; use that information for what is important tomorrow.
  • Plans use the wrong information.  Plans use information from before you’ve started.
  • Instead, be aware of what is going on as you go along.
• Interruption vs. Collaboration
  • An open workspace fosters people interrupting each other.
  • Interruption is the enemy of collaboration and the enemy of productivity.
  • With interruption, work days quickly turn into work moments.
  • Try to stay the hell away from each other at the office at work for better productivity.
  • Try not talking at all to each other on Thursdays. Use email, use IM, use whatever else you use to communicate, but no talking for that day. . . Or even try not talking for three hours.
• Sell your by-products
  • Sawdust — left over from making lumber for houses — started out as a nuisance.  They couldn’t get rid of it.  They figured out it could be used for other stuff like fuel, added to cement, added to animal bedding, pressed again into boards.
  • Oil was once drilled only for fuel.  Now oil is in everything.
  • Same thing with edible grains: now used for fuel, oil, plastics.
  • “Whenever you make something, you make something else.”
  • “We had a product and we didn’t even know it.”
  • Use the knowledge you gain as a product. . . Write a book. Do a conference, workshop, class.
  • Share your knowledge and people will call you back for bigger things.
  • Master chiefs share what they do via shows and cookbooks. Businesses should share too, not be afraid of others putting them out of business by spreading knowledge.
  • Build audiences by sharing knowledge.  People will come to you, you won’t have to go to them.
• Focus on the things that do not change
  • Focus on the basics and the core things that matter, not the sexy stuff everyone is talking about.
• Inspiration is perishable
  • Ideals are immortal, but inspiration wanes.
  • If you find something you want to do, do it now.
  • If you say you’ll do it later, you won’t be pumped up about it.
  • The most energy comes when you first get started on something.

More on Jason’s points:

• Learning from failure is overrated [Signal vs. Noise]
• Don’t Do Dead Documents [Getting Real]
• Alone Time [Getting Real]
• Sell Your by-products [Signal vs. Noise]
• What’s your cookbook? [Signal vs. Noise]
• Focus on what won’t change [Signal vs. Noise]
• Inspiration is magical [Signal vs. Noise]

Warning: The remainder of this post contains extremely boring personal affirmations.

I took most off this talk to heart.  Of Jason’s six key elements, the one I’m best at is tossing aside planning and concentrating on the moment.

I need to improve upon placing more importance on the immutable aspects of my work instead of being caught up on the latest shinny bells and whistles.

Finally, I long for the currently unobtainable holy grail of less interruption.  There are plenty of decent long work moments, but just as many needless interruptions. . . One can always hope.