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It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work summary

Name: It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work
Rating: 4 (200 reviews)
Author: Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

Reclaim your work-life balance

4 (200 ratings)

21 mins

Topics

Work Culture

Table of Contents

It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work
Summary of 7 key ideas

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What’s in it for me? Reclaim your work-life balance.

How did working 70-hour weeks become a point of pride and not a cause for concern? When did your company start claiming to be your family instead of your coworkers? Authors Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founders of the successful software company Basecamp – answer these questions and more, and also provide a much-needed antidote to some of the crazy hallmarks of the modern workplace.

Instead of pushing yourself to work longer hours, meet tight deadlines and see the competition as your mortal enemy, it’s time to discover a calmer way of doing things. In these blinks, you’ll learn the difference between working hard and working smart. You’ll see why a successful, profitable company isn’t just compatible with a good work-life balance, but actually benefits from it. Join two renegades of the corporate world who aren’t afraid to call out our exploitative, unsustainable working culture.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

the reasons why you need to start treating your company like a product;
ways to fit all your work into an eight-hour day; and
an approach to bringing calm to your office for good.

To scale back the crazy at work, start thinking of your company as a product.

How many times have you burst through your front door after a long day, collapsed on the sofa and exclaimed, “It’s so crazy at work!” Unfortunately, in our modern era of long hours, early starts and weekend work sessions, this scenario can be a nightly occurrence. Welcome to the workaholic world, in which 70 to 80-hour weeks have somehow become the norm. What’s the end result of this crazy working culture?

Unfortunately, it’s not higher productivity. More often than not, all the extra hours you spend at your desk aren’t spent on work that’s vital. Instead, they’re frittered away in a haze of anxiety and distractions brought about by the demands of new technologies and endless meetings.

In fact, the real outcome of long and hectic work days is added stress. This stress originates in the culture of our workplaces. Unhealthy workplace culture starts from the top and is handed down to managers, their subordinates and even the company’s customers. So, what’s the solution? How can organizations stop stress, change their culture and still maintain profitability?

Well, the authors believe it all begins with changing the way you view your company. To begin with, you should start looking at it like a product, and treating it accordingly. Though this might seem like a crazy idea, look at it this way: If your company produces products, the company itself is also a tool - one that is used to make those products.

Bearing that in mind, there are certain questions any good product manager should ask himself. Is your company simple for employees to use, or is it complicated? Where is it fast, and where is it slow? Does your company have any bugs that need fixing? Just as the best companies never stop trying to make their products as good as possible, a product manager with a curious mindset is continually searching for places to make improvements in company culture.

And once you start searching, brace yourself - there will definitely be room for improvement.

Indeed, organizations often share one very important trait with software. That trait? They both tend to have areas in which they crash, due to either faulty design or oversights on the part of the developer. Luckily, you’re about to discover how you can phase out the crazy and usher in an atmosphere of lasting calm in your company.

Too many entrepreneurs are buying into crazy attitudes toward success and competition.

Social media may be a valuable tool for keeping up with friends, new ideas and the latest cat videos, but unfortunately, it’s also a bottomless well of workaholic sentiment. Just consider the comments you see associated with #entrepreneur on social media, which include, “Extreme talent isn’t necessary, but extreme commitment is!” or “Conquer your competition!”

Comments like these are made for the virtual world, but they often reflect attitudes that can have dramatic real-world consequences. One such attitude, which is propagated on social media and repeated in many offices, is that success can’t be attained without excessive hard work. But this simply isn’t true.

Stretch your workday by reclaiming your time.

As co-founders of the successful software company Basecamp, the authors have done something almost unheard of in this day and age – they’ve given their employees an eight-hour work day. This might not sound that radical, but for many modern bosses eight hours isn’t nearly long enough.

This is pretty crazy when you think about it. After all, eight hours is the same length as many long-haul flights, and they seem to take forever! So, why doesn’t eight hours at work feel as long as an intercontinental flight? And moreover, why doesn’t a 40-hour week feel long enough to get all your work done?

Your company is not your family.

As a leader, you help set the tone of your company. For better or worse, your senior position means that subordinates will take their cue from you. With this in mind, you better make sure the beliefs and values you’re spreading around your workplace are the right ones.

These days, its commonplace for companies to push the idea that their employees are all one big family. Although this kind of sentiment might make you feel warm and fuzzy, you’d be well advised to run as fast as you can in the other direction when you hear it. Why?

Setting deadlines and giving presentations are two processes that invite craziness.

Producing good work can be a stressful undertaking, especially when high standards come into play. But what about when it’s not the work itself that’s putting you under strain, but the processes that surround it? Even if striving to give your best will always be a little stressful, you can still make the process of doing so as calm as possible.

Let’s take a look at one process that sends anxiety levels soaring in offices everywhere – meeting deadlines. Or, as the authors call them, dreadlines.

Calculated risks are a far better bet than doubt, indecision and stress.

In Silicon Valley and beyond, entrepreneurs are disciples to the belief that big rewards cannot be achieved without an equally huge gamble. And unsurprisingly, this habitual risky behavior can lead to a lot of workplace craziness. What may be more surprising is that being too risk-averse can also lead to stress and anxiety in the office.

In fact, when it comes to risk, it’s all about balance. The authors believe that their company’ has this balance just right. How? Well, they take risks, but they don’t take unmitigated risks. One recent risk, for instance, was to increase the monthly cost of their eponymous software from $29 to $99. Sounds pretty risky, right? And what’s more, they carried out zero market research beforehand to check how customers might feel about this new pricing.

Avoid driving your customers crazy by making the right choices.

In hectic modern life, with the demands and expectations of others buzzing around, it’s easy to forget that you always have a choice when it comes to how you behave, what you prioritize and how you treat those around you. You may well have an exacting boss or a difficult client, but you’re still the captain of your own ship. What’s more, the individual choices you make determine whether your working environment is stressful or calm. One of the most important of these choices is the manner in which you treat your customers, specifically those who come to you with a problem.

Jean-Louis Gassée, the former Head of Apple France, wisely stated that when it comes to handling customer complaints, there are two possible options. You can treat the complaint as highly important or you can shrug your shoulders and deem it trivial. Whatever position you choose to take, your customer will choose the other. That means that you’d better take every customer complaint seriously, because if you don’t the customer will. Let’s take a look at this dynamic in practice. Imagine that you’re a hotel manager whose guests complain that their room is too hot.

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What is It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work about?

It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work (2019) is a refreshing antidote to dysfunctional work culture. Drawing on real-world examples from the authors’ successful software company, these blinks shine a light on how we can say goodbye to habitual workplace stress and become calm, focused and efficient.

Best quote from It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work

Alls fair in love and war. Except this isnt love, and it isnt war. Its business.

—Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

Who should read It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work?

High achievers longing for a better work-life balance
Managers looking for a fresh perspective
Entrepreneurs trying to de-stress

About the Author

David Heinemeier Hansson is a co-founder of the software company Basecamp and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Rework and Remote. Hansson is also the creator of Ruby on Rails, the software program that powers sites such as Twitter and Airbnb. Jason Fried is a co-founder and president of Basecamp.

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