I meant to post this last month, but never got to it. I wrote it in the car, without an internet connection, and forgot about it when I got home. Anyway, here we go…

I just finished reading Rework by Jason Fried and David Henemeier Hansson, the founders of 37signals.

It packs all the common-sense punch and urgency of Seth Godin’s Linchpin in very simple, no-nonsense language.

It’s geared mostly at small business owners like the authors. They wrote it for themselves, really, based on material from their own blog. (At least that’s the impression I get. I have subscribed to their Signal vs Noise blog, but I haven’t read any of it yet. It’s been a busy week.)

There are so many great sections that really jumped out at me as an artist. I’ll highlight a few of them:

• Workaholism
  Workaholics wind up creating more problems than they solve. … They try to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at them. They try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force.
• Build half a product, not a half-assed product
  You’re better off with a kick-ass half than a half-assed whole.
• Tone is in your fingers
  People use equipment as a crutch. They don’t want to put in the hours at the driving range so they spend a ton in the pro shop.
  …
  It’s not the gear that matters. It’s playing with what you’ve got as well as you can. Your tone is in your fingers.
• Interruption is the enemy of productivity
  Getting into that zone takes time and requires avoiding interruptions. It’s like REM sleep … Any interruptions force you to start over.
• Go to sleep
  Forgoing sleep is a bad idea. Sure, you get those extra hours right now, but you pay in spades later: You destroy your creativity, morale, and attitude.
• Make tiny decisions
  When you make tiny decisions, you can’t make big mistakes. These small decisions mean you can afford to change. There’s no big penalty if you mess up. You just fix it.
• Don’t copy
  You have to understand why something works or why something is the way it is. When you just copy and paste, you miss that. You just repurpose the last layer instead of understanding all the layers underneath.
• Decommoditize your product
  Make you part of your product or service. Inject what’s unique about the way you think into what you sell. Decommoditize your product. Make it something no one else can offer.
• Let your customers outgrow you
  You can’t be everything to everyone. Companies need to be true to a type of customer more than a specific individual customer with changing needs.
• Be at-home good
  When you get the product home, you’re actually more impressed with it than you were at the store. You live with it and grow to like it more and more. And you tell your friends, too. … You’re aiming for a long-term relationship, not a one-night stand.
• Welcome obscurity
  The early days of obscurity are something you’ll miss later on, when you’re really under the microscope. Now’s the time to take risks without worrying about embarrassing yourself.
• Build an audience
  When you build an audience, you don’t have to buy people’s attention—they give it to you. … So build an audience. Speak, write, blog, tweet, make videos—whatever. Share information that’s valuable and you’ll slowly but surely build a loyal audience. Then when you need to get the word out, the right people will already be listening.
• Emulate chefs
  They cook, so they write cookbooks. What do you do? What are your “recipes”? What’s your “cookbook”? What can you tell the world about how you operate that’s informative, educational, and promotional?
• Drug dealers get it right
  Make your product, so good, so addictive, so “can’t miss” that giving customers a small, free taste makes them come back with cash in hand.
• The myth of the overnight sensation
  Trade the dream of overnight success for slow, measured growth. It’s hard, but you have to be patient. You have to grind it out. You have to do it for a long time before the right people notice.
• Skip the rock stars
  Great environments show respect for the people who do the work and how they do it.
• Sound like you
  Talk to customers the way you would to friends. Explain things as if you were sitting next to them. Avoid jargon…
• Inspiration is perishable
  Ideas … last forever. What doesn’t last forever is inspiration. [It] is like fresh fruit or milk: it has an expiration date. … When you’re high on inspiration, you can get two weeks of work done in twenty-four hours. Inspiration is a time machine in that way.

So that’s what really grabbed me. Have you read Rework? If so, what did you think?