Alexis T.'s Key Ideas from Rework
by Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson

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

To do great work, you need to feel that you’re making a difference. That you’re putting a meaningful dent in the universe. That you’re part of something important, something you can be incredibly proud of, something you want to take a stand for – a thing worth fighting for. 

The easiest, most straightforward way to create a great product or service is to make something you want to use. 

Until you actually start making something, your brilliant idea is just that, an idea. And everyone’s got one of those.

Ideas are cheap and plentiful. The original pitch idea is such a small part of a business that it’s almost negligible. The real question is how well you execute.

• Less is a good thing. Embrace the idea of having less mass.
• The more massive an object, the more energy is required to change its direction.
• Large companies spend months and years to change something. Small companies can quickly change a business model and a product marketing policy. They can make mistakes and quickly correct them.
• Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make do with what you’ve got. There’s no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative.

• Whenever you can, swap “Let’s think about it” for “Let’s decide on it.” Commit to making decisions.
• Don’t wait for the perfect solution. Decide and move forward.
• When is your product or service finished? When should you put it out on the market? And when is it safe to let people have it? Probably a lot sooner than you’re comfortable with. Once your product does what it needs to do, get it out there.
• Put off anything you don’t need for launch. Build the necessities now, worry about the luxuries later.

• Meetings are toxic. A one-hour meeting with ten people is actually a ten-hour meeting, not a one-hour meeting. You’re trading ten hours of productivity for one hour of meeting time.
• Good enough is fine. Find a solution that delivers maximum efficiency with minimum effort. You can usually turn good enough into great later.
• Break large tasks into smaller subtasks. The smaller your problems, the easier it is to plan them. Divide time intervals into small pieces. Instead of planning a project for 12 weeks, break it into 12 weekly projects.

The longer the list of unfinished items, the worse you feel about it. And at a certain point, you just stop looking at it because it makes you feel bad. Then you stress out and the whole thing turns into a big mess. 

• Divide your long list into many smaller ones. The List of 100 points to the ten lists with ten items in each.
• Try to separate tasks into smaller pieces until you will be able to fully understand them.

• Make tiny decisions. It’s difficult to make and change serious decisions.
• Taking tiny solutions makes it hard to make big mistakes. And it’s easier to change them.

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.