The Peter Attia Drive - #74 – Jason Fried： Optimizing efficiency and work-life balance

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atiyah drive. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. The drive

00:00:10.880 is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along

00:00:15.940 with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working

00:00:19.660 with some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world. And this podcast

00:00:23.620 is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality,

00:00:28.360 more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode

00:00:33.000 and other topics at peteratiyahmd.com. Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode

00:00:43.380 of the drive. I'd like to take a couple of minutes to talk about why we don't run ads on

00:00:47.640 this podcast. If you're listening to this, you probably already know, but the two things

00:00:51.640 I care most about professionally are how to live longer and how to live better. I have

00:00:57.080 a complete fascination and obsession with this topic. I practice it professionally and

00:01:01.960 I've seen firsthand how access to information is basically all people need to make better

00:01:06.720 decisions and improve the quality of their lives. Curating and sharing this knowledge is not easy.

00:01:12.140 And even before starting the podcast, that became clear to me. The sheer volume of material published

00:01:16.960 in this space is overwhelming. I'm fortunate to have a great team that helps me continue learning

00:01:22.240 and sharing this information with you. To take one example, our show notes are in a league of their

00:01:27.700 own. In fact, we now have a full-time person that is dedicated to producing those and the feedback has

00:01:33.020 mirrored this. So all of this raises a natural question. How will we continue to fund the work

00:01:39.120 necessary to support this? As you probably know, the tried and true way to do this is to sell ads.

00:01:44.660 But after a lot of contemplation, that model just doesn't feel right to me for a few reasons.

00:01:50.240 Now, the first and most important of these is trust. I'm not sure how you could trust me if I'm

00:01:56.020 telling you about something when you know I'm being paid by the company that makes it to tell

00:02:00.300 you about it. Another reason selling ads doesn't feel right to me is because I just know myself. I

00:02:06.360 have a really hard time advocating for something that I'm not absolutely nuts for. So if I don't feel

00:02:11.740 that way about something, I don't know how I can talk about it enthusiastically. So instead of selling

00:02:16.840 ads, I've chosen to do what a handful of others have proved can work over time. And that is to

00:02:22.660 create a subscriber model for my audience. This keeps my relationship with you both simple and

00:02:28.720 honest. If you value what I'm doing, you can become a member in exchange. You'll get the benefits above

00:02:35.420 and beyond what's available for free. It's that simple. It's my goal to ensure that no matter what

00:02:41.120 level you choose to support us at, you will get back more than you give. So for example,

00:02:47.440 members will receive full access to the exclusive show notes, including other things that we plan

00:02:53.740 to build upon. These are useful beyond just the podcast, especially given the technical nature

00:02:58.780 of many of our shows. Members also get exclusive access to listen to and participate in the regular

00:03:06.120 ask me anything episodes. That means asking questions directly into the AMA portal and also

00:03:12.760 getting to hear these podcasts when they come out. Lastly, and this is something I'm really excited

00:03:17.600 about. I want my supporters to get the best deals possible on the products that I love. And as I said,

00:03:23.100 we're not taking ad dollars from anyone, but instead what I'd like to do is work with companies

00:03:27.160 who make the products that I already love and would already talk about for free and have them pass

00:03:33.440 savings on to you. Again, the podcast will remain free to all, but my hope is that many of you will

00:03:40.480 find enough value in one, the podcast itself and two, the additional content exclusive for members.

00:03:47.860 I want to thank you for taking a moment to listen to this. If you learn from and find value in the

00:03:52.680 content I produce, please consider supporting us directly by signing up for a monthly subscription.

00:03:58.420 My guest this week is Jason Fried. Jason is the co-founder of Basecamp, a privately held

00:04:02.940 company based out of Chicago, committed to building the best web-based products and tools with the

00:04:07.960 least number of unnecessary features. This is sort of a hallmark of Jason's personality.

00:04:13.840 He's also the co-author of several books, Getting Real, Rework, Remote, and It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy

00:04:20.540 at Work. Now, some of you may recall back from when I started the podcast that one of the reasons I

00:04:25.240 wanted to do this in the first place was I kind of found myself having conversations with friends that

00:04:29.740 after the fact, I thought, man, I wish that had been recorded so others could hear it. And,

00:04:34.080 and this conversation with Jason is exactly one of those. It's in fact, it's an extension of a

00:04:39.800 conversation that we've had several times over meals. We talk a lot about Jason's story. We get

00:04:45.540 into some turns and had some side conversations that I thought were really interesting. And we talk

00:04:50.360 about his background and, you know, how he grew up and how that sort of shaped what eventually led him

00:04:55.220 to working on Basecamp. And we even had a little side tangent on a whole bunch of other companies

00:05:01.040 that, you know, everybody sort of thinks of as great examples of companies like Uber and WeWork and

00:05:05.720 things like that. And one of the things about Jason that's pretty unique in this space is he's just

00:05:10.080 incredibly blunt and not in an obnoxious way at all. He's not being blunt for effect. He's just very

00:05:16.480 open about how he feels and he doesn't sort of mask his feelings about some of these companies and the

00:05:21.800 way they do things and how he feels about that. We talk about Basecamp's focus on hiring and they

00:05:27.800 have a really unique culture around that and the importance of writing and things like that.

00:05:31.840 At the end of the podcast, we get really deep into all aspects of work-life balance, which in some

00:05:37.560 ways is something that I really wanted to talk about with Jason. I would say about a week after we

00:05:43.340 recorded this podcast, both Jason and I sat back and sort of thought that we could have even gone

00:05:48.560 deeper into that very particular topic, specifically work-life balance, which is something that I

00:05:55.140 just think every person struggles with on some level. So we actually hummed and hawed about going

00:06:00.780 back, sitting down again and going even deeper on this topic. But after kicking the idea around,

00:06:07.320 what we decided to do was something a little cooler, which was set up a special AMA that Jason would do

00:06:16.220 much in the same way I've done with Matthew Walker, where after this episode, whatever questions you

00:06:21.760 have about anything we talk about, but I think work-life balance is probably the most important

00:06:27.080 thing we talk about here. We're going to take a bunch of questions from our members and we'll do a

00:06:33.420 specific AMA with Jason that focuses on that. So if you have any questions that we didn't get to

00:06:38.840 or areas that you want to go deeper on, this is a great opportunity to use the AMA to help us put

00:06:45.280 together a follow-up discussion with Jason. So with all that said, please enjoy my conversation

00:06:51.360 with Jason Freed, the first of at least two. Well, Jason, it's great to see you as always.

00:06:58.780 Thanks for having me here. Yeah, man. New York to Chicago, it's not as much of a shock as some

00:07:04.040 places to New York, right? Like Chicago is... Chicago is a small New York, very small,

00:07:08.720 like probably, I feel like it's an eighth, well, actually a 16th of New York, but I get it.

00:07:13.080 I know how to like roll in New York, you know? But I feel like if I came from Kansas City,

00:07:19.340 I wouldn't really know what New York was. It'd be a big shock to me.

00:07:22.400 Yeah. Yeah. New York, it's a beautiful place, but I'll offend all the New Yorkers when I say this.

00:07:27.420 I love it. I just couldn't live here. Yeah. That's how I feel. I feel like I missed it.

00:07:31.800 I wanted to live here in my twenties and I missed that. It never happened. And now I want to kind of

00:07:36.360 live here, but only for four days at a time. That'd be, I think, kind of perfect, actually.

00:07:42.780 Because every time I'm here, I love it. But then like, if I'm here for three or four days,

00:07:45.640 at the end of four days, I'm tired. I'm just really tired and burned out.

00:07:49.020 Yeah. I mean, as I was saying to you earlier, one of the things I like about New York,

00:07:52.700 which is really maybe even less about New York and more about just

00:07:55.740 being in a short, concise zone of work, is like, I always lose a little weight when I'm here.

00:08:02.140 I eat really well for the most part. Sometimes I go off the rails, but like, I don't have like

00:08:06.800 kid food around. I can just be more, this really is not a statement of New York. Now that I,

00:08:11.840 now that it's coming out of my mouth, I realize this is just a statement of people who being on

00:08:14.760 your own, who are working on their own sometimes. Yeah. I was going to say, I can meditate when I

00:08:18.600 want, I can do this when I want, I can say, Oh wait, it sounds like I'm saying I don't like my being

00:08:22.580 with my family, which couldn't be the further thing from the truth. No, but like a little bit of

00:08:25.520 separation is healthy for, for all things. It's good. Like to get away from work, although you're kind of

00:08:29.660 working when you're here, but just to have a change of scenery, I think it's really healthy

00:08:32.480 for, for people, for, for all sorts of reasons. This is definitely something I want to talk about

00:08:36.880 with you today because, you know, someone might be listening to this and saying, what's the CEO

00:08:41.180 and founder of base camp on a podcast where we talk about longevity, because even though you and

00:08:45.380 I both have a lot of shared interests outside, including watches, I definitely don't think anybody

00:08:51.020 wants to hear us talk about watches. So we're probably not going to talk about watches much,

00:08:55.120 if at all. But work-life balance is actually something that I think people can immediately

00:09:01.460 and sort of intuitively appreciate. A is something most of us don't do well. I think if I were going

00:09:08.340 to scorecard Peter Atiyah on health, by far my closest to an F is on work-life balance. And frankly,

00:09:16.840 it's something that seems to know no limit, meaning it doesn't matter how educated you are. It doesn't

00:09:22.140 matter how much money you make. It doesn't matter how prestigious your job is. I think everybody

00:09:27.560 on some level is struggling with this, or at least most people are. And it's such a high priority for

00:09:32.900 you. It's something you've, you've written about and you're just kind of one of the few people for

00:09:38.760 whom this idea of culture in a workplace means something. Everybody says that everybody says that

00:09:46.200 it almost doesn't mean much. So part of me wants to go right there, but I also think part of me

00:09:52.220 thinks the listener who's not familiar with you needs to know a bit of the background. So

00:09:55.820 would you humor me to, uh, if we back up a little bit and explain how you got to be where you are?

00:10:01.340 Yeah, sure. I feel like my career started when I was 14, maybe 13. That's when I was allowed to work.

00:10:09.820 I got a worker's permit. My dad took me to the city hall in the city, a town I grew up in,

00:10:14.480 which was? Deerfield, Illinois, which is about 25 miles North of Chicago.

00:10:19.760 And I went to work at a grocery store and then I eventually went to work at a shoe store and did

00:10:23.680 some other things. But around that time I started getting into computers a little bit. My neighbor

00:10:28.980 had a Mac plus or Mac SE, one of the original, like early, um, all in ones. And he showed me the

00:10:36.240 flight simulator and it blew my mind. I'm like, what the hell is this thing? It's like the graphics are

00:10:40.900 crisp. This is amazing. This was black and white simulator, right? Black and white simulator.

00:10:44.260 This Microsoft simulator, I think, or something like that. Early days. And it just completely

00:10:49.040 blew my mind. Cause before that I'd only seen like an Apple two, which was a, you know,

00:10:53.400 traditional computer, you know, green kind of screen and the Mac was so crisp. So I convinced

00:10:58.440 my parents to get me one eventually. And from there I started to learn how to make software,

00:11:02.700 but only because I wanted something. I didn't care about software. I didn't really care about

00:11:07.960 computers, but I wanted a tool to organize my music collection because I had a bunch of CDs

00:11:12.280 and tapes. So this is, are we in the late eighties where? Let's see. Yeah. Late eighties

00:11:17.100 because the Mac came out in 85. So this is still pre CD you're in your music. The reason I'm asking

00:11:22.120 that question is to know what kind of music collection we're talking about. Were these

00:11:24.400 cassettes? Mostly cassettes. I had some CDs though. Oh, so you were a super early adopter of the CD.

00:11:29.380 Pink Floyd, the wall, my first CD. Mine was the Zeppelin box set. Good. Good choice as well.

00:11:34.440 I'm telling you. Reasonable choice. I remember buying it. 80 bucks. Is that right? 80 bucks for

00:11:39.360 a five disc CD. I remember, yeah, CDs were like 16 bucks each or 18 bucks each at the time.

00:11:44.840 I had this collection of music and I was loaning it out to friends and I would never get it back.

00:11:49.980 You know, I forgot who I gave it to and it's gone. I spent all this time making mixtapes and,

00:11:54.260 you know, whatever gone. And so I'm like, there's gotta be a way to track this. And of course I could do

00:11:59.800 it on paper or whatever, but I had this computer thing. So I eventually, I got this thing called

00:12:04.220 FileMaker Pro. I don't know if you're familiar with the software, right? It's not programming.

00:12:08.720 It was like plugging stuff together. So I plugged a bunch of stuff together and I'd always had an

00:12:13.540 interest in interface design for some reason, design. And so I learned how to like make a

00:12:18.680 interface. I built this thing, which I eventually called Audio File, which was a way to keep track of

00:12:24.960 the music collection that you had and all the tracks that were on the CDs of the tapes and who you

00:12:28.760 loaned it out to and when, and they would send you a reminder to get it back and the whole thing.

00:12:32.540 And I put it up on AOL because this is before the internet, basically. Internet really hadn't

00:12:37.100 happened yet. Kind of 95, 96 is when the internet sort of happened. I put up on AOL and in that

00:12:43.600 file. When you say put it up, meaning like that's where you stored it or that's where you were then

00:12:49.240 allowing people to access it? The latter. So AOL had this, like these file library sections. I don't

00:12:55.840 even know what they were called. I don't recall. This is a bit of a blur. This is a little bit

00:12:59.460 early days and like file sharing where you could, there's like these special interest areas and you

00:13:04.920 could upload files that were called binaries basically at the time. And you could upload

00:13:09.240 these files to AOL and share software with others. So there's something called shareware.

00:13:14.620 This is kind of where you would put things like this. There's also bulletin boards, which is like

00:13:18.940 you dial into with a modem and that kind of stuff. But AOL was the biggest one at the time. So

00:13:23.220 I uploaded some stuff to AOL and in that was a text file saying, hey, if you'd like this,

00:13:29.240 send me 20 bucks. Like here's my address. It's like my parents' house. Just like send this to me.

00:13:34.440 And that summer I got 20 bucks in the mail from some guy in Germany. I remember getting the envelope.

00:13:40.260 It was like the red and blue checked airmail envelope. I'm like, who do I, I don't know what

00:13:44.680 to be in Germany. And like inside this envelope was this printout of this paper I had in $20. And I

00:13:50.160 realized for the first time that I could make something that I wanted, that other people

00:13:55.560 might want too, and they've been willing to pay for it. So that's kind of, I think, even though

00:13:59.380 today I'm doing the same thing. Now I have a business name and I have 54 employees and the

00:14:03.820 whole thing. It was just me back then in, you know, the late 80s, early 90s doing this. And I feel

00:14:09.300 like it's the same exact business. I'm in the same business, which is making something that I need,

00:14:13.240 that I want, recognizing that there's a lot of people in the world. And there's probably some

00:14:17.300 people out there like me who want it too and package it up, make it nice, take care of it

00:14:21.920 and put a price on it and sell it. And that's what I've been doing for 30 years now, basically.

00:14:26.520 So in your business sort of career was the contraband sale. Cause we've, there's some

00:14:32.040 really funny stories that, you know, you've told me and you've told Tim and, and where you, I mean,

00:14:37.400 you, you definitely have an entrepreneurial spirit. Let's put it that way. So where was that occurring?

00:14:42.700 I'm trying to remember like the age I was, this is junior high school. So I don't know. What is

00:14:47.180 that? 13? Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. I was into knives and throwing stars and switchblades and

00:14:55.660 butterfly knives and tear gas and like all this like military stuff that you kind of get into as a boy.

00:15:01.980 At least I did. No, no, I'm the same way. In fact, this is the weirdest story. Sorry to interrupt,

00:15:06.520 but it's so ridiculous that someone's mentioning a butterfly knife, which I've almost forgotten what they

00:15:10.660 are until you say that. At an eighth grade party, I had my butterfly knife cause I was so cool. And

00:15:17.880 this girl, she was the girlfriend of one of my friends and she was just like the coolest girl in

00:15:23.040 the class. Like she was like a cool girl. Right. And her name was Dottie short for Dorothy. And somehow

00:15:30.580 like I let her talk me into carving her initial D into my shoulder with the knife, which she did.

00:15:40.060 And I actually still have this scar on my arm. I still have the D on my right shoulder from that

00:15:46.820 eighth grade party with the butterfly knife. And I didn't see Dottie ended up leaving school and stuff

00:15:52.740 and we lost track of each other, but I kind of came back into contact with her in 2016. And it was

00:15:57.640 the first thing I showed her. I was like, do you remember this? That is crazy. So someone

00:16:02.580 encouraged you to do that and you did it. That's wild. Yeah. Were you just kind of in this like

00:16:07.420 misty, I'm going to impress this girl thing or was there? The funny thing is like I was sort of

00:16:13.380 my quote unquote, you know, air quote girlfriend at the time was like another girl anyway, who I was

00:16:18.700 really into. So no, I don't even think I was trying to impress Dottie per se as much as maybe just

00:16:23.040 everybody there. Like, look at, I I'm tough enough that I can stand here while a girl grinds a knife

00:16:30.080 into my arm while I bleed and I won't flinch. Wow. Your next level. I mean, I think it's speaks to

00:16:37.360 just how it's amazing. Our species survived sometimes when you think of how stupid someone

00:16:44.200 like me could be, especially when we all get to be 13, you know, just stupid. And you're no stranger

00:16:50.400 to stupidity. No offense. No stranger to it. Yeah. We're in the stupid, we're in the stupid

00:16:54.340 13 year old club. So somehow I stumbled on this catalog called the sportsman's guide,

00:16:59.800 which was like a, one of these mail order army supply camping kind of things. I think maybe my

00:17:05.480 dad was on some list and like that showed up or something like that. And I just loved it. How could

00:17:10.760 you not? It was like camo gear and like tactical flashlights and like all this kind of stuff.

00:17:15.800 And I had a job. So I had money because my parents didn't give me any, but I had a good job and good

00:17:21.920 job selling shoes when I was in tennis rackets. And, but it was actually a pretty good paying job

00:17:25.620 because I had a commission and I was a good salesperson. So I could sell enough. And I was

00:17:29.080 making like, I remember 250 bucks in a week and I bought a bunch of this stuff. That's a ton of money.

00:17:34.780 It was a lot. Holy cow. There was a certain tennis racket called the Yamaha secret 10. And if you sold

00:17:41.960 that racket, you got $10 commission. Now I didn't play tennis. I'm ashamed of this. Now I didn't play

00:17:48.700 tennis, but I told customers I did. And I said, I've never played better than with this Yamaha secret

00:17:54.360 10. Such a horrible lie. Like I feel terrible about it. But anyway, I amassed a small, very,

00:18:00.420 very small, small fortune, but enough for me to place an order for some stuff that I wanted.

00:18:05.560 But I didn't have a credit card because you can't, you don't have one when you're 13.

00:18:10.980 So things came COD, cash on delivery. Yeah. Remember that? I totally forgot about COD.

00:18:16.540 Yeah. I don't know if they still do that or not, but the UPS guy would come to our house

00:18:19.980 and I would give him cash. So I'd stay home from school that day. I'd fake that I was sick. I'd stay

00:18:24.580 home from school and the UPS person would come and I would, I would give them, give them cash and I'd get

00:18:29.720 this box of stuff. And then I would basically make a catalog and sell it to my friends. I'd like,

00:18:34.840 I'd get the stuff and I actually physically made a catalog by cutting and pasting things

00:18:39.380 and doubling the price and sold it to my friends. And it wasn't even for the money. I didn't care.

00:18:44.100 It was just like fun. It's fun to get something and sell it for twice or whatever. So I did that

00:18:48.260 for a while until I got in trouble. Why did you get in trouble? I got in trouble doing some other

00:18:52.140 things that were not directly related, but are all related to like being a hooligan. Basically some

00:18:59.260 friends, a particular friend of mine, he, I don't know who convinced who to do this. So I'm not

00:19:04.320 going to blame him or take the blame. One of us decided to fake, this is just again, terrible,

00:19:10.880 fake poison one of our friends by putting like a Tic Tac in his milk at lunch. And then he drank it.

00:19:15.860 We told him we poisoned him. Stupid, stupid. Right? So we didn't of course, but he passed out in math

00:19:23.020 that day later on. The power of the placebo. The power of the placebo. There we go. And so then like

00:19:28.440 they had to pump his stomach. Cause it's like, I got in trouble for that. And then that was just

00:19:33.060 tied into all this other stuff. And then like some friend got caught by his parents with knives.

00:19:38.580 Where'd you get those? Well, I got them from Jay. And it's like the whole thing came crashing down.

00:19:41.820 So your empire comes crashing down. Empire crashing down. But it was interesting because my parents

00:19:46.080 told me, they said, Hey, look, if you don't clean up, we're going to send you to boarding school.

00:19:49.860 And I cleaned up like that moment. I wasn't bad. I was just having fun. And I was pushing as far as

00:19:57.020 I could until I couldn't anymore. And then I couldn't. And that was it.

00:20:00.060 Now, did your parents not put limits on you before?

00:20:02.380 Not really.

00:20:02.920 And now I'm asking this question through the lens of being a parent who's like, I think anybody

00:20:07.480 listening to this, who's a parent, including you, the challenge, I think there are many challenges

00:20:12.940 being a parent, but one of them is by definition, there is enough of an age gap between you and your kid

00:20:19.460 that this notion of setting limits is arbitrary enough because you don't have a great frame of

00:20:25.660 reference. As an example, an obvious example, what is the limit around electronics? Well,

00:20:32.160 it wasn't an issue for me when I was growing up. We had this one total sack of shit cathode ray tube

00:20:38.220 in our house that you wouldn't want to watch anyway. Like there were no limits around TV because all you

00:20:44.020 wanted to do was go outside and play sports. So like that whole concept of needing to limit

00:20:48.800 television or things that didn't yet exist like phones and iPads, I don't have a reference. I

00:20:54.960 don't, I can't look back and say, well, this limit was placed on me and it was good, or this limit was

00:20:59.480 too stringent. Presumably for our kids, their kids will be in a situation where the limits will look

00:21:05.100 different. So I really, I enjoy this topic because I feel like there are some limits that must be

00:21:10.500 preserved across generations, limits around respect, limits around authority or things like that.

00:21:16.520 So, so have you reflected back on the limits that were set on you and how you thought about those

00:21:22.400 with your two children, for example? I have, and I'm, I'm terrified of it to be honest, because, um,

00:21:27.460 I know what I got away with and I feel like where I lived was a lot safer to do some of these things

00:21:34.420 perhaps. But I remember my parents were very, and still are, but now they don't control me anymore.

00:21:41.060 Right. But they were very forgiving. They were very supportive of me. They were there all the time.

00:21:45.280 Whenever I needed something, whenever I wanted something, you were an only child, right?

00:21:48.480 Only child. So that was probably part of it. My mom actually tried to have a few kids before me,

00:21:52.640 but had, I think three or four miscarriages, maybe three before that puts a little extra

00:21:57.360 pressure on you as this sort of chosen one. Yeah, it was sort of me. I mean, I didn't know that

00:22:02.180 I didn't really care, but like looking back, I can see that now. Um, and it makes me ashamed of

00:22:07.480 some of the things that I, that I did as a, as a child. For example, I ran track and my parents

00:22:12.020 were at every single track meet. I was on play basketball freshman year and I sucked. I got

00:22:19.180 into one game, but my parents were at every game, even though I was on the bench the whole time,

00:22:22.640 you know, like, so they were always there for me and always very supportive, always, always gave me

00:22:26.120 plenty of latitude and lots of room to do what I wanted to do. And I really appreciate that. And I

00:22:30.880 think that that's, it was valuable, but I, I got away with a lot of things that I probably shouldn't

00:22:35.080 have. I certainly pushed them a bit too far and I pushed myself a bit too far. And there was quite

00:22:40.940 a bit of tension near the end of my hooligan time. And then I remember they just kind of told me this

00:22:46.460 eventually, like you, you've got to stop this or we're going to send you away. And you're what,

00:22:50.120 like 15, 16? I don't think I was driving yet. So it's probably 15. I got in with like some of the

00:22:56.040 wrong kids. My parents knew it. They called it from the beginning. They go, you shouldn't be

00:23:01.960 hanging out with these people. But I did because you know, that's what you do. It's cool. Right.

00:23:06.440 And, and the pressures, that's just sort of what I'm aware of now. Like, I mean, my son's only five

00:23:10.780 and my daughter's 11 months. So like, I've got some time here, but you can only do so much as a

00:23:15.580 parent. I mean, kids are going to sort of do what they're going to do. I think anyway, they gave me a

00:23:20.280 lot of room. I did a lot of things. I learned a lot, but they also taught me from an early age to be

00:23:23.780 very independent, like getting a job right when I could and working and that sort of thing. So I think the

00:23:27.640 independence part of it was really important. I think it really did shape me that I could figure things

00:23:31.880 out on my own and get where I needed to go without a lot of support. Let's say there was support in

00:23:36.160 terms of we're there for you, but I figured a lot of things out myself. I was never really good at

00:23:41.080 school either. I was okay, but I wasn't great. I think it just kind of bored me. Thinking back to

00:23:45.660 your point about kids now, I'm just aware of these things now. It helped me think about what it was

00:23:50.640 like to be that age again. So when these things come up with my kids, I'll hopefully be able to

00:23:55.420 sympathize a bit more than maybe if I was more perfect coming up, you know?

00:24:01.280 So you managed to dodge this boarding school bullet, right?

00:24:03.640 Yeah, I did.

00:24:04.460 And then you go to college and what do you study?

00:24:07.200 I studied finance. Went to University of Arizona. I picked finance because I didn't know what else to

00:24:12.400 pick. I loved business. I was kind of doing business before, right? My dad was working for

00:24:18.880 himself. My grandfather started a grocery store chain way back when. I think it's something I've

00:24:24.240 always wanted to do, and I felt like I was good at it. I liked the stock market, and on the stock

00:24:29.080 market, I guess that's a finance degree. I don't know, right? So I did that. And truthfully, I went

00:24:33.940 to Arizona to chase the weather and to chase a girl at the time in high school who was also going

00:24:39.280 there, and some friends I had were going there. So I didn't really care. I didn't think that much

00:24:42.480 about college. And I remember a couple years in, I just wanted to be done because I was actually

00:24:47.140 doing business. Then by that time, I was starting to do website design. After that, I was offered a job

00:24:52.440 in San Diego, and I moved to San Diego for about six months. I lived in the gas lamp way back in

00:24:56.620 the 90s. When it was even dirtier? It was just beginning to turn. They just built a Horton

00:25:02.740 Plaza, if that's right. They just built that, and things were starting to change on there. But

00:25:06.480 anyway, I started doing website design, and I actually felt like school was interfering with

00:25:10.220 my education. I felt like I was learning so much more from doing business and finding clients and

00:25:16.360 delivering work and getting paid or not getting paid and understanding what it's like to work with

00:25:20.840 people in the world. That school began to feel faker and faker to me because everything was very

00:25:26.100 abstract. Everything was not real. The work we were doing, the products we were doing, the projects

00:25:31.080 we were doing, they were all manufactured in a way where it just didn't feel like, this is really like,

00:25:34.960 I can learn the real thing. Why would I spend my time doing this? But eventually, I finished.

00:25:39.760 But let's pause there for a moment because I'm really curious as to what the real assessment is of

00:25:45.400 this phenomenon that everybody loves to talk about, which is how many of the great entrepreneurs

00:25:49.080 that we think of didn't finish college. Everybody loves to tell the story about Zuckerberg and jobs

00:25:55.240 and Gates. I'm curious now that you've been in the workforce for a long time, but not only that,

00:26:00.320 but you're so highly attuned to the notion of recruiting talent. Are there a subset of people whose talent

00:26:08.240 is such that going to university or college is truly a waste of time? They're going to go on and be

00:26:14.380 really successful without it versus there's another subset of people who have the potential

00:26:19.900 to be equally successful, but they need that time to be on the rails versus it doesn't matter.

00:26:26.620 So could Jeff Bezos have just said, forget MIT, I'm literally going to create this thing. If the

00:26:32.400 timing were right and he could have started Amazon, if he were 10 years younger, could he have skipped

00:26:37.020 college and investment banking and just started Amazon? And would we be adding him to the list of the

00:26:42.500 Zuckerbergs, the Gates, the Jobses? It's hard to say. I think that there's some mythology around

00:26:47.400 some of that. I mean, some people like Steve Jobs went to school like at a liberal arts college and

00:26:53.260 sort of got into all sorts of interesting things like taking calligraphy classes and stuff.

00:26:57.560 That influenced his sort of flavor for design. Exactly. So the fact that he didn't finish school

00:27:01.240 to me doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you finish school or not in our field. I mean,

00:27:05.600 perhaps in medicine, it certainly matters, right? But like in our world, it doesn't matter so much

00:27:11.660 because I think it's about what experiences do you want? What experiences do you find interesting

00:27:15.500 and being motivated by the things that you're doing? So some people are motivated by learning

00:27:19.800 in school. Some people are motivated by learning outside of school. I don't think that there's

00:27:23.140 a specific breed or type of person that couldn't finish school and needs to leave the world,

00:27:30.560 a school, the educational world and get out in the real world. Like there's some moments in history

00:27:34.660 where timing really matters. I mean, timing always matters. But for example, Zuckerberg,

00:27:40.120 like Facebook only exists because he went to Harvard. It only exists because he wanted to

00:27:44.820 build this thing to get to know other people at school or whatever. Like the fact that he

00:27:47.880 finished school, that's not the important part. Yeah, exactly. And you could even say the same

00:27:51.480 experience. Right. Yeah. If he had not gone to college, like everyone likes to focus on he

00:27:55.840 didn't graduate. Like that's cool. Whatever. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But what's interesting is

00:27:59.800 that to me, although I have a big problem with Facebook, but Facebook exists today because he did go to

00:28:06.840 college. I think that's actually the more interesting thing to focus on rather than like,

00:28:10.320 did you finish or not? Did you actually finish and get this piece of paper? Yeah. So if we want to

00:28:13.060 play with all these myths, like Steve Jobs, calligraphy classes, well, that influenced design,

00:28:17.040 that influenced typography on the Mac. And that made a huge, that changed the world in a lot of ways. So

00:28:21.120 school was important to Jobs and school was important to Zuckerberg. I don't know Gates's

00:28:25.320 history and whatnot. I thought he and Paul Allen met in high school, didn't they? They might've been old

00:28:28.860 friends. Yeah. But again, like here's the other thing that I think is interesting. We all like to

00:28:33.900 call out the exceptions and think there's a lesson there. Right. And we don't really know what the

00:28:38.660 graveyard looks like. Right. The contrapositive. And it's the same thing with venture capital. I'm

00:28:43.260 sure we might get into this, but I can jump into it for a second, which is that people like to look

00:28:48.000 at, or like hard work, let's say hard work is actually a better example. Bezos and whatever,

00:28:52.320 they work their ass off. So like, well, there's a lot of people who work their ass off who get nowhere

00:28:56.320 and they work really, really, really, really hard and they make minimum wage if they're lucky

00:29:00.300 and they work their whole life and it's very, very difficult. So this idea of hard work getting you

00:29:05.440 somewhere, I don't buy it. Wow. I wanted to go down the path of contrarian Jason views. We're

00:29:11.020 there. We're there. I don't think that hard work, the argument is that like no one else is working

00:29:17.040 as hard as Zuckerberg. Therefore, Zuckerberg worked hard and he, come on, please. There's only 24 hours

00:29:22.620 in a day to begin with. I don't even know what working hard means. Like in my opinion, if you

00:29:28.020 get to sit behind a desk all day in an air conditioned room, there's no such thing as hard

00:29:32.100 work. Hard work is picking strawberries in the field. Hard work is roofing in 120 degree heat.

00:29:38.540 That's hard work. Intellectual work can be challenging work, no question about it. And it

00:29:43.020 can be difficult work. But as far as like the hard part of it, the word hard, like to me, that's

00:29:48.120 physically hard, sweating, not getting paid, not being respected. That's hard. It's hard to go to work

00:29:53.620 every day when that's your reality. Anyway, I have a slightly different take on that, I

00:29:57.780 suppose, than most, but going in circles a little bit. But basically, there's a lot of myths

00:30:02.060 around these exceptions. And we tend to focus on the exceptions is like those are the exceptions

00:30:06.880 and the exceptional people. A lot of this has to do with luck and timing and also skill

00:30:11.640 and talent and observation and opportunity and all these things. But I think we put a lot

00:30:15.580 of weight into things that probably have very little to do with it, in fact. So we can find

00:30:20.480 patterns like these people dropped out of school. Therefore, I should drop out of

00:30:23.120 school. And there's a lot of people who feel that way. They want to follow their idols.

00:30:27.100 What I would say is, well, what did they get from that experience? Maybe that's something

00:30:31.320 you should look for versus the dropout, the dropout just a moment in time, you decide not

00:30:34.760 to go anymore. That doesn't really mean anything. I think that is actually a great point. And you're

00:30:38.620 right about the patterns. I mean, I think we are pattern forming machines, and it probably

00:30:43.020 served us incredibly well. In fact, I wrote a blog post on this a long time ago. It's rare that I

00:30:51.100 would even remember a blog post I wrote truthfully. This is like one of my favorites. I don't know

00:30:55.620 why. I just really, I've probably even gone back and read it once or twice. So I don't remember the

00:31:00.500 details. But the gist of it was, we're not wired to think scientifically. So all of this critical

00:31:05.700 thought stuff, reason, trying to distinguish between correlation and causation, these are incredibly

00:31:13.380 modern phenomena. In fact, you could argue that they represent less than five basis points of our

00:31:21.820 genetic existence, meaning like less than one twentieth of one percent of our genetic existence

00:31:27.500 has been in exposure to the idea of thinking logically, going through formal logic and reason.

00:31:35.100 The scientific method has not even been around for 400 years. And if that sounds like a lot,

00:31:41.380 you know, obviously just reflect on how long our genes have been around. But what has been around

00:31:46.600 for a long time is pattern recognition. In fact, you would argue that it hasn't just been around for

00:31:51.100 a long time. We have sharpened that tool so well because, as I think the example I remember using in

00:31:59.080 this blog post was like, if you were walking around in a tribe of 30 people and you see somebody over

00:32:05.040 there getting the desirable mate, then you want to emulate what they're doing. You see somebody over

00:32:09.720 there getting sick. Well, presumably whatever he ate or drank, you shouldn't be doing. And again,

00:32:15.600 will you ever be able to tease out the correlation versus the causation? Not a chance. But if you were

00:32:20.560 a good correlation identifying machine, that was a very beneficial trait to be able to carry on.

00:32:26.940 And I just think that on this topic, which is, again, it's off topic, but it's such an interesting

00:32:32.260 notion that we observe in ourselves. Most of us default back into that without even realizing it,

00:32:38.200 even when we think we're smart and smarty pants, in the end, we're still kind of a bunch of knuckle

00:32:43.140 dragging, pattern recognizing brain stems. For sure. And also we look for the patterns that

00:32:50.320 correlate with our own stories. Then you get into all of the biases, of course. Yeah. So you have

00:32:54.060 the confirmations that come with these things. Right. And that's sort of where it gets to be

00:32:58.040 dangerous, but you kind of have to. I mean, you can't go through the world looking at everything

00:33:01.600 fresh all the time. You just wouldn't get anywhere. I mean, that's what's so I think fascinating

00:33:04.980 about looking at kids. I assume from what I can tell from observing kids, like they don't

00:33:11.620 have those patterns yet, especially when they're young and they see a leaf for the first time.

00:33:14.740 They see a plant for the first time. They see a caterpillar for the first time. And they're

00:33:17.400 fascinated by it. You and I walk right past those things because we know what they are and the

00:33:22.080 pattern is clear. Like that's a leaf. That's a thing. So you end up missing all these interesting

00:33:26.580 details, probably because you jump over things. It's like not all leaves are the same, but that's a

00:33:30.740 leaf. Big deal. But a kid's like, what's this leaf? What's that leaf? What's this leaf? And

00:33:34.520 you're like, come on, we got to go like get your shoes on. But they're fascinated by these

00:33:37.420 little things. So I think that we have to, of course, function with patterns or through

00:33:42.220 patterns. But I think oftentimes they end up reinforcing our own wishes. Like we were excited

00:33:48.000 about the person who dropped out of school. Therefore, like we find the patterns, we find

00:33:51.580 the things that line up and then we can tell our own story that matches with our own

00:33:54.540 internal story. But I try to look for things that are a little bit outside of that

00:33:58.460 because it's a little obvious. Some of these things are really obvious in terms

00:34:01.280 of if you don't dig a little bit deeper, you end up believing the myths. And I think

00:34:05.740 there's a lot of that going on, especially in the entrepreneurial world right now where

00:34:08.540 people are, they look to companies like these big companies and they go, well, that's the

00:34:13.260 way we want to build our company. And that's the way we want to be. What they do, they took

00:34:16.540 a hundred million dollars. We should take a hundred million dollars and they, their

00:34:19.680 founder is whatever. And so we should be that way. And the thing is that I think people

00:34:24.660 follow the wrong pattern. So they're looking at big, huge companies. So they're

00:34:27.720 starting a new business. Let's say there's three people in the business or

00:34:30.000 themselves, just themselves. And they're looking to like, well, how does Apple do

00:34:33.380 it? Well, Apple's at a totally different scale from where you are. You should not

00:34:36.220 be following their patterns. Those are the wrong patterns to follow. They don't make

00:34:39.260 any sense for you. Just like you wouldn't expect Apple to follow your patterns. Like

00:34:43.020 you're just one person, but we end up following the wrong patterns and doing the

00:34:47.080 wrong things because we want to get what they have, but we don't realize that they

00:34:51.780 started out where we started out too. And we just kind of feel like they just jumped

00:34:55.020 up to be Apple. And so like, let's just do what they do and we're going to get to

00:34:57.800 where they're going to get. And I just don't think that's usually true.

00:35:00.540 What do you think is sort of among the top mistakes slash myths that people starting

00:35:08.040 businesses make? Not, not even making the looking at Apple model, but looking at other

00:35:14.660 successful startups, looking at like Dropbox or people, companies where you can say, well,

00:35:20.100 look, there was, I can still remember when they were in their infancy, but look what

00:35:23.560 they're doing now. Like what are, what are some of the common mistakes you see people

00:35:26.380 talking about?

00:35:27.840 I think that most of this stuff is actually luck and timing and there's clearly talent

00:35:36.100 and skill involved too, but sometimes things just happen at the right time.

00:35:40.080 Meaning most of the successes that we look to as these beacons of brilliance, we're under

00:35:46.380 appreciating how much luck is involved.

00:35:47.840 I think so. Partially because if you just think about it this way, like what if they all

00:35:51.180 started again right now? Like could Dropbox be what Dropbox is 10 years from now? Like

00:35:55.420 it is 10 years in probably not. And you'd say, well, why not? They could do the exact

00:35:59.980 same thing. Well, cause it's a different time and there's different competitive pressures

00:36:02.960 and there's just different timing and there's different economic things going on. If you

00:36:07.060 can't replicate these successes, then there's probably a lot of luck and timing involved

00:36:10.480 in these things. And it's not that people don't pay attention to that. I just don't

00:36:14.380 think they give it enough value. I remember early in my career, I thought there was

00:36:18.220 no such thing as luck. I thought I was hot shit and I knew it all.

00:36:21.340 Where in your life cycle is this? This is in college, post-college?

00:36:24.460 No, post-college. After starting our business, probably I gave a talk. We'll have to look

00:36:28.640 this up. I gave a talk at startup school, which was a Y Combinators thing. I don't remember

00:36:34.460 what year this was. Maybe it was 2007. I'm just guessing. Man, I remember someone asked

00:36:39.640 about luck and I remember answering, I don't believe in luck. I remember that answer distinctly.

00:36:44.740 And I am so ashamed of saying that, but that was me at the time. And I remember just being

00:36:50.380 like, no, no, I did this. I did that. We did it this way. It's all intentional. And this

00:36:54.220 happened for a reason, the whole thing. And now I realize that that's probably not true

00:36:57.200 at all. And in fact, if I had to start the business again right now, pretty good chance

00:37:00.560 I wouldn't be able to do it at all. So I think luck and timing has a lot to do with

00:37:04.720 it. And there's multidimensional luck and timing. There's your time, there's the market's

00:37:10.340 time, there's competitors' time, there's the appetite for the public's time.

00:37:14.160 There's a whole bunch of timing things in here. I just don't think people pay enough

00:37:17.740 attention to that. That's number one, or maybe number two and three. The other thing

00:37:21.820 that I think people who start businesses don't realize is that it only gets harder. Business

00:37:27.380 only gets harder. It doesn't get easier.

00:37:30.240 So Basecamp is harder today than it was 20 years ago.

00:37:33.140 Absolutely. Because we have more people. We have more customers. With those come all sorts

00:37:39.880 of things. Customers, you have expectations. There's more competitors, employees. There's

00:37:44.640 just more people. People are difficult. There's just the notion of doing the same thing for

00:37:49.420 a long period of time and becoming blind to new things. And you're so used to the way you've

00:37:53.240 done things.

00:37:53.740 I mean, is it safe to say it's harder or it's just different? Like I'm trying to think of

00:37:57.840 an example. Like, I don't know, every example I can think of, I can immediately think of a

00:38:02.360 counter example.

00:38:03.020 Let me give you something kind of more specific then perhaps to frame it. I'll hear a lot of

00:38:08.860 entrepreneurs saying like, I'm going to work my ass off now so I don't have to later. The

00:38:14.500 assumption is, is that if I put in all this time now, it's going to be easier later. So

00:38:18.200 therefore I don't need to work those kinds of hours or I'll hire people to do that stuff.

00:38:21.680 Never works out that way.

00:38:23.540 Why is that the case?

00:38:25.540 Well, I don't know.

00:38:26.440 How much of it is the drive to work so hard now under the guise of not having to work hard

00:38:34.400 later, when you get to later, you have failed to address that which it is that's driving

00:38:39.300 you to work so hard in the first place. And so, you know, work expands to fill available

00:38:43.540 time. You just come up with more stuff to do, some of which may not even be necessary.

00:38:48.500 Most of it I would say is probably not necessary. I think that one of the reasons why it happens

00:38:53.320 this way is that we're just are creatures of habit. So whatever you practice, you get

00:38:59.120 better at. And sometimes you don't even realize you're practicing. But if you're working 80

00:39:03.180 hour days, you're going to get really good at work or not 80 hour weeks. You're going

00:39:07.100 to get really, really good at working 80 hour weeks. That's just what you're going to do

00:39:09.980 12 hour days. And then at some point you're like, that's the only way to do this, right?

00:39:13.500 Because that's what I've done. That's how I've gotten to where I've gotten. And it's

00:39:16.380 because of the hours I put in. And therefore, like if I pull back, like this is all

00:39:20.460 going to fall apart. So we just that's what we begin to do. And that's how we begin to

00:39:24.000 work. The other thing is, I think people underestimate how difficult it is to have

00:39:28.340 employees. I love our employees, but like it's difficult to have employees. Like when

00:39:32.400 you're starting by yourself, it's just you. You'd make all the calls. You bring someone

00:39:35.820 else on. Maybe it's great. Bring the fourth or fifth person on. At some point, there's

00:39:39.360 personality conflicts. Things get a little bit more difficult. And then you have to manage

00:39:43.000 people and you have to hire managers. And then you're a little bit out of the loop.

00:39:45.380 And before you know it, you own the business, but you're the last to know

00:39:48.300 everything that's important about the business. You don't know what people are upset. You

00:39:52.560 don't know what's going on. You're so far removed from it. And this is what happens.

00:39:55.820 And I think business just gets harder. It does also just become different. So there's

00:40:00.540 just the difference that's true. But I think it becomes harder. And I don't think people

00:40:04.840 realize that. And so I just see people going into things, not recognizing that and just

00:40:08.760 assuming that they can be self-destructive in the short term, because in the long term, it'll

00:40:13.440 be worth it. And I just haven't really seen a lot of that play out. I see a lot of

00:40:16.240 people actually ultimately destructing themselves and destroying themselves. And then maybe selling

00:40:21.100 their business or getting out and then trying to come back and never being able to do it

00:40:24.180 again. So the other thing I would say, I don't know what number I'm on here, if there's even

00:40:28.420 numbers, but I would say if lightning strikes, keep that lightning in the bottle. There's a

00:40:34.440 lot of people who are serial entrepreneurs. I'm not one of those people. I don't believe

00:40:38.080 in that necessarily. I think if you are lucky enough to have a hit, ride it out until it's

00:40:44.140 over versus stop and try and do it again. Chances are very slim that you can really do it again

00:40:50.340 if you actually truly have a hit. So I'm not ashamed to say, I don't think I could do this

00:40:54.680 again. I'm totally comfortable with that. A lot of entrepreneurs feel like they need to

00:40:58.140 prove something to someone or themselves that they can do it over and over and over. That's

00:41:01.200 just not me. So I think putting that idea out there is a good alternative because a lot

00:41:06.120 of people think that by starting a business, selling it five years in, doing another one,

00:41:10.440 selling it five years in, it's like the way to make a career. I think the way to make a career

00:41:14.560 is to stay in business, not to get out of business. Now, again, is it possible that there's just a

00:41:18.640 different itch that's being scratched? I mean, I want to come back to sort of this because,

00:41:22.540 you know, your motivation is, you know, it's clearly not driven by some exit. I mean,

00:41:27.220 Basecamp's a private company, right? There are probably how many times a year are you asked when

00:41:32.100 are you going to take this company public? Probably not that much anymore. Not that much

00:41:35.140 because you've made the answer very clear. Yeah. I get an email or two every week from a VC firm

00:41:40.260 or private equity firm or whatever wanting to invest. And the answer is always no. I just don't

00:41:44.680 want, I don't want that pressure on me. Like the other thing I think that becomes clear or has become

00:41:51.380 clear for me, and by the way, everything I'm saying is my point of view. None of these are facts. Like,

00:41:55.800 this is just what I'm saying is that people end up making things really hard on themselves.

00:42:00.940 I don't think business is that difficult if you don't make it hard on yourself, but people make it,

00:42:07.360 they grow too fast. They raise money from the outside. They put unnecessary expectations on

00:42:11.840 themselves. They are forced into a growth track where they have to grow and they have to produce

00:42:17.480 returns. They have to then hire people because they have money in the bank from the investor

00:42:21.260 because that's where you spend money on people, basically in marketing. And then you get ahead

00:42:25.700 of yourself and you're over your skis and now you're screwed. You're in trouble. So now you have to keep

00:42:30.460 fueling the growth and raising more money. And it's like, I've talked to a bunch of people who've done this

00:42:34.780 and they all pine for the good old days when they were a group of eight people just doing it right.

00:42:41.200 I mean, it sort of got out of control for them. So I see that happening a lot too. And I think this

00:42:45.420 is like self-destructive behavior, even though people don't necessarily see it that way. They

00:42:48.520 see it as like business building, but a lot of businesses are destructed and destroyed by

00:42:53.980 unreasonable expectations of growth and having too much money in the bank. Something I've talked about

00:42:59.980 before is that making money is a skill, just like playing guitar is a skill, just like anything is

00:43:05.600 a skill. And if you want to get good at it, you have to practice it. In our industry, in the software

00:43:10.940 industry, a lot of companies will lose money for years and years and years. And they think they

00:43:14.520 actually say like, we can just pull the lever and become profitable whenever we want.

00:43:18.960 That would be like saying you can walk on stage and just play guitar really well whenever you want.

00:43:22.920 You can't, you have to practice. You have to practice making money, which means that

00:43:26.100 if you keep borrowing money and keep having other people fund your operations and you don't have to

00:43:30.600 get in the black, then when are you going to get good at this skill? And to me, like an entrepreneur

00:43:35.560 needs to be able to make money. They need to be able to make their own fuel, need to be able to make

00:43:39.140 their own food and their own water. That's what profit is. And profit's the only thing that keeps

00:43:42.540 you in business ultimately. And if you have to rely on other people to provide that fuel for you,

00:43:47.240 I think you're at a real disadvantage. And I think you're putting on due pressure on yourself.

00:43:51.300 So let's use an example that's very top of mind because it's just, it's somewhat recent,

00:43:55.240 which is Uber, right? So terrible business. Uber is not profitable, but the story is it could be

00:44:00.820 profitable at any moment. It just has to choose profitability over growth, right?

00:44:04.700 Well, it's a great example because it's a textbook, terrible business. Everyone thinks it's a great

00:44:10.100 success. It's horrible. They lost what? 1.8 billion last year on 11 billion in revenue or whatever it is,

00:44:15.340 or maybe last quarter. I don't even know if it's quarter a year, what numbers, they're just huge

00:44:19.160 losses, right? The fact that you can't remember that it probably says enough massive losses. And then

00:44:24.160 their CEO says, like just a few days ago, it's like, we're just getting started on this amazing

00:44:28.040 journey. It's like, you've actually been in business for a long time. Yeah, about 10 years,

00:44:32.640 right? 10 years. You've raised over a billion dollars in capital. You're a public company now.

00:44:37.580 Like when is this journey, when is this going to work? Because right now, I think right now for every

00:44:43.080 buck they make or they pull in, they're losing 20 or 30 cents or wherever it is. It's like terrible.

00:44:48.380 Like the economics are terrible and they don't seem like they're going to change unless they actually

00:44:51.340 change the pricing model, which might make it less attractive to riders. On top of that,

00:44:57.560 Uber is a dumpster fire in terms of ethics. They've done a lot of bad things, let's say,

00:45:02.460 with tracking journalists and the way they went after competitors and a whole bunch of stuff.

00:45:06.960 That's pushed by growth. They have to show numbers. These businesses like Uber and even like Lyft and

00:45:12.020 like WeWork and like a number of these businesses that are, quote, successful, they're not at all.

00:45:16.460 They're actually terrible businesses. The dry cleaner on the corner is a better business.

00:45:20.140 They're going to be around longer than WeWork.

00:45:22.820 I don't follow this stuff at all. So it's, this is all sort of, again, I'm one of those guys that

00:45:28.720 would just naively say, well, they're everywhere. So they're doing well, right?

00:45:33.080 Yeah. Or just that, oh, they sent the concept of WeWork makes sense. But truthfully, I've never put

00:45:37.580 like my business hat on and actually scratched the back of the envelope and looked at what they're

00:45:41.500 paying per square foot and how they arbitrage it. And then what their middle costs are like,

00:45:46.080 I don't actually, I haven't done that analysis.

00:45:48.280 Well, all you have to do is look at their filing and they say, there's a good chance

00:45:51.060 we will never be profitable. Like they know that themselves.

00:45:53.600 Wait, wait, how is that possible?

00:45:55.040 That's what like almost all of these IPOs that file these days in the tech world say,

00:45:58.720 like there's a good chance we will never become profitable. That's what it says in their S1s.

00:46:05.140 Is WeWork's S1 on the street?

00:46:06.560 Yes, it is. Now it is.

00:46:07.520 Okay.

00:46:07.940 Yeah.

00:46:08.640 I didn't even know that.

00:46:09.380 These businesses are, they're terrible. Like part of-

00:46:10.900 Okay, but then let's use the counter example of Amazon.

00:46:12.900 Okay. So Amazon went public long before they turned to profit, continued to lose incredible

00:46:19.840 amounts of money while growing in equity value like crazy. And now do you argue that AWS basically

00:46:27.960 saved Amazon or do you argue that at some point Amazon just turned the ship and said, look,

00:46:32.460 we're going to focus more on profitability than on pure growth?

00:46:36.760 Well, let me even step back further and go, I don't care because it's one example. And this

00:46:42.840 is the thing that like ends up happening. And I will address Amazon might be an exception is sort

00:46:46.980 of what you're, I think pretty much most of these companies are exceptions because if you think about

00:46:51.280 like most of the, the, the ones we all talk about are exceptions, I will address the Amazon point

00:46:56.100 in a second though, but people always will go, well, what about Amazon? Well, you're not Amazon.

00:47:00.240 And if it was so easy, everyone company would be doing this. They're not like Amazon is a very

00:47:05.980 different kind of company. They've basically said, we don't want to pay anything in taxes. So we're

00:47:11.080 going to roll every, all of our profits back into the business. AWS is a huge part of their business.

00:47:16.440 Maybe for people listening to this, who we're getting a little deep in the weeds. Can you tell

00:47:19.840 people what AWS is and how that sort of is such an important piece of Amazon?

00:47:23.880 Yeah. So AWS is Amazon web services, which is basically an outsourced cloud. Like you can

00:47:28.400 basically use Amazon services and hardware to run your own business in their cloud. They're kind of,

00:47:33.200 they built it for themselves and then they basically made it available for everybody else.

00:47:36.700 So instead of having to buy a data center or, or co-host physical machines somewhere,

00:47:41.420 you can just buy a slice of theirs. If that hopefully makes sense.

00:47:44.600 Yeah. And I remember just to put this in perspective, I remember in 2014, one of my best

00:47:48.280 friends, maybe it was 2013, but it was 13 or 14. One of my best friends who was running a hedge fund,

00:47:53.580 we were having dinner one night and whenever I'm having dinner with people, I'm much more interested

00:47:56.760 in their world than mine. So I try to monopolize the conversation around them. So I don't have to answer a bunch

00:48:01.100 of questions. And this was one of those nights where I was like, tell me about the most interesting

00:48:05.260 long position you have right now. And he's like, Amazon. And I'm thinking it's going to be some

00:48:10.100 company I've never heard of. And he's going to tell me about some offshore oil company in Brazil

00:48:15.440 that's got this thing and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, no, it's Amazon. And I'm like, why?

00:48:20.100 And that was the very first time I ever heard of AWS. And he basically showed me the entire

00:48:25.420 share price of Amazon is captured by AWS. You're getting a retail business for free in 2013 and

00:48:34.780 you have a appropriately valued AWS. And of course, me naively, I was thinking, but their price to

00:48:41.000 earning ratio is so blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:48:42.900 200 or 500 or whatever.

00:48:44.500 He's like, no, no, no. You're thinking about this the wrong way. So what you're saying is like,

00:48:47.840 that's a bit of an exception. I don't know enough about Microsoft, but given that they're a software

00:48:52.040 business and we've been talking about software, I assume Microsoft was pretty profitable at the

00:48:55.780 outset.

00:48:56.300 They've been profitable for years as has Apple. Two great companies, wonderful companies.

00:49:01.280 I guess my point is this. Their stories actually don't matter because that's not like in my world,

00:49:09.180 it doesn't matter because I'm more interested in small businesses and like real businesses that have

00:49:15.120 to show profit. Like you can't be Amazon. The dry cleaner in the corner cannot be Amazon. The pizza shop

00:49:20.160 in the corner cannot be Amazon. They're not going to like, if you said, Hey, pizza shop,

00:49:24.520 let's say this, let's say a pizza shop owner comes up to you and goes, I've got an idea.

00:49:28.300 I'm going to lose money in every slice of pizza I sell, but I'm going to sell a lot of them.

00:49:32.620 What do you think of my business? You'd go, it's fucking stupid. What are you talking about?

00:49:35.960 You're going to be out of business and everyone in the world would know that. So like those are the

00:49:39.460 economic laws that most people are under Amazon and some of these other companies are exceptions.

00:49:44.020 Now, Apple, hugely profitable. Microsoft is profitable. Those to me are better models.

00:49:50.160 Then like, but what about Amazon? I have a lot of respect for what Amazon's done. I also lately

00:49:54.780 have a lot less respect for what Amazon's doing. I think that they might be a net negative given a

00:50:00.220 number of different things. I think the pressure they put on the system, the fact they don't pay

00:50:04.200 federal income tax. And I know they say, well, we were doing with what's within the law. Like,

00:50:09.360 okay, fine. But I think there should be a little bit more corporate responsibility in the world.

00:50:14.560 And I think like companies that generate billions in revenues have an obligation to pay

00:50:18.480 taxes. But aside from that, I also think that given their largesse, I feel like they could treat

00:50:25.240 workers a little bit better and they can do a number of things. I also think they put on due

00:50:29.000 pressure on smaller businesses and they sort of are dominating the market. For example, like our book,

00:50:33.840 98% of the sales come through Amazon. And that's just kind of wrong. I don't think that's good.

00:50:39.340 Even though it's convenient to buy, they made the user experience incredible.

00:50:43.460 So I can't fault them for running that kind of business, but it still feels like in the world,

00:50:49.620 things are a little bit better when there's more options, not fewer options. And I think that Amazon

00:50:53.600 has reduced the number of options people typically have these days. But that's an aside. My general

00:50:58.960 point is that we all like to look at these outliers and go, but what about? And I go, well,

00:51:04.280 that's not your world. You don't get to be them. Unfortunately, you don't get to be them. You have to

00:51:08.880 actually generate more money than you spend. You have to pay your employees. The public is not

00:51:13.520 going to endlessly give you money forever. You're just not that. So we can look at these examples,

00:51:18.360 but I just don't think they're relevant to most companies, truly.

00:51:21.360 What's the natural history then of these businesses, of the WeWorks and the Ubers of the

00:51:25.400 world? I mean, you sort of, I think basically said, look, at some point, the public will either

00:51:30.460 demand profitability, in which point prices have to go up, in which case profitability might not be as

00:51:35.860 much as you think. Because at some point, you're going to drive people back to taxis or whatever

00:51:39.960 the alternative was. I'm still sort of reeling in this idea that these companies are that bad,

00:51:46.720 from a pure business standpoint.

00:51:48.220 They are. You should look at the numbers. They're terrible. Truly. And this is like,

00:51:52.000 I know you don't read fiction. And that's something you and I have in common. We've just

00:51:56.200 basically decided there's too much other stuff I need to read. Fiction. I've read one work of fiction

00:52:01.200 since 1999. So I'm at 20 years, one work of fiction. But this is another one of those things

00:52:06.720 that I used to be very interested in. When I worked at McKinsey, like there was nothing I enjoyed more

00:52:11.480 than reading the entire Wall Street Journal cover to cover every morning. I don't even read the news

00:52:16.360 anymore. I've just decided I'm not reading the news, like ever. I'm the same way. I don't read the

00:52:20.880 news either. But I've looked into these numbers because I'm curious. No, it's relevant. They're

00:52:24.940 terrible. They're terrible numbers. And the thing is, is like these companies, there's a sense that

00:52:29.120 they deserve to exist no matter what. No, they can go out of business. Like Uber could go out of

00:52:34.580 business. And why shouldn't they? It's a crappy business. It's a terrible business right now.

00:52:39.340 Maybe it'll turn around at some point. They've had 10 years. Maybe it'll turn around some point. But

00:52:42.980 there's this assumption that these things are now part of our world. Therefore, they must be there

00:52:47.760 forever. I just don't think that that's true. There will be other people who come along who maybe

00:52:51.600 make a profitable model out of this. And there's been a number of things around ride sharing lately

00:52:55.900 that have come out. Traffic is worse because of ride sharing. Pollution is worse because of ride

00:53:00.120 sharing. Because there's a lot of cars idling with nobody in them. So will autonomous vehicles

00:53:04.480 change this for Uber? I think they might. Although I think that's much further off than we all think.

00:53:10.180 I think it's very, very far, actually. But I do think that that's probably what they're holding

00:53:15.580 out for. They want to dump all their drivers because they don't want to deal with them. And they've

00:53:19.380 kind of said this publicly, which is amazing to say that about people who work for you right now.

00:53:23.040 We're basically trying to eliminate you. And they want to go through autonomous. But I think that's

00:53:27.320 also selling the dream to investors. Right. To buy a longer position and just go in and make the

00:53:34.040 investment. But I think that's very, very, very far out. So they're, of course, running trials and

00:53:38.060 doing all this stuff. And they get news stories for it. But I think we're very, very far off from that.

00:53:41.560 You can just see the best in the business at this. Tesla, we don't have one now, but we had one.

00:53:47.520 And their autopilot, it's actually a crime to call it autopilot. I think they shouldn't have

00:53:52.820 called it that. That's part of the problem. The expectations are wrong. It's not autopilot.

00:53:56.600 It's like assisted driving. And it's really quite good at that. But to leave your hands

00:54:00.380 off the wheel and trust the thing, which is what autopilot would basically suggest,

00:54:04.080 you're going to kill yourself. So if they're the best in the game, and that's where they're

00:54:08.160 currently at, maybe there's some massive technological advances around the corner that

00:54:11.940 we don't see over the hill, whatever. But as it is today, we're nowhere near autonomous vehicles.

00:54:17.080 Like really driving on the streets with human beings and pedestrians and bicyclists and all

00:54:22.820 that stuff. I just don't think it's anywhere close. Yeah, that's sort of been my uninformed,

00:54:27.500 I guess, bias would be the only way to describe it, which is I think the problem

00:54:30.820 is way harder than it's being sold because it's way more asymmetric.

00:54:36.580 Yes. And I think it's easier if you, for example, I have to think it's, it would be easier if you had

00:54:42.940 like dedicated roads only for autonomous vehicles where they would all behave the same way and follow

00:54:47.220 the same rules. Well, not only that, and if each car could be autonomous overnight. In other words,

00:54:52.020 if you could immediately allow every vehicle to communicate with every other vehicle and you

00:54:56.940 could eliminate all of the humans simultaneously, I think that's actually easier to imagine than a

00:55:02.380 gradual transition where you infuse in autonomous vehicles, you know, and there's a point when like

00:55:08.580 7% of them are autonomous and 93% are driven by knuckleheads. Well, the 93% of us who are knuckleheads

00:55:16.020 driving cars, I just don't know if AI is good enough to fully understand the depths of our stupidity.

00:55:24.440 I totally agree. So it's the phasing in, which seems like decades and decades away. I agree. If there

00:55:30.620 was dedicated lanes where all the cars talk to each other and they all follow the same rules and

00:55:34.160 they all have the same language, different story, but that's not the story. Like we can't build more

00:55:38.080 roads right now. Like there's, where are you going to build roads in Manhattan? Like where's that going

00:55:41.040 to happen? So they're going to have to phase in. And that I think is really far away. But anyway,

00:55:46.420 WeWork, Lyft, Uber, look at the economics, terrible businesses. Uber and Lyft, I mean, the public markets

00:55:53.780 are saying these are actually quite bad. They're down quite a bit off their, off their highs when they IPO.

00:55:57.220 So like people are starting to wake up to this and they're saying, eh, I don't think there's anything

00:56:00.420 here. The funny thing is like, I love talking about this stuff so much. And I realized there's

00:56:03.880 probably somebody at this point in the podcast saying, what in the world does this have to do

00:56:07.220 with anything that I want to hear these guys talk about? So let's, let's go back to post college.

00:56:13.060 You're doing some software stuff, right? Website design. Website design. Do you ever get any

00:56:17.300 interesting feedback on website design? I did. So I remember when I was first getting going with this,

00:56:22.760 I thought I was good. There was this award thing back then. I think it was called high five

00:56:27.100 awards, something like that. And back then, this is before you had like WordPress where people could

00:56:32.200 basically take a template and tweet. You're doing this from scratch. From scratch. This is like

00:56:36.200 writing basic HTML, website code, basic stuff. This is mid to late nineties. So this was about

00:56:42.560 95, 96 is when I started doing this stuff. Cause that's kind of when the web became visual before

00:56:46.680 that it was like mostly text-based. Right. So mosaic was a big step forward. And I remember the

00:56:53.000 summer of 94 when I was using mosaic on a sun workstation and it was like, I didn't know what

00:56:58.100 I was looking at. Yes. That was total game change. That was the moment that everything changed in the

00:57:02.380 world. Netscape IPO'd in August of 95, if I recall, right? I remember when that was. Okay. 94, 95 was a,

00:57:09.660 that's when it changed. It was a step function. Yeah, exactly. And that's when it changed and that's

00:57:13.300 when it became commercially viable for companies to have websites or even begin to think about the web.

00:57:17.320 So there I was in college, bored, a junior, I think in 90, I graduated in 96. I love design

00:57:25.040 and I knew a little bit about computers. And back then it was really easy to learn how to do this

00:57:29.000 stuff because no one knew what they were doing. And so like, it was just dead simple. Today it's

00:57:33.040 really hard. Another example, like today, could I pick up what I know today? Probably not. It's

00:57:36.760 really hard. I mean, yeah, I could, but like everything's got more complicated. Back then it was

00:57:41.320 simple. Anyway, I figured out how to make some websites. I went around to some, some sites,

00:57:44.600 actually financial sites and emailed at the bottom and said like webmaster at whatever,

00:57:49.240 because that's what everyone had back then. So I'd email these people and say, Hey, I like your

00:57:52.960 site, but I think I could make it look better. Like, will you give me a shot? A couple of them

00:57:57.320 replied yes. And so I did some simple work. First job I ever had was like 600 bucks doing some guy's

00:58:02.300 website. Actually a guy named Tim, I forget his last name, but it was called Profit Data Services.

00:58:08.540 It was actually based out of San Diego. Tim Knight was his name. He's still around actually doing this

00:58:12.820 stuff. But anyway, I, he gave me a shot and I did some work for him and I did some work for another

00:58:16.560 guy named Keith Cruickshank in San Diego and started doing more work for him. And then he

00:58:21.720 offered me a job when I graduated from college in 96. So I went out to San Diego and sort of worked

00:58:26.280 with him. It was just me and him for about four months, five months. And I realized I'm just not

00:58:30.180 built to work for other people. I just knew it at that moment. I kind of had like a suspicion

00:58:34.540 before I've had jobs before, but they were like, you know, part-time jobs and that's fine. But as far as

00:58:39.620 a full career job, I couldn't work for somebody else. I had a hard time doing something I didn't

00:58:45.500 believe in or didn't agree with. I just couldn't do it. What do you mean by that? Like, was there,

00:58:50.600 I mean, these guys weren't asking you to do anything unethical. No, no, no, nothing like that.

00:58:53.740 So what did you not believe in? I realized that my motivation went to zero.

00:58:58.220 Because it wasn't your idea? No, it wasn't that. It was more like, for example, an aesthetic decision

00:59:03.620 or like, if I had to do something that I just didn't agree with aesthetically or like structurally

00:59:09.220 or in terms of like copywriting a sentence that I didn't like, I just, it's not that I couldn't do

00:59:13.620 it. It's just my motivation went to zero. I just didn't want to do it.

00:59:17.020 Oh, so it wasn't about you having a boss. It was about you having a client. If I'm your client and I

00:59:21.840 say, Jason, you know, you probably noticed the Atiyah medical website sucks. Can you help me redo it?

00:59:27.680 Is the issue that I would say, well, I really, I much prefer to have serif fonts here,

00:59:35.380 but sans serif fonts here. And if you thought that was wrong, you just couldn't do it.

00:59:39.440 Or is it that I'm talking to a guy between us who's telling you what I'm telling him?

00:59:44.460 It's not the client side. I'm okay with working with clients. It was more of the boss situation.

00:59:48.240 And it wasn't this fellow named Keith, who was a great guy. It wasn't that. It was just purely

00:59:53.280 a function of motivation. I realized that I don't want to spend my day on something. I feel like I

00:59:59.060 begrudgingly have to do if I don't have the intrinsic motivation to get it done. Like I just,

01:00:04.520 if I just like, for example, with writing, like I love writing. If I had to write a sentence in a

01:00:09.780 certain way just to appease somebody because they were paying me, like it was, it was my job. I would

01:00:15.080 write the sentence, but I'd be miserable by the end of the day. I'm like, I don't, why am I doing this?

01:00:18.980 Like, why am I spending my day doing things I don't want to do? And I don't agree with that.

01:00:24.180 Like you can do that once or twice or five times, of course. But like when that became something that

01:00:28.520 was clear to me that we had like a, we had like aesthetic differences with my boss, we had like

01:00:34.020 just a fundamental principle outlook differences around the work itself. Yeah. I could do the work,

01:00:41.020 but I didn't want to do the work. And if I didn't want to do the work, why was I doing it? Why was I

01:00:44.460 wasting his time? Why was I wasting other people's time? Why was I wasting my time? I realized that

01:00:47.940 I have to be motivated by the work itself. That's what drives me. It's not the money. It's not

01:00:54.560 success. It's like, I get the pleasure. It's like Feynman. Like the pleasure isn't pleasant to find

01:00:59.400 the thing out, right? It's not the awards. It's that. And so for me, that's what it was. And if I

01:01:02.900 have to do something, I just didn't enjoy, I just motivation was gone. And if you don't have that,

01:01:07.940 you're screwed. Cause then there's no carrot that can pull you along. I mean, they can pull you along

01:01:11.200 in the short term, but longterm can't. So, which I want to come back to this theme by the way at base camp,

01:01:15.840 but let's keep going with this story. So I quit, lived in San Diego for a few more months,

01:01:19.260 moved back home to Chicago, and then started doing freelance website design on my own.

01:01:23.400 Which in the mid nineties looks like what, how are you finding clients?

01:01:27.480 Same way I did before, which was that I would just reach out to people who had websites

01:01:31.080 because everyone's website at that time, how are you finding the people who don't have websites?

01:01:35.020 Aren't they the people that need you even more? No. So I've never focused on that. I always

01:01:38.920 focused on redesigning because I felt like I could show an improvement. If there's context,

01:01:45.540 I certainly, there's always context from zero to nothing, but I felt like I had the ability to

01:01:50.740 take something that someone had and elevate it basically in a way where they'd be like,

01:01:55.000 I want that version of the thing that I have. So I always have focused on redesigns. So I would

01:02:01.500 go to websites that I use and I'd find out how to get in touch with the owner and say, Hey,

01:02:06.120 sometimes I would send them like a free mockup that I would make or something and say,

01:02:10.440 here's what I would do with your thing. And eventually you get a few clients and you get a few

01:02:14.200 clients. And sometimes you don't have any. So you make up a fake client and design something

01:02:17.720 yourself and show someone something. And this is what I would do to this bank if I could,

01:02:21.140 which is something we eventually did at our company where we did this whole thing called

01:02:25.020 the better project where I was so frustrated with how FedEx's website worked that I just

01:02:31.260 redesigned it for myself. I mean, I couldn't use it because it wasn't FedEx's website, but I made a

01:02:35.760 mockup of it. This is how you'd want it to be.

01:02:37.940 It's how I'd want it to be. And we got a lot of publicity over doing like a better FedEx,

01:02:41.820 better bank, better car interface, better PayPal. We didn't get hired by these companies,

01:02:47.940 but it was a way for us to show what we could do if we had the chance. And so sometimes you have to

01:02:51.940 create your own clients. That's what I kind of did too, and sort of got that word out there.

01:02:56.280 And then word sort of spread and it was just me. So my costs were zero. My rent, I was paying 900

01:03:01.560 bucks a month to live. I lived and worked in the same place, of course. My costs were zero,

01:03:06.700 basically. Not zero, but 900 bucks. So I could cover that. This is one of my things. I never get ahead

01:03:11.480 of myself. I never spend more than I make. I never put myself in a bad position. I'm a believer in

01:03:17.080 risk, but never putting yourself at risk, which is a different...

01:03:19.680 So differentiate those for me.

01:03:21.220 Risk is like taking a shot that if it doesn't work, no big deal. And we do that all the time

01:03:25.520 at Basecamp. But what I will not do is bet the company on something. I mean, maybe I would figure

01:03:32.940 out that I've done that looking back if something didn't work, but I would not knowingly go into

01:03:37.760 something and go, this has to work. We're going all in on this or else, like it's over.

01:03:42.360 And this is another great example of history is littered with these hero stories of betting the

01:03:47.360 company on, you know, what was Apple bet on? I mean, Apple was bet on the Mac.

01:03:52.040 Yes, it was.

01:03:52.500 The re-release of the Mac in 97 was the entire... I mean, that company was hemorrhaging cash

01:03:57.780 when jobs came back.

01:03:59.780 Disaster. And they bet big.

01:04:02.240 They had to bet.

01:04:02.660 Now, in retrospect, yeah, was that...

01:04:04.240 I mean, clearly it was the right move.

01:04:06.740 Well, yes. But even... I mean, but remember Annie Duke. I don't know if you ever heard

01:04:10.400 the podcast I did with her. I mean, Annie, I think, does this great job of differentiating

01:04:13.560 outcome from process and stuff like that. But in retrospect, do we still think like if

01:04:18.600 there were a thousand universes with a thousand apples all in the same position and the company

01:04:24.680 was bet, do like 800 of them work out well? Or did we see one of just 75 of a thousand

01:04:31.640 that worked out well?

01:04:32.500 Well, I think there could have been, of course, a bunch of different outcomes. Microsoft could

01:04:35.500 have bought them. Someone else could have bought them. But looking around this table right

01:04:38.460 now, I have an iPhone, you have an iPhone, you have an iPad. These things would not have

01:04:42.200 existed in the world had Apple not made that initial bet with the Bondi Blue iMac. So all

01:04:48.640 those things led to these things, whether or not that's good or bad.

01:04:51.000 But you're just saying it's not in your person. Like that's... Your type of leadership is not

01:04:54.280 designed to be in that moment. Maybe the way Jobs was the right guy for that role.

01:04:58.360 Yes. Although I will also admit that I haven't been in a position where I had to do that.

01:05:02.500 And that's sort of partially intentionally and also perhaps by luck. But Jobs came back.

01:05:08.260 He had nothing to lose. Apple was dying. You could almost say like, what else were you going

01:05:13.900 to do? Why come back and do the same thing?

01:05:16.780 Make another Newton?

01:05:17.440 Yeah. Make another Newton, which didn't really pan out. Although some of those ideas were

01:05:21.180 very prescient.

01:05:22.420 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

01:05:22.920 That was totally not his.

01:05:24.620 Yeah. Right. But anyway, like looking back on it, of course, it was the right move. But there's a

01:05:29.280 bunch of littered, you know, histories littered with the companies that try that. But for me,

01:05:33.240 I just don't see the point. Like I'm about the odds. What are the odds? Like with any decision I make,

01:05:40.600 I don't really think probabilistically necessarily, but I do think about it in a broad sense. Like,

01:05:45.980 what if this goes wrong? Like David's my co-founder, my business partner. We always talk

01:05:49.860 about this. Like, what if this doesn't work? What's the worst that's going to happen?

01:05:53.300 And it's like, well, like we're making a new product right now. Okay. We have Basecamp. We're

01:05:57.640 going to do another product. What if we spend a year building this other product? What if it doesn't

01:06:00.760 work out? Then we spent a year building it and we're not going to go out of business because of it.

01:06:04.560 We still have a very healthy business with Basecamp. It's still growing. We're fine.

01:06:07.420 The worst that can happen is we spend a year. If we spent 10 years, that'd be a problem. If we spent

01:06:13.760 seven years, that'd be a problem. But we can afford to spend a year on this. I'm not going to do

01:06:18.500 something I cannot afford to do. I just don't see the point in it. Like I'm more for self-preservation.

01:06:24.320 I don't need to like hit the grand slam. Like I want to keep doing this. Like I found my dream job,

01:06:30.220 which is running my own business. Why would I want to put that at risk? Now you could say,

01:06:35.220 if you don't take more risks, someone's going to beat you. And I would say, you're probably right.

01:06:38.660 And at some point we will lose and our company will go out of business and the company will die.

01:06:42.080 And that's what happens to every single company in the world, essentially, except like there's

01:06:45.920 some Japanese companies that have been around like 40 generations or whatever. Companies die and

01:06:49.520 that's okay too. This stuff doesn't have to last forever. But if we look back, David and I have

01:06:53.860 talked about this too. Like let's say in six years, it just peters out. Well, that would suck.

01:07:02.120 But also like that's a 26 year run. That's not so bad. So I always tend to look at it that way,

01:07:08.520 but I also want to stay in business. So I don't want to take the risks that could put us out of

01:07:11.960 business. I want to just take risks, but not put ourselves at risk. So that's kind of, I don't know

01:07:15.900 if that defines it well enough, but that's how I think about these things. So before base camp,

01:07:19.640 now going back to the mid nineties, you're one stop shop, you're one man, $900 apartment guy.

01:07:25.180 And then how's that going? I mean, the story I'm pushing you to is this funny submission to a

01:07:30.500 contest. Yeah. So yeah. So around that time I thought I was good. I mean, I was, I was good

01:07:34.960 enough for clients. They were paying me and I was staying afloat and this is great. There was this

01:07:39.060 award site and I was sort of excited about it because a lot of, I wanted an award. Like I wanted

01:07:43.280 to be recognized, which is like a very human fundamental thing. Now, since then I've realized

01:07:47.520 awards are nothing I'm interested in. But at the time I was young and like excited to be on the scene,

01:07:52.800 right? Get someone else's approval. So I submitted this website design to this award site.

01:07:58.760 I got an email back saying like, basically you suck. You should not do this. This should not be

01:08:04.860 the line of work you're in. I think maybe some people would be destroyed by that, but I've always

01:08:10.020 felt that to be motivation. Like, okay, let me show you what I can do. Or like, I didn't care about

01:08:15.480 this guy. Did you see a grain of truth in the feedback? Did you think? No, I didn't believe it.

01:08:19.480 I thought I was good. I thought I was good at what I did. I am good at what I do. And I thought so,

01:08:23.260 but like what I realized was that like everyone's opinion is purely subjective, especially when it comes to this

01:08:27.840 kind of stuff. Like this is just a guy. I don't even know this guy. Why should I let this guy

01:08:31.780 piss me off? But he did. Like now I look back at that and go, why would I ever let someone else take

01:08:36.660 my mind over like that and make me upset at his opinion? Who cares about his opinion? But he was

01:08:44.080 sort of seen as a rainmaker kind of type at the time. So I didn't get that award, but it just motivated

01:08:49.560 me. Like I've always been motivated by that. Like if, if I, someone thinks I'm not good at something

01:08:53.680 or can't do something like that fires me off, it doesn't piss me off. I mean, it pisses me off,

01:08:57.260 but it doesn't make me upset. So it's sort of a productive channeling of at least a quasi

01:09:02.500 productive channeling, except you could say it's revengeful, which is not productive in that regard.

01:09:07.700 But like, I wouldn't do it to shove it in his face. That's, that's not why I would ever do it.

01:09:12.020 I would do it because like, I think I am good. It just motivated me to keep, keep working at that.

01:09:16.340 So I got better and better and better. Then how do you hone a craft like that where you're on the,

01:09:20.880 it's the wild West still practice. You just keep doing it. And then you find your,

01:09:25.940 you find your aesthetic, you find your, your eye, you find what you're good at,

01:09:31.240 what you're not good at. And you kind of double down. So for me, what I was good at was I actually

01:09:36.260 wasn't very good at making, I'm not a trained designer, so I couldn't make sophisticated

01:09:41.060 three-dimensional designy things. Right. What I was really good at was laying out copy or writing copy,

01:09:47.920 laying out text, laying out simple graphics. So things were orderly and structured in a way

01:09:53.240 where people who hit the site will go, I understand what this company is selling. Because a lot of

01:09:57.540 companies have a really hard time explaining themselves and helping people get to the thing

01:10:01.300 that they're trying to sell. They just can't explain their own thing. They're too close to it. So I got

01:10:04.360 really good at that because that was what was within my ability. That was it. I didn't have the desire

01:10:10.460 to flex outside of that. I'm like, let me just get good at what I'm good at. Like, why do I need to get good

01:10:14.620 at everything? Like, let me get good at that. So I kept doing that. Got really quite good at it.

01:10:18.840 Eventually hired another person because I got a really big gig. Somehow I won this gig for Getty

01:10:23.740 Images, which is a big, huge company. Yeah, they make the stock photos and stuff like that. Yeah.

01:10:28.100 They're launching this new service called Getty One, which was the first aggregate. They had a bunch

01:10:32.160 of different stock photo libraries. And you had to search all the separate stock photo libraries to

01:10:37.800 find a picture of the Empire State Building or something. So Getty One was going to be a new site

01:10:42.060 where they aggregated all their results into one place. It was just me at the time. I won the gig

01:10:47.480 to design that site actually from scratch because they didn't have that site. But they had an identity

01:10:51.040 and they had some other stuff. But I beat out a bunch of big companies and someone really took a bet

01:10:55.120 on me, made a bet on me. And so I ended up hiring my first employee then, a guy named Matt Linderman,

01:10:59.860 who lives here in New York now. And he was with me for like 12 years after that. We worked together

01:11:04.560 for a long time. And that was my first employee. From that, we grew very slowly.

01:11:08.660 And how did that become Basecamp? Is that the vehicle that became Basecamp?

01:11:12.800 No. Well, eventually. So the company was called 37 Signals at the time. And we started getting

01:11:18.540 busier and busier and doing more and more projects. And then we needed a better way to manage the work

01:11:23.580 that we were doing because we were managing our projects using email at the time and phone calls

01:11:28.200 and in-person meetings and paper. And stuff was slipping through the cracks. And we couldn't figure out

01:11:33.140 where things were. I didn't know where to find something. Someone else put something in the wrong place.

01:11:36.280 It's like, you can't work that way. You can kind of work that way for a minute. And then an hour

01:11:40.280 later, it's a total mess. So we built Basecamp. Like when I built my audio product, we built Basecamp

01:11:47.940 for ourselves, for our own specific needs. Didn't even realize it was going to be a product. But then

01:11:52.240 we used it with our clients. And they said, hey, what is this thing you're using? We have projects

01:11:55.260 too. Can we use this thing to manage it? We're like, no, it's just this thing. And then eventually

01:11:58.460 enough people ask. You're like, ah, there's a product here. We tightened it up, cleaned it up,

01:12:02.700 put a price on it, put out in the market, called it Basecamp. And February 5th, 2004,

01:12:07.220 which happened to be the same day Facebook launched, interestingly enough. About a year

01:12:11.620 and a half later, it was making more money for us than website design. So we stopped doing website

01:12:15.320 design and transitioned to do software entirely. I'm skipping over a few things like when I met

01:12:19.660 David, my business partner and stuff. But he was a student at Copenhagen Business School. He's from

01:12:24.480 Denmark. I hired him to do some projects before that. And then we ended up building Basecamp

01:12:28.820 together. So he did the back end of Basecamp, and I did the front end design, along with another

01:12:32.560 person we had at the company. That's what happened. But it wasn't a plan. I don't plan. I don't have

01:12:38.280 goals. Yeah, this is the next thing I want to ask you about is you very famously said you don't set

01:12:43.600 goals. I'm not a goal driven person. How does that work? How doesn't it work? I mean, it works.

01:12:50.280 Well, you're talking to a guy like, so by contrast, like everything in my life seems to be about a goal

01:12:55.900 or something. And so when I was in high school, every day I would wake up and write anew my goals

01:13:04.720 because sometimes they would change a little bit. So I would like to, I would have a goal. I don't know

01:13:09.220 how this really started, but I had goals in what I perceived as all areas of physical fitness.

01:13:16.320 So I wanted to run five, five minute miles. So five miles in 25 minutes was a goal. And I wanted to,

01:13:23.000 I had goals in strength. So I wanted to be able to bench press, squat and deadlift certain amounts.

01:13:28.260 I don't exactly remember what they were, but they were very, very high, much higher than anything I

01:13:32.280 could dream of doing today. You know, I had certain anaerobic goals, certain goals with respect to

01:13:37.540 flexibility and muscular endurance. Like, I mean, I really had this long list of goals and I would

01:13:42.680 literally write them out every day. And many days I was just rewriting what was there the day before.

01:13:46.820 I mean, no change, right? But over the course of years, there was tweaking. You know,

01:13:51.520 I was realizing, oh, you know what you, that's a, that's a bit of a sandbag goal. You're, you're

01:13:55.260 actually going to hit that goal within six months. Let's stretch it out a little bit. And then there

01:13:59.140 were times when, you know, for example, like I never could do the five, five minute miles. I don't

01:14:03.300 know what it was like I could do. So I really, I changed that to five, six minute miles, which I

01:14:08.860 could do again, not just to move the goal line, but because I also realized like I was just not going

01:14:13.180 to get to five, five. So you could have that goal on there forever. But at the time I certainly

01:14:17.060 didn't know how to train for that. I'm not sure I ever could have, but the way I was

01:14:21.820 training, which was in retrospect, running far too long and far too slow was going to

01:14:26.460 plateau me there. So that was kind of a goal modification. Basically that has sort of stayed

01:14:30.380 with me forever. That habit. I don't think I'm as literal today. I don't actually write

01:14:33.980 them down on post-it notes anymore, but you know, then in college I wanted to be able to

01:14:39.120 spend, you know, this summer, I would want to go through the entire book of integrals and

01:14:44.220 know how to derive every single interval and all these sorts of things. So, so no, for me,

01:14:48.640 it's like everything in life comes down to these, to these goals. And I still do have a to-do list,

01:14:53.600 which is kind of a mini goal list of, I have a daily, weekly, and then non-time constraint,

01:15:00.840 personal and non-time constraint, professional to-do list. So yeah, this is a totally foreign concept.

01:15:07.780 People should do what motivates them. What I realized was that goals don't motivate me because

01:15:12.860 goals turn into one of maybe three things. Like one is just disappointment. You don't hit it

01:15:18.860 and then you're disappointed. Like, I'm not sure I want to do something that ends in disappointment.

01:15:23.640 Like why should I even set myself up for ending up in disappointment? Two, you end up just like

01:15:28.300 hitting it and then setting a new one. So like, so you're on a treadmill, you're on the treadmill of

01:15:32.200 like forever setting these fake numbers. I mean, you just, you guess like five minute mile,

01:15:37.740 like that's just a round number. It's easy to say, but like, what does it mean?

01:15:41.460 Why is that better than a five, 12 mile?

01:15:42.900 Yeah. Why does it, what does it mean? The other one is that you end up, I think,

01:15:45.620 just kind of chasing things without really thinking about it. My feeling is that I had

01:15:50.520 some experiences where I didn't realize this until later, but for a while I did want to run like

01:15:55.400 certain times, you know, you go out for a run and let's say you want to run a six minute mile,

01:15:59.880 like recreationally, you go out for a run, you want to set a six minute mile, you wear your watch,

01:16:04.180 you time it and you ended up getting like a six Oh six or something or six Oh eight or whatever.

01:16:09.760 You didn't hit your goal. You're disappointed. Now you could say, well, I'm not cause next time

01:16:13.500 I'll get it. But like, at some point you're like, fuck, I didn't get this, this number.

01:16:18.200 That's like the wrong way to frame it. The better question is like, did I enjoy the run?

01:16:22.240 Did I get some fresh air? Did I move my body? Did I feel challenged to some degree? Like

01:16:26.980 if I did all of those things, what does the number have to do with anything? The number is

01:16:31.300 nothing. It doesn't mean a single thing, a six versus a six Oh six. It's different. If you're

01:16:35.400 like an athlete, like training for something, you need to beat someone else's time. Okay. That's a

01:16:39.520 different story, but I'm not that. So why should I focus on trying to hit a fake number? Why not try

01:16:45.900 to hit things like, did I have a good time today? Did I get outside and run for 45 minutes and get my

01:16:50.140 heart going? Did I enjoy myself? Did I get a break? Did I get to think about some things like those are the

01:16:54.180 things that are more interesting to me. So there's that side of it. The other side of it is I just want to do

01:16:59.240 the best work I can anyway. So because I want to run a five minute or six minute or seven minute,

01:17:04.740 like I'm just going to run the best I can anyway. I don't need the number to tell me what that is.

01:17:09.820 This is maybe tying back to the whole thing. One of the reasons why I quit that job is if I'm not

01:17:16.100 motivated by the work itself, it doesn't matter. I have to enjoy the work. And for me, the pleasure

01:17:21.780 is the thing itself. Just doing the best I can on any given day and just like seeing where it comes out,

01:17:27.320 like who cares? But that's not necessarily incongruent with having a goal, right? So

01:17:31.580 let's use your health as an example because that's something we obviously talk about, right? Which is

01:17:36.060 again, putting semantics aside, if we're going to take the word goal off the table, you have

01:17:42.760 objectives, correct? I mean, I want to go in a certain direction. Well, also I think, wouldn't it

01:17:48.540 be even more than that? I mean, don't you have a model for, or in your mind's eye, a sense of what

01:17:54.660 the 85 year old Jason should be able to do. What does success look like when you're 85? This is

01:18:00.100 kind of this backcasting idea from Annie Duke, right? Don't think about how many miles you have

01:18:04.740 to run tomorrow or how much weight you need to lift next month or next week. But think about what

01:18:09.320 the wind state looks like at 85. Not that that's the end of your life, but let's just use that as a

01:18:14.120 point in time. And you have to have an objective of that to sort of at least get in the direction of

01:18:20.200 getting there. Don't you? I think about it in terms of at base camp, we don't have company goals,

01:18:25.000 but we have a vision. Like we have a direction we're going. We have things we want to do because

01:18:29.740 we think they're the right thing to do and the right way to do them. So for me, like living,

01:18:34.240 trying to live to be 85 and be able to goblet squat 30 pounds, wherever these things are, like

01:18:38.480 to me, that's more of like the vision side of things. Like I want to get there because it'd be nice

01:18:42.900 to be alive that long and to be healthy that long. Why would I want to not be that way?

01:18:47.280 It's, I don't, I just don't see it as a goal. I don't see it as like a distinct thing that I

01:18:51.740 either, here's maybe what I think. If you don't hit a goal, most people are disappointed.

01:18:59.700 Like when I'm 85, if I can't do that, I don't want to be disappointed when I'm 85 years old.

01:19:05.340 I want to like, I tried or I did whatever, but like, I don't want to have this point where I have

01:19:10.040 to go, did I make it or did I not? Am I disappointed or am I happy? Like do, that's the thing. Maybe it's

01:19:16.040 subtle, but I think it's an important distinction. Like when I would just go out for a run, I don't

01:19:19.960 have to measure up against something and decide whether or not I worked hard enough, ran fast

01:19:26.520 enough, whatever. I can just go, did I enjoy it? That was a good for me. Did I like it? So you

01:19:31.320 could say like the goal is like health. Yeah, there's, there's that, but it's very broad. It's

01:19:35.360 not a number. Maybe it's the number goals. I don't like, maybe it's like the milestone goals. I don't

01:19:39.180 like, but like directionally I do have definitely, I want to go in specific directions.

01:19:43.520 It might just be also, again, I think the process part of it, if you want to be able to goblet

01:19:48.060 squat 30 pounds correctly, when you're 85, you'll have to do a lot of work between now

01:19:52.720 and then to maintain it because you can do that today quite easily, but gravity is going

01:19:57.740 to really work against you over the next 40 years. And if when you get there, you can goblet

01:20:02.260 squat 25 pounds instead of 30, I don't think anybody would say that that's a failure. And

01:20:07.200 more importantly, I guess it's that objective, which, you know, for me, we use this example

01:20:11.700 because I, it's one of the things on my centenarian Olympic list of, you know, 20 different events

01:20:16.620 to be able to do, but what's it in service of, I guess, is the question. Maybe that's

01:20:20.440 where we are probably saying the same thing in a different way. I mean, to me, it's not

01:20:24.040 about a goblet squat. It's that 30 pounds represents the weight of a toddler and a goblet

01:20:28.520 squat, which is to say a squat position where you have to be in scapular protraction and be

01:20:34.160 able to pick something up in front of you. That's what it's like to pick a toddler up. And

01:20:37.580 I want to be able to pick up a toddler when I'm 85. I would agree with that. But to me,

01:20:41.640 that's like a direction versus a, I see. So let's bring it back to the company. Cause

01:20:46.000 this is still a very unusual concept within the company, which is really a big part of

01:20:50.140 what I wanted to talk about today. There's no shortage of stories, horror stories really

01:20:54.580 of companies that have just gone so far ethically off the rails because of creating perverse

01:20:59.760 incentives. So, you know, this great story with on the podcast with Catherine Eben about

01:21:04.560 the generic drug companies, Rambaxi's only goal is profitability. Like literally nothing

01:21:10.520 else matters. And unfortunately that goal superimposed in a cultural environment that

01:21:17.920 produces sort of different sets of ethics that are deemed almost acceptable leads to devastating

01:21:24.260 consequences where, I mean, they'd sell you cyanide if it was profitable. If they could make

01:21:29.540 enough money on it, they'd spike your medication with, with that. So you have to motivate people.

01:21:35.760 Should we even start that? That's not necessarily an assumption. Like you have 54 employees. Do they

01:21:39.580 need motivation? And if so, do you feel you need to provide some of it?

01:21:44.120 Everybody's very different. I think we have to set a vision of a direction of where we're going.

01:21:49.280 That's people want to be on board with that. If the train's going this direction, you want to be on

01:21:53.280 that line or not like there's that, but I think a lot of it is more day-to-day in the actual work

01:21:58.160 itself and that people have the autonomy and the control over their own work and their own work

01:22:02.700 environment and their own schedule and their own time. That to me is the more important side of it

01:22:09.500 versus dragging someone along with a carrot, which is like this bonus or that thing or whatever, or

01:22:14.440 at some point this company worth 17 billion and you've got this much stock equity and options and

01:22:19.360 you can convert that. It's like, yeah, some people are going to be motivated by that, but I don't think

01:22:24.040 that's healthier and long-term motivation. So for me, it's more about the day-to-day

01:22:27.700 autonomy of the work, the time they have to themselves every day, and the environment

01:22:32.960 that we can create for people. I think that's the thing that's often most overlooked is that

01:22:36.640 people always talk about, we want to hire the best in the world. We want to hire, you know,

01:22:40.020 it's like you can hire the best in the world, but if the environment is crap, like you're not going

01:22:43.900 to get the best work out of those people and they're going to leave at some point. I'm more

01:22:47.620 interested in creating a great environment than I am motivating people around specific business

01:22:53.320 goals. It just, I don't think a lot of people care about specific business goals. That's not,

01:22:58.340 they're a writer, they're a designer, they're a programmer. They care about the work that they're

01:23:02.560 doing and how it all relates, of course, but like whether or not we hit some number, I don't think

01:23:08.020 most people care unless your compensation is tied to it, but I think that's a whole nother problem.

01:23:11.700 I don't think that's a good thing to do either.

01:23:13.580 Let's talk about hiring. Let's start with hiring. You have some hiring practices that are

01:23:17.820 not always in the norm. How do you guys hire? We spend like weeks writing job ads. First of all,

01:23:24.000 a lot of companies like, Oh, that's HR department. Just like throw something up there with a bunch

01:23:27.600 of bullet points. You need five to 12 years experience this and whatever. We actually try

01:23:30.800 to write in a way that truly conveys what it's like to work in this position and what your day

01:23:36.660 to day would actually feel like. And we put a lot of time into it because we feel like if we want to

01:23:40.760 get the best people we can, we're going to attract the best people with, with, with that kind of job

01:23:45.320 description. So we're very clear about that. We also put salaries in the job descriptions and job

01:23:50.000 ranges because there's no reason not to. Why is that typically not the norm?

01:23:54.100 I think the big reason is because companies feel like it's their job to negotiate the best rate they

01:24:01.580 can from a person. Like they're trying to get the most out of somebody. I don't feel like that's

01:24:06.720 something I'm interested in, in terms of like, I don't want to, if I could have paid this person

01:24:11.100 160, they would have taken 140 or something like that, but I got them for 130 or like, you know,

01:24:16.280 or like I got them lower than they would have, they would have gone or whatever. Like, or we're

01:24:20.380 willing to pay 180, but like they accepted 165. Like a lot of companies see that as a victory to me.

01:24:26.340 Like if there's any place to spend money, it's on people. I'm not interested in having leverage over

01:24:30.520 anybody or forcing anyone to be an ace negotiator to get what they deserve. So we publish our salaries

01:24:35.940 because that's the actual number we're going to pay. It's not like come to us and let's negotiate.

01:24:42.120 It's like, this is actually what we pay. A lot of companies just won't do that because they want

01:24:45.160 to try to take advantage of people or they don't know what they're going to pay. There's a variety

01:24:49.480 of reasons for it. Some people think there's some ethical issues around like publishing salaries

01:24:52.800 because then other people would know what people make. And I can appreciate that, but we've just

01:24:57.560 decided that we want to remove negotiation completely from the, from the picture.

01:25:01.320 So do you ever get down the path where you, you know, you post this thing, this is a job that's going

01:25:05.280 to pay 97,500. You get a bunch of people, you put them through, you finally get your dream candidate.

01:25:11.920 They're awesome. And then they say, look, I know you guys posted this at 97,500, but I'm not working

01:25:17.180 for that. Like if I'm not working for less than 115, how many times do you find yourself in that

01:25:21.800 situation? We don't, that's a non-starter because like it's published. That's the number. And that's

01:25:26.820 what we're going to pay. This is something we did a few years ago. We decided this is sort of a very

01:25:31.140 unusual angle that we take here, but we pay everybody in the company top 10% of the industry

01:25:39.320 rates based on San Francisco rates. We don't have anyone who lives in San Francisco, but in our

01:25:43.420 industry, San Francisco has the highest salaries. So we use these, uh, these benchmarking tools to

01:25:47.280 figure out what the industry pays. And we're just saying, we're going to pay people basically the

01:25:50.840 best. There's of course, always companies that are higher. And if you're in the top 10%, there's

01:25:54.020 some that are in top 5%, but we're going to pay people the best we possibly can. And we're going to

01:25:58.400 eliminate negotiation from the, from the equation. It's unfair to employees.

01:26:02.120 So you're sort of like CarMax.

01:26:03.740 Yes. We're like CarMax because here's the thing. Why should you have to not only be great at your

01:26:08.540 job, but also be an ace negotiator? Most people are not good negotiators. They don't like negotiating

01:26:13.140 for cars or for houses or for anything. So why should your livelihood depend on how good of a

01:26:18.000 negotiator you are? That's not fair to somebody, but they should get paid. In our opinion, the best we

01:26:24.180 can possibly afford, which is basically top of the market. And so we've, we've basically said

01:26:28.700 that that's the deal. And so we have different tiers of based on the different roles, but everybody

01:26:33.340 with the same set of skills and experience get paid the same amount of money. And that money,

01:26:36.940 that number is published. So it's not necessarily clear like how much each person individually makes,

01:26:40.980 but like, it's basically, you could figure it out if you wanted to. And that's part of the hiring

01:26:43.920 process too, which is like, it's no bullshit. This is the number. This is what it's going to be.

01:26:48.280 And there's no negotiation from the start. So if you feel like you want the 120 or you're like

01:26:52.520 an extraordinary person and you want double, like, cause some people have said that, like

01:26:55.980 I'm worth more than this and that's cool. Go find another job. Like there's a lot of jobs out there.

01:27:00.120 If you want to work at base camp, we're going to pay you incredibly well. We're going to give you

01:27:03.000 the best benefits we believe in the world overall. And this is the number. And that's, let's like,

01:27:07.780 can we eliminate the rest of it? Like, why do we need to play games around salaries? The other thing

01:27:12.060 about hiring for us is that we look primarily first at their writing ability. So no matter what the

01:27:17.940 job is, you have to be a great writer. If you cannot write well, if you, if you submit a cover

01:27:22.480 letter and it's bad, you're out. I don't care like what you're, if you're the best scientist in

01:27:27.260 the world, like you're out because you have to be able to communicate with us and the rest of the

01:27:30.700 company. It's primarily written and you have to be able to express yourself that way. So that's a

01:27:35.440 core thing for us as well to like the first filter that we have. Now you talked about this before that

01:27:40.740 when you were website slinging, your strength was more on the copy side. So you've, and you've written

01:27:46.460 how many books, four books? Yeah, four, five, maybe depending how you count. So you obviously like to

01:27:51.320 write, were you always a good writer? No, it came down to motivation. Again, remember I was a terrible

01:27:55.360 writer in high school because like I had to write papers I didn't care about, about subjects I didn't

01:27:59.360 care about. Like write about this, like, okay, but like, I'm not, I don't care. It's only when I got

01:28:05.620 to college and I was able to write about things that I really cared about, I thought were interesting

01:28:10.100 that I started to develop a love for it. Like I love sentences. I love just a well-crafted sentence

01:28:15.920 that just nails it. That just few things are satisfying to me is reading a great line. Only when

01:28:21.300 I began to be able to write for those reasons that I begin to love writing. And I think it's

01:28:25.360 just like, it's so true with a lot of kids in schools. Like you don't get it until something

01:28:28.620 applies to you and then you really get it. Or you find a teacher, a professor who knows

01:28:31.740 how to put something in a perspective that makes a lot of sense to you. Then you begin

01:28:36.220 to excel. So that's kind of how that. I mean, whenever Tim talks about his professor

01:28:40.520 at Princeton, I can't believe I'm blanking on his name right now. Do you know what I'm talking

01:28:43.700 about? I've heard him speak about this, but. I have one of his books actually. Whenever I hear

01:28:48.080 Tim talk about it, I just get insanely jealous that I was not smart enough to have found a

01:28:54.900 similar experience in college. Because even though I wouldn't have had, it's John something

01:28:57.980 is his name, but even though I couldn't have had a professor that good necessarily, like

01:29:02.120 how did I not put more effort into writing?

01:29:05.800 Well, you're a good writer now though.

01:29:07.300 I mean, I think I'm okay, but I wish I was a hell of a lot better. I agree with you.

01:29:11.560 It's just one of these things that.

01:29:13.300 You got a fun topic. I mean, now you do. So you get to write things that you're interested

01:29:16.620 in, but there's something else I think that's interesting about learning how to write in

01:29:20.340 school, which is that I don't, especially in business school. I mean, I didn't go to

01:29:23.560 an MBA program, but like my business classes, they don't really teach you how to write.

01:29:27.940 They teach you how to put words on paper and it's usually like length based. It's not even

01:29:33.260 about like substance in a sense. It's like write a five page paper on whatever. It's like

01:29:36.480 why five pages? Like, why is that? A class that I'd love to teach if I ever taught writing

01:29:41.040 or I'd love to see, I don't care. Someone can take this idea and run with it. It's not

01:29:44.500 something I need to do for every assignment. Let's say there's a writing assignment. I

01:29:48.440 don't even care. You pick whatever time. If I was writing, teaching writing, pick whatever

01:29:51.400 topic you want. I want a five page version of this. I want a two page version of this.

01:29:56.620 I want a one page version. I want a three paragraph version, a one paragraph version,

01:30:00.400 a one sentence version, and a one word version. They don't teach editing. That's the really

01:30:05.280 valuable part. So I'd love to see you write a long thing and then keep writing a shorter,

01:30:09.640 shorter, shorter, and try to distill it down to a sentence. Of course, one word is,

01:30:12.500 that's more of a fun exercise, but write these things at different lengths. That to me is the

01:30:18.880 skill. It's not like, can I fill up five pages? Of course you can. But can I fill up three paragraphs

01:30:23.040 and get pretty close to what I had on five pages? That's the real skill. And that's not being taught.

01:30:28.220 As I was thinking about talking today, I was like, I wonder if I can coax Jason into reading my book

01:30:34.460 before it comes out. Oh, I'd love to.

01:30:36.120 It is so long. My poor editor and the publisher are like, they're humoring me, but I think deep

01:30:45.600 down they're losing their mind. How many words?

01:30:48.900 No, the contract said 80,000. With the appendix, it comes in under 200. That would be a miracle.

01:30:56.580 Obviously it won't be published at 200,000 words.

01:30:59.140 It'll be better if it's half as long. You know that too.

01:31:02.720 It just will be. I know you have a lot to say, but...

01:31:05.720 You know what it is? The desperation is I don't ever want to write a book again.

01:31:09.100 Part of it is I have 10 books inside me. I don't want to write them. I want to write one and never

01:31:13.960 do it again. So it's like, there's this sense of I can't not talk about this and I can't not talk

01:31:17.880 about that, which of course is sort of a dumb idea, but...

01:31:19.960 Can you do like a double album style thing, like two books?

01:31:22.480 Yeah, it's use your illusion one and use your illusion two, which is the greatest,

01:31:25.940 in my opinion at least, the greatest double album ever simultaneously released.

01:31:29.620 Our books were like, our contract said 40,000 words and we handed in 20,000.

01:31:33.400 And initially we had to argue with a publisher about it because he's like, well,

01:31:37.320 thick books sell better and the whole thing. And it's like, I know, but we just read.

01:31:41.440 Can you read it, please? Can you read? Like, it's so funny. These industries,

01:31:45.100 like they don't, what about the book itself? Like what is the thickness and like the word count?

01:31:49.060 Like what about the material? And so eventually we ended up padding it with pictures.

01:31:53.000 So every essay had a picture, not this current, our latest book, but our previous book, Rework,

01:31:58.680 had a picture with each essay to thicken it up. That was the compromise. Content was great,

01:32:02.880 but it wasn't thick enough to sell apparently, which is so ridiculous. But anyway.

01:32:07.440 So you mentioned that in 2007, you're giving some talk at Y Combinator and you're up there

01:32:12.640 in all your confidence, basically saying, hey, there's nothing about luck here. Like I made my

01:32:19.420 destiny. Here we are. Well, we're 12 years later and you don't, you don't have a bone in your body

01:32:24.080 that reeks of that. So what happened in the last 12 years that changed your outlook on the role of

01:32:31.780 luck and presumably a lot of the other things that you've written about that I want to talk about with

01:32:36.160 respect to work-life balance? It was probably a slow shift. I typically think most things are

01:32:42.020 event-based, like something must've happened, but I don't recall something that happened. I think it's

01:32:46.060 just a, a mellowing of, of, of age and growing older and sort of seeing things and being more

01:32:52.480 honest with myself and self-reflection. I don't think I reflected much when I was younger. I thought

01:32:56.500 I was just like, cause you don't have as much to reflect on. I think just sort of recognizing that

01:33:01.960 like at some point that I probably couldn't do this again if I tried and wondering why would that

01:33:09.000 be? Like, I thought it was really, really, really good. And I kind of probably realized that like,

01:33:13.220 maybe I was really, really, really good at that time, at that thing in that place. And I've been

01:33:19.020 able to continue to be good at that thing, but starting another business, for example, I don't

01:33:24.500 think I would do well at that at all. And part of this also might come from the fact that I've,

01:33:28.520 I've written about this, which is like, they ask the wrong people for advice. Maybe this was sort of

01:33:33.860 the genesis of this. So people ask me all the time how to start a business. I don't know. I haven't

01:33:39.600 done it for 20 years. I'm the wrong person to talk to about how to start a business.

01:33:44.040 Advice has a shelf life and it expires pretty quickly. You're much better off talking to somebody

01:33:49.000 who just started a business six months ago than me. Even if they're struggling, I don't care. Like

01:33:53.340 that's the right person to talk to. They know the ground game there. They know what's going on.

01:33:57.720 I don't know. I don't remember. And things have changed. So I think I kind of began to realize that

01:34:02.340 reflecting on that, you kind of realize like, well, a lot of this has to do with when we started it,

01:34:06.440 what was going on at the time. Hopefully like you just continue to reflect on that and you

01:34:11.260 develop some more humility. I think you have to grow into that though. At least I did certainly

01:34:15.160 have to grow into that. And I still have more to grow. When did this ethos around, wait a minute,

01:34:22.240 what if you don't have to work 80 hours a week? What if you don't have to be checking email all the

01:34:26.800 time? What if we don't have to have meetings all day, every day? Like how did that begin to take

01:34:32.380 hold for you? I remember this was a distinct moment. I used to write proposals to get work

01:34:37.300 back when I was in like 98, 99 or whatever. And I was mostly on my own, actually 97 probably.

01:34:43.380 I would spend all night, I would stay up all night and do these proposals for client work to get a

01:34:48.540 project, 20 page proposals and whatever. And I would just do this and do this and do this and do this.

01:34:54.220 And I realized like I won some jobs and I didn't win others, but I put a lot of work into that

01:34:59.460 process because I felt like that's what I had to do. And then I was redoing my kitchen at my

01:35:04.480 apartment and someone sent me their proposal. And what did I do? I turned to the last page

01:35:09.620 and looked at how long is it going to take and how much is it going to cost? And I realized like

01:35:13.720 that's all people really care about when it comes to proposals because if they've asked you for one,

01:35:18.180 they already know what you can do. They already know what you're doing. They just want to know how

01:35:21.700 much is it going to cost and how long is it going to take? And that's what they're really

01:35:23.720 comparing. That's it. And so I started going, okay, wait a second. Maybe I should just write

01:35:28.860 shorter and shorter and shorter proposals. Why do I need to put all this work into this document?

01:35:34.760 So I started doing like, I was doing 10 page and five page and three page, kind of like the writing

01:35:38.400 assignment. And I eventually got down to basically one or two pages and it was like, here's the thing

01:35:43.120 and here's the cost and here's how long it's going to take. And if you want to know more about me,

01:35:46.160 like call me or like, here's our, here's my link to my website, whatever. I didn't win any more

01:35:51.760 jobs or lose any fewer jobs. Like it was the same. And except you got to sleep more.

01:35:56.660 I got to sleep more. And I realized like, wait a second, all this work I've been doing,

01:36:00.400 I don't need to do. And that was the first moment I realized I can kind of poke this

01:36:04.660 expectation of like, God, you have to, because all the proposals I'd seen up to that point were huge

01:36:08.560 and they're fancy and they're glossy and all this work and everything's personalized. It's like

01:36:13.040 when I was on the other side of that, I just looked at the time and the price.

01:36:16.340 That was the moment when I realized like, I don't have to do all this work. And so then that kind

01:36:19.680 of extended into a whole bunch of other things. Like, why do we need to work 12 hours a day? What am I

01:36:22.980 doing? Like, why do I need to push this hard on these things? Like maybe I can just do a little

01:36:27.840 bit less and figure out what the essence really is. Like, what is the price and time of all this

01:36:33.580 other work that I'm doing? And then when you finally kind of get into that mode, you realize

01:36:38.080 like most of the time you spend on things is probably wasted time. And this is a huge exaggeration,

01:36:44.000 of course, but there's a lot of time you put into things that you don't need to put into things.

01:36:46.720 And I've gotten really good at editing that down. So I can put a little bit of time into

01:36:51.740 something because I just know what the essence of the thing is and just do a really good job on

01:36:55.080 that and leave the rest alone. And we've tried to develop that habit and that skill internally

01:36:59.600 at base camp with all our employees. So we really get to the essence of something. We call it the

01:37:04.360 epicenter of whatever it is that we're doing. What are we doing? So you can think of like,

01:37:07.700 if I was to open a hot dog stand on the street, it'd still be a hot dog stand if I didn't have

01:37:14.200 ketchup and mustard and onions and pickles and relish, even the bun. I could just sell the hot dog.

01:37:21.280 If it was a hot dog, it would be the hot dog stand still. If I didn't have the hot dog,

01:37:25.540 it wouldn't be a hot dog stand. All those other things wouldn't matter then.

01:37:28.400 So the epicenter is the hot dog itself, not the quality of it necessarily. I don't care about

01:37:32.080 that. But like all these other things, like they're nice to have, but you don't really need

01:37:35.100 them to still say that you sell hot dogs on the street. So that's how we kind of think about like

01:37:39.860 features and functionality. Like what is the core essence of this thing that we're trying to do?

01:37:44.860 There are always going to be more powerful.

01:37:46.900 But there's so much judgment involved in that. And like, I've tried to play this game with myself

01:37:51.320 and I'm so bad at it. I would talk myself into saying, well, you know, really you can't just

01:37:55.980 have the wiener because then it's like the wiener stand. You have to have the bun. And

01:37:59.360 I can't be just handing people buns. I at least have to have the napkin. And honestly,

01:38:04.140 there's going to be somebody that wants a paper plate. I ought to have that. And how could you not

01:38:07.400 have ketchup and mustard? And who's not going to want to drink? And by the way, there's ancillary

01:38:10.860 revenue in the drink. I probably have bigger margin on the drink. I should have the drink.

01:38:14.180 Like, you can see how I would spiral that into something that is the antithesis of what you

01:38:20.820 just described. And I don't think I'm alone in that.

01:38:23.440 And I'm not either. Like, I think about that too. But then I edit it down. It's all about editing.

01:38:29.280 And is this something that only works now?

01:38:32.800 Let me just actually throw this thing at you too. Because what you could also say is, you know what,

01:38:37.500 I'm going to be the hot dog guy that just serves hot dogs on a stick. Or I'm going to be the hot

01:38:41.360 dog guy that just has a hot dog with a fork in it or something. Or like, I'm going to be the hot

01:38:46.040 dog guy that whatever. I don't know. You could be the other hot dog guy. That's an angle too. It's

01:38:51.580 not just like, I need to be like everybody else. And I think this is the problem, especially in the

01:38:55.720 software world. As you see, well, this competitor has these five features and this one has these

01:38:59.560 seven. So I need to have these 12. I need to cover everything. Because if I don't cover everything,

01:39:03.880 they're going to go here. They're going to go there.

01:39:05.140 I think the more interesting thing is to see what do you really need to have? And what can you live

01:39:11.740 without? And execute at a really high level on the things you absolutely need to have. And then

01:39:16.980 let other people deal with the things people can live without. And recognizing that the market's

01:39:21.380 large, and there's lots of people who will not like what you do. And there's some people who will

01:39:24.260 love what you do. And some people will hate what you do. And it'll be controversial. But I think

01:39:28.260 there's a lot of value in that. Further, it allows you to work less. I take pride in that. I think

01:39:33.620 there's a lot of macho boasting in our industry of people who work long hours and get no sleep.

01:39:39.860 It's like, I got four hours of sleep last night.

01:39:41.400 It's every industry.

01:39:41.860 Yeah. Now it's turning into every industry, especially finance and a bunch of these industries.

01:39:45.980 I think it's actually been a bit of an export though from tech. Tech gets a lot of publicity for

01:39:50.360 this.

01:39:50.800 Which may have exported it from medicine.

01:39:52.260 Well, yeah. Medicine. I mean, I don't even know how that's legal to work like 24-hour shifts and the

01:39:57.020 whole thing and whatever. But people brag about how little sleep they get and how much they work.

01:40:02.320 I don't understand that. And if you pay attention to what they're doing, if you really ask them about

01:40:07.160 why they're working so long, and this is, I think, the deeper insight, it's not that there's more work

01:40:12.680 to do. It's that there's less time to do good work because people's days are broken into smaller and

01:40:18.120 smaller and smaller chunks of time. And I think you need contiguous amounts, blocks of time to do

01:40:23.780 great creative work. You can't do it 15 minutes at a time, then check your phone, then get 20 minutes

01:40:28.160 and there's a conference call, then you're pulled into a meeting. And before you know it, it's the end of the

01:40:30.980 day and you've got nothing done, even though you've been busy all day. If that's what's going on at work,

01:40:35.160 then it's crazy at work. Like our whole point of view is that it should be calm at work. Like the title of our

01:40:39.640 book, it doesn't have to be crazy at work. It doesn't have to be crazy at work. We have to give people a full

01:40:45.400 block of eight hours a day to themselves. And you cannot allow people to look at each other's calendars and take

01:40:51.040 time from each other. If you get to that place, which is where we're at, you can get a lot of work done in

01:40:56.940 eight hours. I mean, a ton of work. Eight hours is a long time. Fly from here to, I just flew to

01:41:01.140 Amsterdam with my family. It's in about an eight hour flight. It's a long flight. It's long. You

01:41:05.040 like, look at your watch, like, oh my God, it's only half done. You look at your watch again, you're

01:41:07.540 like, got to be done. It's only six and a half hours in. Like eight hours is a long time. If you have

01:41:13.080 eight hours, most people don't have eight hours at work. They have like 45 minutes to themselves.

01:41:18.060 And therefore they're working late nights and working on the weekends because there's no other time to get

01:41:21.640 the work done that they're expected to do. Work is, is chewed it all up.

01:41:24.760 What you're saying makes sense, but the part I still struggle with is, but how do these teams

01:41:31.320 coordinate with those teams? And how do these guys, you know, present their work to their manager or,

01:41:36.840 you know, whatever it else that someone might be having to do?

01:41:39.000 A few things. Number one, we try to work independently versus being dependent. So I think

01:41:44.520 there's a lot of companies that work, they're, they're grinding gears. Like this gear has to push

01:41:48.660 this gear and there's a lot of dependencies. And so people are waiting around and there's so many

01:41:52.100 things that can go wrong. If one person's late, the whole thing, we try to glide past each other.

01:41:56.780 We're more like glide wheels than gears with teeth. Almost no one should ever have to depend on another

01:42:02.440 team to get anything done at base camp. Every team is autonomous and sell under their own control.

01:42:08.080 Sometimes they might need something from operations to make sure a new server's online or something like

01:42:13.080 that. But for the most part, every feature and everything is built and can be deployed independently

01:42:18.640 of one another. So there's no dependencies. How is that possible in a software business?

01:42:23.820 I'm glad you're asking this because this is really interesting stuff. I think at the end of the day,

01:42:27.120 the size of the project matters. So we only work on things that take six weeks or less to do.

01:42:33.720 So every feature we build into base camp, there has to be a six week maximum version of that.

01:42:38.320 Many features are only two weeks or three weeks.

01:42:40.440 Can you give an example? Cause I can't fathom what this could be.

01:42:43.840 Let's see, like let's take a calendar feature in base camp. So for a number of years,

01:42:48.220 base camp didn't have a calendar. A lot of people wanted calendars.

01:42:52.640 So you start thinking about like, what does that mean? What is a calendar? A calendar is like

01:42:55.960 complicated. We built calendars before and they've taken, this is before we started working

01:43:00.560 these six week cycles. Years ago, we built calendars and they can take six months, eight months to do

01:43:04.940 well. But what do people really want? A calendar is just a manifestation of something. What do they really

01:43:11.580 want? And you're talking to people and start digging into requests and you start to understand

01:43:16.320 what they really want is they want to see days that have something on them. And they want to see

01:43:22.000 what those things are on that given day. That is a lot easier to build than like a full blown calendar

01:43:27.380 where you can drag things across cells and have events that span different cell blocks and have to

01:43:32.440 have to span like another line. There's a whole bunch of complexity that gets involved with building

01:43:36.600 a full blown. Like if you try to build a Google calendar in six weeks, you cannot do it. But

01:43:41.820 there's a version of Google calendar you can build in six weeks that solves 80 to 90% of the issues.

01:43:47.500 So you have to kind of file it down to that. You really file it down to that and go, we're going

01:43:51.840 to build that. And then if we want to build something else, that's a separate project.

01:43:56.080 What we don't do is we don't hold that back, that calendar feature. We don't hold it back until we

01:44:00.360 have seven or eight or 10 other six week projects and then launch it all together. We launch these

01:44:04.720 things as we go. And therefore they're small enough that they don't depend on other things.

01:44:09.540 And there's nothing held up that ends up becoming stale because other people have committed new work.

01:44:13.540 So, and how many people would have spent the six weeks working on that calendar?

01:44:16.920 Three max. So this is the other thing on any given feature. We have three people maximum working on

01:44:21.960 that feature. Typically two programmers and one designer, sometimes just one program, one designer.

01:44:26.400 And that's intentional too. The number three is really important to us. It's a small team. It's a wedge.

01:44:31.760 It's odd. So there's never any ties. It can be self-managed. Once you add a fourth person,

01:44:38.080 like something happens where like you can now have sides and someone has to kind of come in and

01:44:43.300 mediate and it just becomes more complicated. It's all hard to get four people on the same schedule.

01:44:47.960 It's everything gets harder the more people you add. So three people maximum to any one,

01:44:51.420 one feature, they have six weeks maximum to complete it. And oftentimes it's, it's less than that.

01:44:55.620 And then we move on, but all these things slot in independently.

01:44:59.380 But that trio reports not to you. They must report to a manager who reports to somebody who

01:45:04.680 reports to you or, you know, I mean,

01:45:06.040 Kind of, but not really. We're very flat. So organizationally, so there's me and David.

01:45:09.980 So David's a CTO. I'm the CEO. We have someone who runs what we call core product, which is like all

01:45:16.060 the designers and developers for like the desktop version of Basecamp. We have an iOS team, which is

01:45:21.780 three people. We have an Android team, which is three people. We have a customer service team.

01:45:25.520 We have a technical operations team. And then we have a few other people who were, our work

01:45:29.240 independently. These teams, like for example, the product feature team with three people,

01:45:35.080 we have like maybe four of those teams running at the same time. They sort of self-report. So in

01:45:40.860 Basecamp, the product, there's a way every, at the end of every day, Basecamp asks everybody

01:45:45.100 automatically, what'd you work on today? People write up what they worked on today. They also write up

01:45:49.380 what they plan on working on this week. And then every six weeks, the team lead writes kind of a

01:45:54.220 summary of what's happened over this past six weeks. So these things are self-reporting and

01:45:58.560 we're all paying attention to the work itself as it's going. So there's no moments when there's

01:46:02.460 big presentations. There's no presentations. It's like work is happening. We're paying attention to

01:46:06.960 the work itself. Everyone's writing up what they're working on every single day. And people just know

01:46:12.000 what's going on. You just know what's going on this way. When people go off for months at a time

01:46:16.600 and do these big, huge, massive projects, then they have to report back. That's a whole different

01:46:20.640 structure, which we don't have. I don't think that's the right structure. Does that make any

01:46:24.400 sense? I feel like sometimes it's hard to explain these things.

01:46:26.640 Well, it does, but it begs this question, right? Which is how much of this is a product of

01:46:32.940 the type of work you do specifically and how applicable is it to, I don't want to use my work

01:46:40.920 as an example because I want to go so deep on that that we don't even have time. We'll save that for a

01:46:44.580 dinner. I'd love to figure out how to change my life to have eight hours a day to think.

01:46:49.820 But it seems hard to imagine most jobs being amenable to that.

01:46:57.780 I just don't think it is.

01:47:00.040 Do you get a lot of people asking you this that say, Jason, I read your book. I love your book.

01:47:03.580 I mean, oh my God, it sounds like a nirvana. Yeah. How do I do it?

01:47:06.920 Yeah. Well, yes. And we just wrote another book actually called Shape Up, which is a web-based book.

01:47:11.520 So if you go to basecamp.com slash shape up, it's a very, very detailed, like this book here,

01:47:17.480 it doesn't have to be crazy work. It's more of the big picture.

01:47:19.680 It's the framework framework. Shape Up is actually how we work day to day to build software,

01:47:23.960 but whatever you're building, it has elements to it. And if you can scope these things down into

01:47:31.360 smaller elements, I think you can work this way. There's certainly some things that are going to,

01:47:35.500 like, I'm not saying like you can build an airplane. Like people always go, what about an airplane?

01:47:38.800 It's like, well, you're not building an airplane. Everyone thinks they're building the most critical

01:47:42.600 thing in the world. They're not. It's like, no one is. There's just some people building

01:47:45.300 airplanes. Everyone's like, what about air traffic control systems? It's like, you're not building

01:47:48.780 an air traffic control system. A lot of people, I think, think that their work is so mission

01:47:52.840 critical. It's not. Like you can work this way. You can slow things down a little bit.

01:47:56.640 You can break things into smaller bits and you can apply a few people and apply pressure to a

01:48:02.540 problem with just a few people over a short period of time and solve that. And then layer that in

01:48:07.340 and keep doing that over a year, you end up getting somewhere. If you have multiple teams,

01:48:11.520 like on any given six week cycle, we're doing four or five or six or eight different features,

01:48:15.300 just different teams are doing them. And they all come together in the end because they don't,

01:48:18.560 they don't mesh. They don't have to rely on each other. That's why you can do this. The big problem

01:48:22.520 is when you've got six or four or whatever different teams working on their own things that all the

01:48:26.940 puzzle pieces have to come together at the end and work together. In some product worlds,

01:48:31.120 that's true, but we've made the conscious choice that's not in our world. And I think the key here

01:48:35.060 is that it is a choice. What's the price you pay for that? Because every choice comes with a cost

01:48:40.100 and is the cost that you are less profitable over a given time horizon or less innovative,

01:48:48.340 or I mean, I'm making these things up because I don't know what the answer is.

01:48:51.480 Everything has a trade-off. So I look at more as a trade-off than a cost specifically,

01:48:55.380 but whatever. Yeah, fair enough. Good point.

01:48:57.160 Yeah. It's a trade-off, which is like, maybe some of our stuff is not as high fidelity perhaps as,

01:49:01.980 like, it could be. Like maybe if there's a transition, like you click a button and

01:49:05.340 it'd be nice to have a smooth transition between these two screens. Maybe instead the screen just

01:49:09.340 flash. Like we just decided that that trade-off is worth it to get the feature out. Or maybe we have

01:49:15.460 to cut some features. Like in our book, we cut our book from 40,000 to 20,000 words. Certainly there

01:49:19.880 were some words in there that we cut that we probably shouldn't have, but that's okay to make this book

01:49:24.300 readable in three hours because overall the advantage is there. So there's absolutely trade-offs and we're

01:49:29.820 very conscious of them and we make them all day long. And we actually talk about the trade-offs.

01:49:33.780 Like this is something we have, we have a term internally called trading concessions.

01:49:38.420 I run the, basically run the design team. David runs a technical team. I'll bring an idea to Dave

01:49:43.180 and I'll say, here's how I'd like to do this. And he'll go, we can do it that way. It'll take

01:49:48.500 probably maybe 12 days or something of worth of work. This is an estimate. Although we don't really

01:49:52.840 talk about estimates. We talk more about appetites, which is another thing we'll talk about in a

01:49:55.920 second, but he'll say, this will take a little, maybe a couple of weeks to do. He goes, but there's

01:50:00.660 a version of this I can do in three days. And here's the difference. The difference is it won't

01:50:04.720 do this, that, and the other thing. And then I'll go, that's worth it. Let's save those 10 days or nine

01:50:10.080 days or whatever. And let's do that simpler version and get that done. Cause now we can do three or four

01:50:13.900 more things in that same amount of time. So it's about trades. You make trades with people and some

01:50:18.680 things I'll go, you know what? No, this is, I believe, I mean, it's just a guess. What do I know?

01:50:22.540 It's like, this is what I think. I think this is worth actually going all in on like this feature.

01:50:27.720 Let's do the two week version of this. And he'll go, you care more about it than I do. I'll do that.

01:50:33.560 And the next time maybe he'll get the win on that. Like, it's like you pay for lunch. I'll pay for

01:50:37.800 lunch. You just kind of all evens out in the end, but you have to talk about the trade-offs and then

01:50:41.800 you have to discuss them and go, man, that's worth it. That's worth it. I think the thing is, is that

01:50:45.880 especially in software, a lot of people don't talk that way. They just think that we have to build

01:50:51.260 the best possible version of whatever it is that we're making, no matter what. And it's like, well,

01:50:55.720 why? Like, why does it, why does it have to be the best possible version? And what is the marginal

01:51:00.180 gain past a certain point? You can put, like, and we've done this in the past where we used to work

01:51:04.080 on things for long periods of time. And truthfully, like, let's say we worked on something for three

01:51:08.020 months. Like, as you said, Parkinson's law work expands to fill the time available. What we realized

01:51:12.620 was that that project probably could have gotten done in half the time and probably been 95% as good.

01:51:17.200 And probably the stuff that we squeezed out was probably worth it. It's just,

01:51:19.720 you can keep squeezing these things until you get down to the atomic level. And then you can do more

01:51:24.280 of them. That's the other thing. You can do more of them. The other thing I would say, getting back

01:51:27.620 to culture, is that there's nothing more demoralizing than working on something that you don't know when

01:51:34.000 it's going to end and that you don't like. No matter what you're doing, you're going to work on some

01:51:39.140 things you don't like to do. At base camp, the worst thing that could possibly happen is you have

01:51:43.860 six weeks of something you don't want to work on. Certainly other bad things can happen. But like,

01:51:48.380 when you begin, you can see the end. Six weeks max. And we've thrown out work. We've built something

01:51:54.320 six weeks like, eh, we don't like it. What's the cost? Six weeks. Versus what ends up happening is

01:51:59.420 if you work on something for six weeks or 12 weeks and 24 weeks and you keep going,

01:52:05.060 you then have this huge momentum that makes it impossible for you to cut your losses. Because

01:52:10.300 we put in months and months and months. It's only going to take, we're almost done, another month,

01:52:14.460 another month, another month. It's never just one month. It's always another month after that.

01:52:17.280 Before you know what, you're nine months in, 10 months in. And you're not going to cut your losses

01:52:21.220 at that point because you've invested too much. It's very hard to do that organizationally. So you

01:52:24.960 end up keep pushing and pushing and pushing. And this thing keeps going and going and going. And

01:52:28.180 by the end, it's no good. And you've wasted a year. And that could kill morale and can destroy

01:52:33.260 teams. So at the very worst, we have basically what we call circuit breaker, which is after six

01:52:38.160 weeks, like if this isn't going anywhere, if we're not where we need to be, we can pull the circuit

01:52:42.060 breaker and call it quits on that. And like, we lost six weeks, but that's not the end of the world.

01:52:46.100 Now, how does one apply this to themselves? You have the luxury of being the boss.

01:52:50.720 This is the culture. This is your company's way you've created it. How does somebody who's

01:52:54.740 listening to this, who works at a company that functions the way a normal, you know,

01:53:00.060 a normal quote unquote high functioning company works, how do they get to apply this to their

01:53:03.440 lives when they don't control their calendar, shy of quitting and working at a company like

01:53:08.220 Basecamp? And do you get the sense like, what percentage of companies do you think function,

01:53:12.400 even let's just limit it to software? What companies within software do you think function

01:53:16.840 within sort of the neighborhood of the way you've described that?

01:53:21.040 I'd say pretty small percentage. Currently, we're out to change that. But I would say most

01:53:26.180 do not right now. How does someone do it? This is like kind of about like figuring out what

01:53:30.380 you have control over and what you don't. If you're new at a company, you're probably unlikely

01:53:34.920 you have any power to change any of these things. The best way to do something like this

01:53:38.820 is to take a small step. And you're probably not going to have the influence to change the

01:53:43.260 way the company works. But maybe on some project that's on the side that no one really cares about,

01:53:47.720 you can take that on and show people how you can do this perhaps in a shorter amount of time. And

01:53:51.180 they might have expected it was going to take three months and you do it in six weeks. Like,

01:53:54.340 oh, what is that? Like, how'd you do that? And then you begin to build on some wins. But

01:53:58.800 I think that's even maybe too big of a leap. I think around time, which is really important here,

01:54:04.680 which is you may not have full control of your own time because you have a shared calendar system

01:54:08.580 and people pull you into meetings and you're junior and you have to say yes, because you can't,

01:54:11.860 if you don't say yes, you're not a team player and you're out of there. You can start to do

01:54:15.800 some things with other people. So, you know, there's the famous, I guess it's the Gandhi quote,

01:54:21.020 be the change you wish to see in the world, basically. So if you don't like being interrupted

01:54:25.480 by other people all the time, you can interrupt other people less or fewer times. Whatever you have

01:54:32.260 in front of you that you can modify and you can change, begin to change that for yourself. You're not

01:54:36.360 going to change the whole company, but hopefully you can influence some other people and they might

01:54:40.760 be willing to make some more changes. And you can kind of bring that up the chain, but I'm not

01:54:43.940 under any illusion here that like someone's going to read this book or read some other book we've

01:54:47.720 written and like the company's going to change. Where that change happens is from the top.

01:54:51.060 So a CEO reads it and goes like, and I also will also tell people like, if the way you're working

01:54:56.880 works, like keep doing it. But the way most people are working is not working and they know it,

01:55:01.360 but they don't know what to do about it. They just like, this is what you do. We,

01:55:03.580 we pour in more hours. Projects go long. We're running in circles. Like if you're at the point

01:55:08.860 where you're struggling with that and going, I can't do this anymore. I don't want to do this

01:55:11.840 anymore. Then it's time to change. The only time people are going to change is if there's actually

01:55:15.520 a struggle. You're not going to change because you've heard of something. You're going to change

01:55:18.960 because you're struggling so bad with what you have that now you're open to a new wave of working.

01:55:23.820 So that's really, I think ultimately the only way for these sorts of ideas to take hold is when

01:55:29.320 there's a true struggle and you have the chance to implement some of those things.

01:55:31.920 But as far as like other ideas we have, which are not about working as a team,

01:55:36.660 like there's a lot of individual things you can do. Certainly.

01:55:39.200 How do you think about it personally? I was on the phone with a friend yesterday who's,

01:55:44.760 I said to him, I said, man, I am so impressed by your ability to say no. I was pitching an idea to

01:55:51.880 him that I'm interested in and, you know, sort of putting a group of guys together to invest in

01:55:56.280 something. And I reached out to him saying, look, I realize you're probably not going to do this,

01:56:00.620 not because you don't love it, but because you have the strictest no policy of anyone I know.

01:56:07.300 And in the end it was, I love this so much, but like, I can't, it is irresponsible for me to take

01:56:14.320 on one more single idea. By the way, I should be saying the same thing. I should absolutely be saying

01:56:19.940 no, but I'm not, but I've been investigating this within myself lately, right? Why do I struggle

01:56:26.300 to say no? And I have this nasty, nasty habit, which creates so much tension in my life of agreeing to

01:56:36.460 do things into the future. And then when D-Day comes, I take it out on everyone around me,

01:56:43.540 but I'm really just pissed at myself. I'll agree to go do a talk next March in Germany.

01:56:51.500 And I'm like, well, you know, there's nothing on my calendar, March 14th next year. And then

01:56:57.240 February 27th comes along and I'm like, I'm so pissed. And I do this awful thing. I take it out

01:57:05.160 on other people. I'm like, how could you let me do this? And I was like, you baby, you did it

01:57:11.000 yourself, you idiot. But the fear that I'm examining is I have a fear of missing out.

01:57:16.840 Like, well, you never know. Maybe that one talk, you meet somebody really interesting and

01:57:20.980 they're doing this really cool thing in research and you learn this one thing that's going to change

01:57:25.520 the way you do this. Or, you know, it's like, I don't know. I don't know how I keep rationalizing

01:57:31.320 doing things that in the end, I really believe I'd be better off doing less, but I don't know how to

01:57:39.680 do less. I mean, this is, this is like, now this has turned into a therapy session.

01:57:42.960 This is hard. And I've realized that too, which is why I've gotten better at saying no. I often

01:57:48.040 regret saying yes. I've realized to things far out in the future. One of the reasons why is because

01:57:53.900 yes is really easy to say. Yes requires no work. Like later, like, yeah, I'll say yes to that trip

01:58:00.120 to Germany. Cause it takes no work to say yes to that trip to Germany. And then you get to like,

01:58:04.240 it's like, I'd rather be somewhere else right now than have to get on a plane, fly internationally,

01:58:07.420 and I'm going to be tired and the whole thing. Like I've just gotten better at looking at like

01:58:11.340 trying to zoom to that point in time and going, would I want to do that then? It's not about,

01:58:15.440 do I want to do it now? It's what I, do I think I want to do it then? And that helps me be able to

01:58:20.520 say no to things. But to me, no is far more surgical and far more precise, which I think will,

01:58:27.640 this will appeal to you. When you say yes to something, you're basically saying no to a thousand

01:58:31.420 other things. Cause you can't do, when you go to Germany, yeah, you might meet someone interesting,

01:58:36.300 but look at all the things you can't do. Like at that same time, you don't have the flexibility

01:58:40.220 and the freedom to do things because you've already booked something far in advance. And

01:58:44.280 that thing is costly. It's costly in your time and your health and all these things that you have to

01:58:48.180 do. When you say no, you just say no to one thing. And now you have more, more options available to

01:58:53.060 you. And that's how I've been thinking about no, no is a very surgical, very precise strike.

01:58:57.620 Yes is a shotgun. And for me, I've discovered that I prefer, this is again, just for me,

01:59:03.200 I prefer flexibility and I like to have options, which is also one of the reasons why we're an

01:59:08.920 independent company. And I will always remain an independent company because my freedom and

01:59:13.040 flexibility is the most important thing to me. The ability to do what we need to do the way we

01:59:17.300 want to do it is way more important. And the way for me to spend my time on the things I want to do

01:59:21.100 is way more important than booking my calendar in the future and feeling regret when that moment

01:59:25.840 comes. Cause it's unfair to the venue for me to go and feel regret. Like I should be honored to speak,

01:59:30.360 but I feel like it's not the speaking moment. It's the, everything around it that I don't want

01:59:34.500 to do. Yeah. One hour talk is still 48 hours of your time. Right? So I've gotten much, much better

01:59:40.440 at this. I heard something, I don't know if this is true. I've heard, this is sort of how Warren

01:59:44.700 Buffett manages his time. I don't know if you've heard of this thing. I think I've heard the story,

01:59:48.200 but please. I don't know if it's true. So like, I kind of feel weird about talking about it, but

01:59:51.960 I've heard that basically he will not book things far in advance. If you want to see Warren

01:59:56.700 Buffett, if you're a business associate or whatever, you basically have to ask his secretary

02:00:01.360 a day before and say like, is Warren available tomorrow? That he wants to keep his schedule

02:00:06.860 open for anything that comes up and not be blocked for months and months and months. Because how do

02:00:11.400 you know what you're going to want to be doing in three months on Tuesday at four o'clock? How would

02:00:15.200 you ever know what that's going to be like? Like you might in that moment feel like you want to read

02:00:19.320 a new article or you want to go on a trip or you want to think about something else or something

02:00:22.300 else comes up the day before that you want to work on. We block our future with present

02:00:27.400 obligations and then we never have time to do the things we want to do. So when you realize that,

02:00:33.880 I know it's hard still, even if you realize it, it's hard to do it. But I've found it to be a lot

02:00:37.920 easier once I realized that I was, I don't want to be regretful and I don't know when I'm going to

02:00:42.760 want to be doing that far in advance. So I'll book something a few days in advance or a few weeks in

02:00:46.980 advance or a few months in advance sometimes for people I know. But like I turned down way more

02:00:51.480 things than I say yes to these days and I feel better about it. Do you have any tips for saying

02:00:55.360 no? The actual act of declining something that, as you said, is flattering to have been offered and

02:01:01.500 you feel like an idiot for not being more grateful? I think just being really honest about it. Like,

02:01:06.040 for example, I was just invited to speak overseas and I said, it's an honor to be invited. I appreciate

02:01:12.100 the invitation. However, I'm just not, I don't feel comfortable flying internationally for talks

02:01:16.740 anymore. It's just too tiring for me. It's hard on my family and I just, I don't want to do that

02:01:20.480 anymore. So, and I'll often say like, if you want to do a virtual thing, like I'm happy to call in

02:01:24.760 via Skype or like provide some other option, but I can't book travel around a business engagement

02:01:30.440 anymore. And I'll even do that in the U S where like, if it's a, if I have to go to San Francisco,

02:01:34.540 like that's a four hour flight for me from Chicago. And that's a day minimum, probably two days. And

02:01:41.320 it's like, I'm just very careful about that now. So I'll just be honest about it. Cause otherwise if you

02:01:45.940 like sprinkle potter sugar on it and BS people, it's like, and everyone responds, like, I totally

02:01:51.340 understand. I appreciate that. Thanks for the consideration. And you're just nice to people

02:01:55.080 and they're nice to you back and you're honest and they're honest back. And everyone understands

02:01:57.760 nobody's mad ever. You know, maybe they're like, I really would have liked to have you speak,

02:02:03.220 but they're, they understand. I agree with that by the way, the times I muster up the foresight to

02:02:07.900 sort of say, no, I agree. People, I don't really recall a time when it's been so poorly received.

02:02:13.800 If I've just been very transparent, the biggest challenge is examining the motivation. They,

02:02:18.400 the fear of not doing something that, that for me is something I'm still really exploring.

02:02:23.960 Well, here's how you can look at that. Cause I understand that just flip it. Like look at all

02:02:27.720 the other things I can do instead of all the possible things you can do. You can now do any

02:02:33.060 of those possible things versus you're only going to be able to do one thing. Look, I've met wonderful

02:02:38.400 people at events that I didn't want to go to. And there's clearly the opportunities that I've

02:02:42.980 missed because I haven't done some things obviously. But I think that the power of no is

02:02:48.940 that you have a lot more options. It gives you a lot of options and you can experience something

02:02:52.320 else that day. And it might be something where, where you kind of keep track of the things you've

02:02:56.440 said no to. Like I've said no to seven things this year that I think would have been really

02:02:59.380 interesting. So like I have to do seven interesting things instead. Like you can make your own little

02:03:03.720 trade-offs with yourself.

02:03:05.620 Oh, that's interesting. I like that. That thing that came up in March that I said no to,

02:03:10.760 the biggest reason I said no to it was actually the realization that it would basically kill

02:03:17.300 any chance of going away with my family that month. And there might be a window to go, you

02:03:22.060 know, if spring breaks line up, that would basically nuke a spring break opportunity, which then

02:03:27.880 you'd feel like an idiot, right? If you're like, I can't believe I agreed to do this thing. And

02:03:31.720 it now means I'm not going to do something with my family.

02:03:34.440 Yeah. I look at no's as, as yeses to other things. That's kind of how I look at it.

02:03:38.400 Do we even dare talk about watches at all? How did you get into watches? You and I both love

02:03:43.260 watches. We have a circle of friends who are equally, I think if I can just be affectionate,

02:03:49.220 idiotic. Is it an aesthetic thing for you? Obviously you've expressed a huge interest in aesthetics.

02:03:54.880 Yeah. It's an aesthetic thing. My dad, I don't think he does this anymore, but he used to buy

02:03:58.900 these old watches on eBay back when I was in high school. So like old Elgin and Illinois,

02:04:04.080 these old tank watches from the twenties, that aesthetic doesn't speak to me today.

02:04:09.220 Well, some of it does, but I just remember these little cool objects that would come in the mail.

02:04:13.640 We'd open them up, we'd look at them together and they were all different. I've always sort of been

02:04:17.740 interested in things that like, look like there's only one way to do something, but then there's

02:04:21.300 like a thousand ways to do something. So like watch design is a great example of that. So you have a,

02:04:25.260 you have 12 hours or whatever you have, you know, some 24 hour dials, whatever it is.

02:04:28.860 And you're like, there should be like one way to do this. You know, there's like two hands and this

02:04:33.580 is, but, but really there's, there's thousands of different designs and stuff. I've always found

02:04:37.040 that fascinating. So I followed my dad has probably hundreds of these little watches,

02:04:40.960 like 20 bucks a pop. I don't know what they were. I kind of got into it that way. And my first watch

02:04:45.540 actually was, um, that I remember getting was a Seiko data 2000, which is a digital watch with a

02:04:51.160 keyboard. And being the bad student that I was, I would cheat in school with it because you could put

02:04:57.060 notes into it with a keyboard and it would sync it. And you'd have like, there's a screen with

02:05:01.620 two buttons which you can scroll through. Like how would it sync? It was amazing. This was like

02:05:05.600 an amazing thing. So it had a keyboard, like the size of a, like an iPhone today. And the back of

02:05:10.860 the watch was this just metal and it would snap into this spot on this keyboard. And there was like

02:05:15.720 an induction thing going on. It was like pretty interesting. Then it would go into this text mode

02:05:20.200 where you can basically have like a text file and I could type stuff into it and then it would just

02:05:24.560 save it. And then you take the thing off and put on your wrist and then you can just kind of scroll

02:05:28.980 through the notes. And, you know, back then in whatever it was, the early nineties or late,

02:05:34.900 whatever it was, no one would ever suspect that you had like data on your watch. Right now, like

02:05:40.160 it's, you'd be cheating, but I guess people can have notes today. But anyway, so I would just kind

02:05:43.320 of look through and tap through and have some notes for math and some history notes. Cause I was

02:05:47.900 terrible with like names and dates and stuff. So I just kind of put those in there and that didn't feel

02:05:51.880 really cheating to me, to be honest. Like, what does it matter if you know someone's name or date

02:05:55.120 exactly? Like, what is the difference really? But anyway, I would do that. And that kind of got me

02:05:59.480 into like the utility of watches. Now everyone talks about tool watches. That was like a great tool for

02:06:03.760 me truly. And so I got into that. And then I eventually got into mechanical watches because

02:06:07.440 I was just like blown away by the fact that like something could run without a battery and can run

02:06:12.160 perpetually forever just because you're moving. That's really kind of a cool thought. And then I got into

02:06:17.360 the mechanics of them. And then of course I got into the aesthetics of them. You know, I definitely have

02:06:21.300 this, the sickness, although I've been sort of trimming back lately, which is kind of nice,

02:06:25.460 but it's probably just to kind of build back up again. My tastes have changed too. So I think like

02:06:29.480 that's the other thing is kind of neat to see things that you bought that you thought you liked

02:06:33.320 six years ago. And you look at them now and you're like, my tastes have changed. And I think it's kind

02:06:36.940 of a neat thing to do because there's, of course you can look at clothes and look at other things,

02:06:40.840 but I feel like I kind of dress the same way I always have like a t-shirt and jeans. So that hasn't

02:06:44.780 really changed much, but the things that I like, the objects that I like definitely have. And since these objects

02:06:50.020 are permanent objects, you do keep them around. Unlike a phone, like flip phones, like you go,

02:06:55.040 you know, way back when you don't have those anymore. So you can't really look back on those

02:06:58.640 things, but watches, you can look back and go, that's what I was into then. And that's kind of,

02:07:01.720 and this is how I've changed. I kind of like that. Now, how did you get involved with Houdinki?

02:07:05.300 I was just a fan. And then Eric Wind, who used to work with them, he reached out to me.

02:07:12.380 Eric is a great vintage watch dealer. I've bought several watches from him.

02:07:15.580 Yeah. Eric's a wonderful guy, very knowledgeable. He reached out to me via email because I had some

02:07:19.520 stuff on Instagram back when I was doing Instagram. I don't do it anymore. But when I was doing that,

02:07:23.300 I had some watches and somehow he found me and he's like, Hey, you seem to be into watches a lot.

02:07:28.280 And I want to introduce myself. I'm Eric from, from Houdinki. And I write this thing called

02:07:31.740 bring a loop or whatever it was called back then. I think it was like

02:07:34.260 the precursor to talking watches. Yeah. Yeah. And this is like a thing every Friday,

02:07:38.560 they would show vintage watches that they found on the web. And I think he once said like,

02:07:42.700 can I show one of yours? I think that's kind of how it was. And I kind of got into that.

02:07:46.280 And then I eventually met Ben and met the crew. I'm a big fan of what they're doing.

02:07:51.320 I'm also an investor. So full disclosure. So like I'm a fan and I'm an investor, but

02:07:55.520 I am on the board there. So like just to get that out of the way, so everybody knows where I'm coming

02:07:59.720 from there. But I like what they've done. And I think they've elevated this sort of weird geeky

02:08:06.040 thing into a bit of a more refined collector's experience, which I think is pretty cool and pretty

02:08:10.980 hard to do in like niche circles. So a lot of like niche collectory things are often like really poorly

02:08:16.200 done, bad taste, not like offensive, but just like there's no design involved.

02:08:21.780 Well, I think that's what's sort of cool about Hodinkee. And I don't talk much about watches on

02:08:25.180 the podcast, actually, but I do think a number of people listening know how much I love watches.

02:08:31.020 And Hodinkee is really great. I mean, I think their writing is very good. And I find myself forwarding

02:08:38.220 articles to my wife all the time. You know, one thing I had to do two years ago was take this stupid

02:08:44.000 Hodinkee alert off my phone and computer, because it was just really bad every day to get like two

02:08:50.360 pings with a Hodinkee article. And I was like, you know, talk about not being productive is just

02:08:55.680 getting watch porn thrown at you all day long.

02:08:58.880 I've eliminated pretty much all notifications on my phone, except like things I need during the day.

02:09:03.440 I actually think phones are highly addictive. I think they're basically cigarette,

02:09:07.260 modern day cigarettes.

02:09:08.140 And they might be at least as bad for you.

02:09:09.880 I think they might be worse. Oh, well, probably not worse. Like lung cancer is pretty damn bad,

02:09:14.480 right? And cardiovascular disease is pretty damn bad.

02:09:16.160 But you know what, though? If you took the area under the curve of suffering,

02:09:19.640 I actually think phones have a bigger AUC of suffering than cigarettes.

02:09:25.620 And even though maybe for a while people didn't realize cigarettes were bad, like

02:09:30.520 people know that they're bad and they still do them. I don't think people realize

02:09:34.360 phones are bad. So I think that's, they're manipulative in that way,

02:09:38.720 in a way that the cigarette is very direct. It's like, I smoke, there's smoke.

02:09:42.120 Well, it's the cigarette, it's the cigarette of 1950.

02:09:44.380 Right. Where no one really knew, I thought it was cool and whatever.

02:09:46.660 Yeah. Doctors recommended them.

02:09:48.140 Doctors recommended them.

02:09:48.820 Great way to lose weight.

02:09:49.720 Menthol was good for you or something.

02:09:51.000 Yes. In fact, this was the preferred brand during smoking, during pregnancy rather.

02:09:55.460 Is that right?

02:09:56.100 Oh, I'm sure. I think there was a mothers should smoke this one variant.

02:10:00.180 Wow.

02:10:00.680 You know, at Hopkins in the old wing of the hospital, which I don't think is in use anymore,

02:10:03.900 there are still ashtrays in the patient rooms. And I remember still in the old ORs even seeing

02:10:10.060 ashtrays.

02:10:11.100 That's interesting. And they should keep that around just as a reminder of how delusional

02:10:14.640 we can all be. But I think phones are kind of like that. So I've kind of taken notifications

02:10:18.160 off my phone. I don't, like if I want to know something, I'll go find it versus I don't want to

02:10:22.500 be pulled to anything. Like I'll go look for it if I'm curious. I think we've become slaves to

02:10:27.740 phones telling us what to do and apps telling us what to do. And this actually calls,

02:10:32.940 all comes back to the kind of the beginning of this conversation, which was that the business

02:10:36.660 models surrounding many of these things on phones are all about engagement. And engagement

02:10:41.560 is an addictive behavior. And so these companies basically are designed to addict you to their

02:10:48.120 services and prompt you the right amounts of time per day and reward you for engagement

02:10:53.000 and whatnot. And they build these terrible addictive behaviors. I'm aware of them, but like I try to

02:10:58.160 stay as far away from them as I possibly can. But the business models are tied to this. This is the

02:11:02.380 other thing. It's all about eyeballs, number of people using it. It's all about advertising

02:11:05.940 dollars. It's all about all these things. And this is where the business model, like you can't

02:11:10.920 see things changing unless the business model changes. There's a lots of talk about like

02:11:14.640 companies need to be more responsible and designers need to be more responsible and programmers

02:11:18.600 shouldn't be building software like this. But like as long as the business model supports

02:11:21.920 that and that's what keeps you in business and that's what the job is, you're going to keep

02:11:24.520 doing it. That's just human nature, unfortunately.

02:11:26.980 I remember you sort of opted out of Instagram a little less than a year ago, if I recall.

02:11:32.360 Yeah, in 2019, beginning of.

02:11:34.220 Yeah, I remember you put up a black picture, right?

02:11:35.980 Yeah, it's a black square. And I still look at it sometimes. I find myself actually browsing

02:11:40.480 and I feel sick though when I do it. But I still do it.

02:11:43.820 How come?

02:11:44.140 It's like powerful. Why do I feel sick?

02:11:45.820 Yes.

02:11:48.000 A couple of reasons. First, I feel like I'm going against what I said I would do. So I have

02:11:53.200 stopped posting completely. But I was hoping that that meant I would stop using. But I'm

02:11:58.360 not.

02:11:58.860 So why haven't you uninstalled it on your phone?

02:12:01.380 It's mostly because of the watch thing. So like I still use it to look at watch people

02:12:05.940 that I know, because I feel like I learned something from that. But I don't think it's

02:12:11.620 worth it. Because I probably still spend too much time browsing through things mindlessly

02:12:16.000 looking at pictures of watches, which like don't really matter to me. Really? Like really

02:12:20.640 don't fundamentally matter if I see that picture of that person wearing on the wrist. Like

02:12:24.080 I'm not really learning anything. I've sort of convinced myself that I am. It's kind of

02:12:28.340 like I'm an addict convincing myself that it's okay. I mean, that's what it is. Now, there's

02:12:35.740 recreational enjoyment out of it. And I do learn some things that I met some people that way

02:12:39.520 clearly. But I don't, again, getting back to trade-offs, the trade-offs are probably not

02:12:42.700 worth it. Yet I'm still on the wrong side of that deal. I'm using it less and less and

02:12:46.560 less. What I don't like looking at is, I guess I don't like looking at vanity.

02:12:50.640 Because you still use Twitter. I use Twitter. So it's not a social media thing that you're

02:12:54.760 opposed to. It's not social media. Although like I am strongly opposed to Facebook for

02:12:58.340 a number of other reasons. But I'm not opposed to Twitter. Because to me, Twitter is something

02:13:03.140 that I can, I mostly broadcast. I don't really read that much. Except I'll engage if someone

02:13:09.440 writes me back typically. But Twitter for me, it's just different. It feels very different.

02:13:14.100 One of the things that bugs me about Instagram is that a lot of people just show off. It's not

02:13:18.740 that there's not valuable stuff on there. It's just that I don't like to see people

02:13:22.520 showing off. And that happens. And I remember myself doing that. I'd buy a new watch or something.

02:13:29.480 And the first thing I would do, I want to share this with other people. Not because I want

02:13:33.080 them to see it. It's because I want them to know that I have it. And that is not healthy

02:13:38.200 behavior. It just isn't. So I cut myself off from that at least. But then now I still see

02:13:42.700 other people doing it. And it just, but then I, it's hard to turn away too. It's a, this

02:13:46.720 is the addiction a little bit. So I use it a whole lot less than I did. And I'm almost

02:13:50.800 all the way off it now. I should probably just delete it. In fact, I will delete it after

02:13:54.740 this conversation. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Done. Holy cow. Why not now? Like, when am I going

02:14:00.760 to do it? Well, it's funny before we jumped on this podcast, we were having another great

02:14:03.560 discussion about a whole bunch of other really cool stuff with respect to exercise and

02:14:06.940 meditation. And you are very much a person who does what he says he's going to do.

02:14:11.520 I'm going to do it right now. We're going to do it right now. Right now. I mean, you'll

02:14:14.640 have to tell people that I'm really doing it. Well, I, yeah, they're down here. And

02:14:18.700 of course I look, I can always reinstall it. Yeah. But knowing what I know about you, that's

02:14:23.420 gone. And it's interesting to note that was your home screen. Second. Oh no, you're right.

02:14:27.460 Yeah. That was your home screen. So you opened up some real estate on the most important screen

02:14:31.300 on the phone. Here's what's going to happen. It's not going to matter. That's the thing.

02:14:34.540 Like you might go, I might lose connection with like, oh, well, like the fact that you

02:14:40.420 can't do something because one thing goes away because of it. Like, I don't want to

02:14:44.900 be beholden to those kinds of things. And also I'm just aware that like, that made me

02:14:50.120 feel weird for a second. That's them making me feel weird. Like I shouldn't let them make

02:14:57.360 me feel weird. It's just, they shouldn't have control over me that way.

02:15:01.540 That might be the most important moment of the podcast. Last, last question I want to ask

02:15:05.060 you, which again, purely stems from selfish desires though. I do, but I think there'll

02:15:09.460 be enough people listening that this question will serve a broader purpose. What is your

02:15:13.260 relationship like with email? Which is, I mean, just to let my, I've probably spoken about

02:15:18.440 this more than people want to hear. I really find email to be a troubling thing. I find you

02:15:23.260 take everything you feel about Instagram, cube it, raise it to the power of E and cube it

02:15:30.940 again. That's how bad I think email is. I think email is an awful, awful thing, which

02:15:36.580 is not to say there aren't valuable things that come from email, but I think the net effect

02:15:40.360 is toxic.

02:15:41.960 I agree with you. One of the things that blows me away about email, anybody with your email

02:15:47.440 address can get in your face. I don't mean like getting your face in a rude way, but I

02:15:51.140 mean like getting your attention, right? They land in your inbox. It's yours and they can

02:15:55.520 put themselves there no matter what.

02:15:56.960 And to build on that, they can add to your to-do list. It's sort of like, it's this to-do

02:16:01.680 list that everybody gets to add to. And it's an introduction list that everybody can just

02:16:08.360 make.

02:16:08.960 But actually I don't think email is the biggest offender. I think in organizations, I think

02:16:13.380 chat is a bigger offender. Now, I don't know if you use chat tools in your organization,

02:16:18.160 but chat's worse.

02:16:19.540 Yeah, because it's even more instant, right?

02:16:21.260 It's real time and there's an expectation of immediate response and that makes it especially

02:16:25.680 bad. And also organizations begin to think one line at a time.

02:16:30.520 It discourages this writing thing that you seem to place an emphasis on.

02:16:33.460 Yeah, you've got like write and present and like think something through and put it out

02:16:36.740 there as a complete thought. Like if you've ever tried to be in a chat room in a company,

02:16:41.420 you're sort of typing some idea out and someone else jumps in and takes and like asks a question

02:16:45.760 like, wait, let me just finish. And it's like, it's just a mess. It's like this race to get

02:16:50.000 your idea out because you're doing it one line at a time. Meanwhile, if you write something in

02:16:53.960 long form, you can get your whole idea together, put it out there for people. People can read it

02:16:57.480 on their own schedule and they can get back to you tomorrow. There's not this expectation of like

02:17:01.600 immediate response because the medium is encouraging immediate response. So

02:17:05.060 Well, that's why I hate WhatsApp. I just can't stand WhatsApp for that reason.

02:17:10.240 But imagine if you had a company of 200 people and everyone's on WhatsApp and that's the primary

02:17:14.820 way they communicate with each other. This is what's happening inside many organizations these

02:17:18.300 days and it's going in the wrong direction. And people are beginning to realize that just like

02:17:21.740 15 years ago, everyone thought open floor office plans were a great idea.

02:17:26.280 People are realizing now they're not good ideas at all. But at the time it was the best idea in

02:17:30.080 the world. So everyone switched to it. There's other ideas why there are other reasons why they

02:17:33.200 did because it's cheaper and it's easier. It's more flexible. I get all that too, but they're very

02:17:37.000 distracting. People don't have any privacy. It's hard to get in the zone and do some deep work when

02:17:41.120 people are mulling around and there's noise around. Chat rooms are basically all day meetings

02:17:46.300 with an unknown set of participants and many, many different topics all at once. And they're

02:17:53.640 basically virtual open offices and they're running 24 seven and they're terrible, but that's sort of

02:18:00.140 the current trend. But I think it's going to trend back towards more asynchronous long form

02:18:03.600 communication because it's, I think it's better, better method. I hope so. I mean, I would just close

02:18:08.220 by saying, I think evolutionarily, I don't think we evolved for the tempo of the electronic

02:18:12.960 environment. Obviously we didn't evolve with electronics, but it's less about the electronics,

02:18:17.340 I think, and sometimes, and more about the way it's changing our brain and the way we,

02:18:23.600 the chats are obviously a horrible example, meaning a great example of how horrible it is.

02:18:28.100 But yeah, I just, I don't think our ancestors, when they were working on a problem, whether it was

02:18:32.580 finding their next meal or building something, like I, I just don't think that we're great

02:18:39.160 synaptically at doing that stuff. Tied to that too, is like, what's the rush?

02:18:44.660 Someone might hear me say that and go, well, you guys work in six week cycles instead of like three

02:18:48.240 months. Like what's the rush? Well, six, six weeks aren't rushed, but like, why is everyone feel like

02:18:54.440 they need to rush around? I mean, you can ask people what it's like at work today. And most people say

02:18:58.820 like, I'm super busy. I'm like, I've got to get back to these people. And like everyone all of a

02:19:03.620 sudden is rushing all the time. What is so important that we're rushing about? And most of the stuff

02:19:08.260 we're rushing about and rushing to get to and rushing to do doesn't really matter anyway. It's

02:19:11.980 just, there's this pace that I think has absorbed the business world specifically that is unhealthy

02:19:18.160 and unsustainable. And I don't think the outcomes are better. Why is it better to talk faster at work?

02:19:24.680 Like, why is that better? Why is it better to talk shorter at work? Why is it better to not be able

02:19:28.960 to explain yourself clearly in one fell swoop? Why, you know, why are these things actually better?

02:19:34.220 I think they're more convenient and that's why they're happening. But I don't think

02:19:38.240 that they're better. And I think that enlightened companies are going to begin to realize this and

02:19:42.800 go, convenience is one thing certainly, but we're actually able to do better work when we're more

02:19:47.660 deliberate about it, when we slow down a little bit and we get to communicate in complete sentences

02:19:51.400 and in complete form. And when we also don't allow human nature to get in the way, which is that

02:19:57.060 specifically around projects, that things should not last forever and go on and on and on and build

02:20:02.200 up to such momentum that we can't pull the plug anymore. And that morale goes down the tubes and all

02:20:07.120 these sorts of things begin to happen. So I think, you know, a small percentage of companies are going

02:20:11.400 to sort of see the light and are beginning to, and it's not going to change everyone because

02:20:15.600 convenience and speed is something that a lot of people value as well. But I think that there's

02:20:19.380 a lot of trade-offs that aren't being evaluated. Well, Jason, I, on a personal level, find this stuff

02:20:24.340 so interesting because like I said, if I were to sort of evaluate, give myself a scorecard on how I'm

02:20:29.640 doing with respect to my eating, my sleeping, my this, my that, my other thing, I think this is

02:20:33.180 definitely the area where I fall short and it's not even close. Like it's not, it's, it's not even

02:20:38.720 a contest. This is really tough. This will be a long commitment for me, but, but I'm, I'm very

02:20:43.680 interested in figuring out ways to make this better because I think I come at it from a different

02:20:48.180 framework, which is, uh, honestly, I've had the, uh, I don't know if privilege is even the right word,

02:20:54.920 but I've certainly seen many people at the end of their life, not so much today because of what I do

02:20:59.160 today. But back in my previous life where I really did get to see people who were at the

02:21:03.240 end of life, cliches are a cliche for a reason. I really don't recall anybody at the end of life

02:21:09.300 wishing they had worked a little longer, a little harder, which isn't to say that there isn't somebody

02:21:13.820 out there who feels that way, or there isn't somebody who feels like they left something on

02:21:16.480 the table. And who knows, maybe in his final days, Steve jobs did wish he had worked a little

02:21:21.980 harder to get that next product just to that next level. I don't know. I mean, I, I, so, so I won't,

02:21:26.840 I won't blanket that statement as completely diffuse, but most people, so I have to assume

02:21:32.960 I will be the same way. When you're on the back end of that, you start to think about the

02:21:38.100 relationships that got neglected or the amount of just joy that got sort of missed by being busy,

02:21:46.960 which is for me, busyness is a bit of an addiction. Busyness is the other thing we didn't

02:21:51.320 really talk much about, but busyness is something I try to avoid at all costs because I feel like

02:21:56.840 busyness is basically shifting between a bunch of different things at the same time.

02:22:00.820 And that's why you feel busy. Cause you're just like, I got to run to this. I got to run to that.

02:22:03.620 I got, and I'll come back to this and I'll have more time to do this later. It's like,

02:22:06.200 if you can figure out ways to work in contiguous blocks of time, you can cut back a lot of the busy

02:22:11.560 feeling. I think that's another really interesting area to, to, to improve on is, is to, to give

02:22:16.400 yourself time to start and finish something in the same day versus within a contiguous block of time

02:22:22.320 versus like, I'll get this done later between lunch and after this call and whatever. You'll

02:22:28.000 do a better job and you'll, you'll have a calmer day than trying to wedge things into empty spaces.

02:22:33.700 I think that's one of the big things. I think people's days are pretty scrambled, actually.

02:22:37.540 That's one of the, one of the reasons they feel busy. Again, it's not that there's more work to do.

02:22:41.460 I don't feel like there's more work to do. And in fact, shouldn't technology being like,

02:22:45.120 hasn't the promise been like less work and it's, it's all these things are automated for us. So

02:22:48.760 where's all this more work coming from? I don't think it's that. I think it's, our days are chunked

02:22:52.080 into smaller bits. It's hard to fit everything in that. And you feel really busy and manic.

02:22:55.780 I think that's a, that's a great point, Jason. Thank you so much for making the time. I know

02:23:00.580 you take time very seriously, so you're here as little as you need to be. So, well, thanks,

02:23:04.900 Peter. It's great to be on. You can find all of this information and more at peteratiamd.com

02:23:11.860 forward slash podcast. There you'll find the show notes, readings, and links related to this episode.

02:23:17.140 You can also find my blog at peteratiamd.com. Maybe the simplest thing to do is to sign up for

02:23:22.920 my subjectively non-lame once a week email, where I'll update you on what I've been up to,

02:23:27.540 the most interesting papers I've read, and all things related to longevity, science, performance,

02:23:32.420 sleep, et cetera. On social, you can find me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook,

02:23:36.940 all with the ID peteratiamd. But usually Twitter is the best way to reach me to share your questions

02:23:41.960 and comments. Now for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general informational

02:23:46.460 purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional

02:23:51.020 healthcare services, including the giving of medical advice. And note, no doctor-patient

02:23:56.220 relationship is formed. The use of this information and the materials linked to the podcast is at the

02:24:01.660 user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional

02:24:06.200 medical advice, diagnoses, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining

02:24:11.320 medical advice for any medical condition they have and should seek the assistance of their

02:24:15.560 healthcare professionals for any such conditions. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take

02:24:21.080 conflicts of interest very seriously. For all of my disclosures, the companies I invest in and or

02:24:26.040 advice, please visit peteratiamd.com forward slash about.

The Peter Attia Drive - October 07, 2019

#74 – Jason Fried： Optimizing efficiency and work-life balance

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript