Rework

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Rework
Jason Fried & David Heinemeier




"That would never work in The real world". You hear it all the time when you tell people about a fresh idea. This real world sounds like an awfully depressing place to live. It's a place where new ideas, unfamiliar approaches, and foreign concepts always lose.

The "real world" isn't a place, it's an excuse. It's a justification for not trying. It has nothing to do with you.

Failure is not a rite of passage. Evolution doesn't linger on past failures. It's always building upon what worked. So should you.

Unless you're a fortune-teller, long-term business planning is a fantasy

Writing a plan makes you feel in control of things you can't actually control

To do great work, you need to feel that you're making a difference. That doesn't mean you need to find the cure for cancer. It's just that your efforts need to feel valuable. You want your customers to say "This makes my life better".

The truth is most people don't want it bad enough

You need to know what you're willing to fight for. And then you need to show the world

There's a world of difference between truly standing for something and having a mission statement that says you stand for something.

When you use outside cash you wind up building what investors want instead of what customers want

The way to find the epicenter is to ask yourself this question: " if I took this away, would what I'm selling still exist?" A hot dog stand isn't a hot dog stand without hot dog. You can take away the onions, the relish, the Maynard, etc.

When we start designing something, we sketch out ideas with a big, thick sharpie marker, instead of a ball-point pen. Why? Pen points are too fine. They're too high resolution. They encourage you to worry about things that you shouldn't worry about yet.

You don't make a great museum by putting all the art in the world into a single room. That's a warehouse. What makes a museum great is the stuff that's not on the walls.

If you're planning to build "the ipod killer" or "the next Pokemon". You're already dear. You're allowing the competition to set the parameters. You're not going to out-Apple Apple. They're defining the rules of the game. And you can't beat someone who's making the rules. You need to redefine the rules, not just build something slightly better.

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