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Jason Fried (Founder, Basecamp)

Published on Mon, 1 Oct 2018 10:00:00 +0000

This week we're talking to Jason Fried— co-founder of Basecamp and New York Times best-selling author. Jason has a mostly cerebral approach to watches. He was first drawn in as a kid, but it was coming to understand them as complex feats of design and analog companions that turned him into a real watch lover. Hearing him talk about watches, you wonder how anyone in their right mind could resist this strange little hobby we all enjoy so much. We also get into Jason's new book new book, “It Doesn’t Have To Be Crazy At Work.” Enjoy.

Synopsis

In this episode of Hodinkee Radio, host Stephen Pulvirent sits down with Jason Fried, the founder of Basecamp and New York Times bestselling author, to discuss his passion for watches and what draws him to mechanical timepieces. Jason's interest in watches began in childhood, influenced by his father's collection of early American watches like Elgin and Hamilton pieces from the 1920s and 30s. His first mechanical watch was a minimalist MIH watch, which captured his aesthetic sensibilities with its clean, functional design. From there, his collection evolved through Speedmasters and vintage dive watches before gravitating toward modern pieces from brands like Tudor, Lange & Söhne, and Grand Seiko. Jason explains that people in the tech world are drawn to mechanical watches because they represent something tangible and permanent in contrast to the ephemeral nature of digital work—software encoded into physical gears and springs.

Jason discusses his appreciation for authenticity in materials, honest design, and objects that age well over time. He values watches that focus on doing a few things exceptionally well rather than having numerous complications, drawing parallels to his product development philosophy. He's particularly enthusiastic about the Tudor Black Bay Fifty-Eight, which he sees as capturing vintage aesthetic sensibilities while being thoroughly modern and practical. Jason also expresses admiration for Japanese craftsmanship, particularly Grand Seiko and Lange & Söhne, praising their attention to detail, value proposition, and the thoughtfulness embedded in their designs. The conversation then shifts to Jason's new book, "It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work," co-written with David Heinemeier Hansson. The book challenges modern workplace culture's obsession with busyness, growth at all costs, and the expectation of constant availability. Jason argues for creating calm companies that respect employees' time and attention, eliminate unnecessary interruptions and meetings, and allow people to do meaningful work within reasonable hours, drawing on Basecamp's twenty-year experience building such an environment.

Transcript

Speaker
Unknown There are a lot of different reasons why people enjoy mechanical watches. Some people like the thrill of the chase that comes with being a collector. Others are drawn to the romance of things like pilots watches and dive watches. While others enjoy geeking out about complicated movements. This week, I sat down with Jason Freed, the founder of Basecamp and a New York Times bestselling author, to talk about what drew him to watches and why he's still collecting today. It all started when he was a kid, but the combination of interesting engineering, analog simplicity, and detailed design all keep him interested. Jason also has a new book coming out this week called It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work, and the title kind of says it all. He wrote the book with Basecamp's co-founder David Hennemer Hansen, and it's not your usual business book. It's about achieving more while seemingly doing less. It's written with all the same energy and eloquence that you'd expect from Jason, and I think even some of the skeptics are going to be convinced. This is a good one, folks. I'm your host Stephen Pulverant and this is Hodinky Radio. This week's episode is brought to you by Hook and Albert You can also learn more at hookandalbert.com
Unknown .
Unknown Hodinky, there's there's been kind of an explos
Unknown ion of people interested in watches in kind of the the tech space, which I think I think it's fair to say you you are
Unknown in technically. S
Unknown ort of I I kinda hate the the label to be honest, but I am in it. You're right. A
Unknown aron Powell Why why do you think maybe folks in in that world are are gravitating towards mechanical watches? A
Unknown aron Powell Well, I think that a lot of people in the world that I inhabit are staring at screens all day long, um, working on things that in a sense don't really exist. You know, we're like the software we make at Basecamp, like it doesn't kind of exist. It sort of exists. I mean, it's real, but it's digital, it's pixels, it's ones and zeros, and it's just doesn't have the substance that a physical mechanical object does. So I think at some level people are just feeling like, you know, let's look away at something else that has some dimension to it. Let's let's like think about mechanical things that just work that are in a sense software permanently encoded into gears and springs and jewels. And that idea is kind of an interesting thing. So um I've always thought of watches actually as as a as software and hardware. It's just it's it's just fixed. This is all it can do. And so anyway, I think there's something about that
Unknown . I mean is that is that kind of how you approached watches for the first
Unknown Well, um I came at f from a few different directions. So my dad has always collected or not always, but when I remember, as long as I remember, collected um early American uh watches like Elgin and Hamilton's in Illinois, like twenties, thirties, like Art Deco little tank watches and stuff. So I remember him always collecting those and I was always interested in those. They were just these cool little objects. You'd get them on eBay for a hundred bucks or whatever, and I just loved whenever something would show up in the mail. So there was part of that. But further back, the first watch I ever got was actually uh Seiko Data 2000. Oh, yeah. Are you familiar with that
Unknown ? Yeah. So it's the uh
Unknown the digital watch that you would wear and then you could plug it into a keyboard and you could type notes into it. And so I I got this I saved up money and bought this in like junior high or something like that, if I remember correctly. Maybe it was high school. I can't quite remember when it was. But I used it to cheat in school. Um so I would I would write notes on this thing. So you plug this thing into this the this head unit, which is a keyboard and you can type notes in there, and then it sinks to the phone, or sinks sorry, not to the phone, to the watch. You put the watch on, the watch had two arrows on it, and you could scroll up or down. And back then, back in the day, I would, you know, no one ever suspect that you' haved data on your watch. So like teachers were always looking for notes or for like you people would write things on their hands, but I had stuff on my watch really early on. I was into gadgets, but that's what kind of got me into watches thinking like this thing is cool. I could cheat in school with this thing. This is sweet. It's kind of James Bondy. It's like this really neat thing. And so that's really I think what started off for me. But my first mechanical watch actually was the MIH watch.
Unknown That's a pretty serious first mechanical watch
Unknown . Yeah, I remember seeing it somewhere, uh on a picture online and being like, I that's my aesthetic. I have to have that. What is that?
Unknown Can you describe it for for people who may not know what we're talking about
Unknown ? Yeah, sure. So it's it's a 42mm black dial, very minimalist watch with basically white hash marks at the at the at all the numbers, all the markers. It's an annual calendar and it's a chronograph. It has a very it's a tiny tiny bit of color. There's like an orange uh tip on the seconds hand or on the chrono hand. It's just like a really super minimal, beautiful, I think a beautiful object. And um made of titanium I believe or aluminum. I'm not sure it's very light. I think it's titanium. And it's still unlike anything else that's out there today. I know that like Gnomos kind of has that aesthetic to a certain degree, but not really. And I still think the MIH watch is like one of the prettiest watches that I've ever seen. And so um I bought one of those. And what's so cool about that watch is um it comes on a piece of cardboard wrapped in a piece of newspaper. Um and it was like five grand or something when I bought it. And the newspaper is the newspaper of that day. And it's just such a cool way, it's a no-fuss, modest way to just like say, this is really all about the watch. So look you, know here',s here like here. I'm not giving you a box you have to deal with. Like I hate these big boxes, these big watch boxes. Like I just don't want to deal with these big pieces of wood.
Unknown It's just a hassle. That's all it is. It is.
Unknown And then you're in the like the box storage business all of a sudden. It's like I don't know where to put this. So anyway, they just give it to you on a piece of cardboard, wrapped in a piece of newspaper, I think that's how it came. And I loved it, and I still have it, and it's a wonderful watch. But it's a great look, really cool. My color is like black.
Unknown And then from there, how did your col
Unknown lecting evolve?
Unknown Well, unfortunately I ran into hodinky and um
Unknown We have that effect on people. Yeah end of
Unknown spending too much money on a lot of things. Um I got into Speedmasters. Um I got into uh I didn't get into Rolex until later. Uh and by later, I mean I I think I got the MIH watch five five s uh maybe six or seven years ago, uh I think. Okay. Um so it's been about like that length of time I've been into mechanical stuff. Um so Speedmasters, uh I got into some um I really, really, really wanted to get a a Polaris, a JLC Polaris, an early one, the 68 one. Got one of those, eventually sold it, and I got the sixty five model, which I like also. So I got into these like sort of more obscure dive watches. Um and then eventually found myself in Rolex and then um now I'm getting into Grand Seco and some other stuff and Longa and whatnot. But but I I kind of um I think I followed a pretty traditional path initially going into Speedmasters. And I and I love them and I still have a few of them. And then I just sort of split off. My my whole thing is, you know, I I never really cared about the movements, except like when you see something like a longa or whatever, and it's like you can't help but be impressed. But in general, a lot of the watches I got early on you couldn't see the movements. And so I didn't Aaron P
Unknown owell You kind of have this nice balance of
Unknown modern and vintage watches too. Do you do
Unknown you see those two things as kind of playing off one another
Unknown ? I see them mostly as different phases. So I'm as of late, I've been getting more into modern stuff for a number of reasons. One is um I just I'm trying to eliminate hassles from my life. And um vintage watches can be a bit of a hassle at times. You know, it doesn't work right or it's not as accurate and you get it serviced and you're it's gone for six months and it costs more than you think, or you can't even find someone to service it, or it's not waterproof, so you can't wear it outside and you're delicate with it. And I just sort of like I l I love what the objects are and I I I have many, many uh vintage watches, but lately I've been mostly strapping on modern stuff. And um so I think that's a phase perhaps. Um but also it reflects a bit of a change in attitudes in terms of practicality and hassle and eliminating hassle, I should say, and not having to worry about things. Like I don't care if something gets wet or I know it's going to be accurate. I don't have to worry about servicing it for quite a while, that sort of thing. So I think that's mostly it. And then there's also just some aesthetic things. Like Longa, for example, really speaks to me aesthetically, and I just can't find that aesthetic really anywhere in the past. So there's some of that as well. And then Grand Seiko is something I'm really becoming um interested in and I like the aesthetic of those as well and that's something I can't I mean I can find some of that in the old stuff, but not quite the same way. So um I guess it's uh roller coaster. And I don't like where I'll end up. I suspect if I keep going the modern route, I'll crave something old again and then they'll probably bring me back and fumering back and forth. Yeah.
Unknown I I think it's interesting that the two brands you've said that you you are currently gravitating towards and that you're having a hard time finding kind of analogs for our are Langa and Grand Seiko, neither of whom are Swiss, right?
Unknown Right. Do you do you think that is a
Unknown part of it? Do you think you're looking for something that's that's kind of purposefully different or or that comes from a different tradition?
Unknown You know, I don't care where things come from. Uh I I try to judge things objectively and look at it and go, I like this. I like what this stands for, I like what this is, I like how it's made, I like the ideas behind it. I like the decisions that went into it. I like to look at things and wonder how'd this happen? How'd this come together? Why this? Why that? And those two brands specifically. I mean, Longa obviously I think it's imp sort of impossible to look at one from the front and the back, let's just say the back though for a moment, and um not be enthralled and fascinated by what it the hell is this thing. Like this is incredible, right?
Unknown They're great watches to show non-watch people because they just they just freak out. People have no conception of this being a thing that could exist. Aaron P
Unknown owell It's funny. I just watched the um the talking watches with uh with Jack and um I forget the magician's name.
Unknown Oh, uh Dan White. Yeah. And
Unknown so I would just watch that episode and it made me think because magic is one of those things where you cannot hold back a reaction. You see a trick that blows you away, and you're like, oh my, what? Come on. And I I feel like the back of a langa is the same way. Like you look at that and no matter who you are, you're like, what? Come on. What what what is this? And it's very similar to a magic trick in a sense. And it kind of is magic, really, if you think about it. Um Grand Saco, on the other hand, like the one I have doesn't I can't see the back. So or I can't see the movement I should say. So I'm not a that that's not the part that appeals to me necessarily. But um yeah, as far as Swiss, like I never I don't care where where it comes from, um doesn't mean anything to me. I just like the aesthetic and how they feel and wherever they're from is great. Although I I will confess to saying I do like things that are Japanese in general, so there is some extra appeal to the fact that the Japanese do things their own way, almost always improve on what exists in the world. And that is, I would say, a fairly substantial reason or portion of the reason why I'm starting to get into Grand Sego
Unknown . What if if you had to describe some of the the improvements they
Unknown make and some of the things that to you de
Unknown fine Japanese things and the re
Unknown ason you love Japanese things. What what would
Unknown what comes to mind there? Aaron Powell The Japan
Unknown ese are very efficient. And I like that. I love so I went to Japan a few years ago and I'm 5'7. So like for me, Japan is built for me. When I feel like the United States is not really built for me
Unknown .
Unknown Yeah, you and I both. Like in Japan, the scale is our scale. And um I loved and and and there's it this you know Tokyo for example or Kyoto, whatever it is, the space the spaces are smaller. Um there's not as much room there, there's a lot of people and and they're just so thoughtful about how they use space, how they think about color, how they think about placement, how how economical they are with all these things, their packaging, all that stuff. And so there's just a sensibility there. And also their their great respect for nature um in most things. Um I remember walking through Kyoto and seeing like tree limbs being held up by these these like brace saddle braces that are coming down the middle of the street and you just drive around the brace. You drive around the stilt, I should say. And and you know, in America or wherever they just cut the branch down. But in Japan, like, no, this branch has been here longer than the street. It deserves to to to be supported. And I just love that. Now, of course, that doesn't really translate necessarily to watches, but the sensibilities and and the way they approach the world and the way they think about things really appeals to me on a variety of levels. And so perhaps I'm uh uh applying those to watches as well in ways that they don't actually exist. But I do think, especially with Grand Seco, the thought, the carefulness, the handwork, the attention to the right kinds of details. You know, people talk about attention to detail all the time. You can pay attention to the wrong details, and a lot of people do, I think. I find that Grand Seiko pays attention to the right details, and that's really appealing to me
Unknown . What in in the watches that you've you've experienced from Grand Seca,
Unknown what are those right details?
Unknown You know, you you see one and you then you go, oh, now I see what's going on here. Like the the light really reflects in this way and these things are incredibly sharp and they're perfect. And the markers and all these things, just the the the surfaces. I would say the surfaces more than anything. Uh the treatment for the surfaces really appealed to me. You know, like I don't love their logo. So that's one thing that the font basically just kind of irks me. That was the thing, it's funny, that was the thing that sort of kept me away for a long time. But you know, okay, so here's the other thing I've learned, like nothing's perfect in every way. And you know, if if that's gonna hold you up, like uh you should probably look a bit deeper. So I'm like, okay, I can live with that. Um it's fine, because all these other things are really great. And so yeah, the surfaces, the shapes, uh typically the the spareness on the dial, um, you know, like a lot of modern Rolex, for example, like I could get behind them in a sense for a lot of reasons, but I don't need to read a book on my dial, you know, like nine lines of text is just it's too it's too many. I don't need to see it. So I like a lot of a lot of about or I should say Grand Seiko I think is really efficient with with each character and I I dig that about them
Unknown . Do you think that
Unknown the kind of bigger, more traditional European luxury players could could learn something from this? Do you think there's something that's kind of a lesson that's applicable or do you think it they're just very different sorts of products and experiences
Unknown . I do. I think that teachers can always learn from students. And for the longest time the Swiss have pretty much been the teachers and the Japanese have been the students. And I think it's time for that to flip a little bit, specifically around value. I think that the Japanese, specifically Grand Seiko, has a lot to teach about value. And I think that the Swiss brands, and of course I'm generalizing, there's many, many Swiss brands, but many of them could learn a thing or two about value. Um one of my favorite quotes is the Warren Buffett quote, which is price is what you pay, value is what you get. And I think when you buy a number of Swiss watches, you don't necessarily feel like you're getting a great value. When you buy a Grand Seiko, I think you feel like you're getting a great value. The quality, the attention to detail, the nuance, the shape, the materials, the general sense of quality and um durability and reliability that you just get with a watch like that when you actually see it and you have it in your hand, you have it on your wrist, you feel like you got a great deal. It wasn't cheap, but it wasn't expensive. It feels like a lot of value. And I don't think a lot of Swiss watches these days are delivering on that. So if there's one thing I think the Swiss could learn from the Japanese, it would be that. It'd be value
Unknown . I mean one one very traditional, very Swiss watch that that I know you you acquired recently and and really love is is the new Black Bay fifty eight from Tudor. Uh what what kind of pulled you into that watch
Unknown ? Well I had a forty one millimeter Black Bay, um which I bought uh a couple of years ago. I you know, I love subs. I love the sub look. I've had a couple of Rolex subs, um old subs. I had a new one for a while. Um and uh I've I've always l you know, liked the the genre basically, right um I wanted something durable waterproof the whole thing right but um I felt like the Rolex was just so two-tone and well not two-tone actually monotone black and white right um I liked the black bay 'cause it had a touch of color. It had the, you know, guilt style dial. Um it had the red triangle. It had that like little punches of color, which you know, you look down on your wrist and I I I just like want to see a little bit of something. Um and uh um and so, you know, the Black Bay was a great fit, but it was a little bit too big for me. It's fine actually, but it was a just felt a little bit too big. And so when I saw the 58 coming out and I saw it was a couple millimeters smaller and like almost three millimeters thinner. And and it had a little bit more color with the with the uh gold numbers and the and the and the insert and the bezel insert. I said like this is this is the one. Like this is what I've always wanted. and it's you know modern, so it's reliable. It's very reliable. I mean I've been it barely loses any time. It's waterproof, it's durable. I feel like the the bezel has a great click to it. Um it looks great. It's everything I'd kind of want in a vintage sub, um at you know um what, uh twentieth of the price in some cases and uh with no no worries. And so you can jump
Unknown in a pool with it. It's a vintage sub you can jump in a pool with
Unknown . In every way. And you know, as I said on Instagram when I when I posted that watch, I said, like, I I don't want a 5512 or 5513 or a you name it 5508 or whatever it is. Like I don't I don't want one of those anymore. I just don't want I don't I'm perfectly satisfied with this 58, this Tudor 58. And uh it's wonderful. And I've I've been wearing it more than anything since since I bought it, which was uh I don't know, when that was six uh forty five days ago or something like that. It's just ha been on my wrist more than anything else and it's very satisfying and and I really dig it
Unknown . That's great. I mean uh full full disclosure, I ordered one also. I'm waiting, waiting on mine. Um looking looking forward to giving it some some risk time there. Um but I the thing I love about the Black Bay 58 is that to me it just kind of dials in the nostalgia factor like just right. Like it's it's just enough kind of like historical reference without the watch feeling like a reissue or something like that. And I feel like that kind of like over dialed up nostalgia has kind of taken over the watch world in the last couple of years. Um is is that something you've noticed at all or or have any thoughts on?
Unknown Aaron Powell Yeah, I do. And that's a great point. I I feel like that watch, even though of course it's uh it's like in homage to maybe a variety of details over the years, it still kind of feels like its own watch.
Unknown Yeah, I agree. Which I like a lot
Unknown about it. Um and it also places some some of the sensibilities I do like about older some older vintage stuff. Um for example, the other sort of well actually that's not a reissue like you said, but but the reissue I the other issue I do have is the um the Speedmaster nineteen fifty seven sixtieth anniversary one, which is basically a a replica, right? It's a basically a replica. And I and I dig that too, uh from a different angle. But the Black Bay, I like it because like you said, it calls or points back, it calls back to a different era in a sense, but also feels thoroughly modern. It's not, I don't feel like it's trying too hard. Um, and I think that's my initial reaction when I see a lot of the sort of um throwbacks is that they're they're trying too hard in a sense because their their best days were behind them and they're calling back to their past catalog, which again is not it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's just something that I notice. Versus I feel like Tutor is still Tutor's moving forward and pulling out some of their greatest hits in a sense and other people's greatest hits and incorporating those, but still doing it in their own way and I I really appreciate that about it. I do not feel like I'm wearing a replica watch at all. And replica is the wrong word. I don't feel like I'm wearing a homage basically. I feel like I'm wearing something brand new that has the right sensibilities from the stuff that I like from the past
Unknown . Do you think this kind of run of of nostalgia based design presents a a problem or a challenge in the watch world that if if all the best ideas are in the past, how how do you go forward from A
Unknown aron Powell I think as long as they sell, it's not a problem. And I think look, I mean the sort of golden age of watches, let's call it from like the forties through the sixties or something like that, or seventeen. It's really golden age of watches, but it's like f in our world, sort of it is. Um there's some wonderful designs, wonderful, beautiful designs. And by the way, of course, it's not just in watches, it's in furniture, it's in architecture. There's a lot of stuff calling back to those eras right now, to that era. And at some point it will be overdone. It's like I don't need to see another mid-century this. I don't need to see another Ames chair. I don't need to see this. Like those things will in some ways, although new generations always come up and they discover those things for the first time. So there's always that you know, when something's great, it's recycled for a reason. But I think that at some point certain things are overdone and people will look to something new. So I don't think it's a problem in the short term if in at some point like the back catalogs will be used up. And then what are these brands going to do? So um as long as they have as long as they're still looking forward to things and playing with new ideas, I think that's safe. Although I think that if um they're just focused on the past, at some point they're gonna they're gonna saturate that market and they'll be out of ideas and that's gonna be a problem. But these brands have been around for a long time and I think there's probably some really I'm sure there's really great people there who are thinking ahead as well.
Unknown Yeah, I wanna I mean you you just mentioned a minute ago that these this idea applies in in furniture and design and architecture and all these other other categories as well. And I
Unknown know you're you're interested in those things. Are are
Unknown there similarities between how you either approach or appreciate watches and and these other sorts of things
Unknown ? Yeah, I think for me, um I typically tend to look at um authenticity of materials and how things age. So the reason why I like a lot of old things is because they were built well. And they were built well because they were built with real honest materials. Like solid wood um should last a long, long time and it gets better with age as long as it's taken care of. Um in some cases veneer uh can do the same, like some of the aim stuff, the bent wood and stuff that's plywood, like um and there's veneer and some of that stuff can can last as well. But like things that are plastic, they tend to yellow, they tend to break down, things that try to imitate other things. I felt like before, like maybe in the you know in that era of mid-century stuff, in terms of furniture specifically, um if it was if it looked like metal, it was metal. If it looked like wood, it was wood. If it looked like leather, it was leather. Or I guess it could also be vinyl or whatever. But like I feel like then in the you know eighties and perhaps in the nineties for a while, especially in cars, a lot of things were faked. So you you'd have like you look at the grill of a car, including really high end cars, and it looks metal and you press on it and it's plastic. That's like, you know, coated with something that looks like chrome. Um or you have faux wood in cars. Um that stuff turns me off really quickly. I I don't like faux things. Um I think like if So I think that era specifically things were were done in that way most of the time. And I appreciate that. And the same thing's true in buildings. You look at built like older buildings with beautiful terracotta work, and then sometimes you look at new buildings with more c like cast concrete that's sort of supposed to look like terracotta, and you're like, this is just not it's not the same. It's just not the same thing. Now granted there's cost reasons and there's a variety of reasons why and I might make the same decisions today that an architect would make today that they wouldn't have made fifty years ago for a variety of reasons as well. So I I understand all the pressures, but that is sort of what appeals to me about that era of things. And I think watch design specifically it, was it was um more original back then because it was it was new in a sense. It was calling on things, and I think a lot of the materials in the designs were more true to what they were trying to be versus sort of acting like they're supposed to be something else
Unknown . Yeah. That's super interesting. I mean, and do you do you think that your sort of aesthetic tastes in in design and and architecture line up with your aesthetic tastes in in watches, or do you think that the values underlying them are similar, but the aesthetics kind of diverge
Unknown ? Uh that's a really great question. I haven't thought about that. But I I think um I think what I tend to look for in anything besides sort of the authenticity of the materials and the and the idea. But I like I like to look at an idea. I like to look for the idea. Like what's the idea behind this thing? Why is this thing the way it is
Unknown ? Um why is it built the way it
Unknown is? Why is it looked the way it is? Like for example, I once bought um like a really cool looking bathtub. Like and it the bat but it sucked as a bathtub. But I got seduced by like the beautiful shape of this bathtub, you know. It's like one of these really flowing, like oval shaped, like white, you know, beautiful you've seen 'em in catalogs, right? Like this is amazing, right? You look at it, you buy it, you get psyched up, psyched for, and the contractor installs it. You you fill it up and it was too shallow first of all. And then also like the way the edge was was sort of shaped, I would sli like slide down. I wanted to like prop myself up, but I kept sliding down because of the angle of the curve
Unknown , which sucked. And then like
Unknown there was actually because it was so shallow, um, and there's a lot of surface, it was shallow and wide, so there's a lot of surface area, which meant that the heat dissipated quickly. So like you're the b inath and it's like cold in seven minutes. It's like this is just a bad design. It looked good. This is what I call showroom good. There's difference between showroom good and at-home good. Right. And a lot of things are showroom good or store good. They look great in the package, they look great in the catalog, whatever. You get them home, you actually use the thing and it's not so good. So I try to look for things that are at home good. And I also look at proportions and I look at materials and I look at all these things. So I don't necessarily think like I'm into, for example, like I do like mid-century architecture and and and mid-century design from a variety of different categories, but I don't look for that aesthetic in other things. I look for proportions and an honesty in other things and an idea behind the other things. Um and I think that's probably the so it is more of the values, like you said, that's what lines up for me.
Unknown Okay. I mean what are what are your I love this idea of of store good and at home good. Um it completely makes sense. And and when you lay it out like that, it's it's almost obvious. Um what what are some of your strategies for finding things that you you can be reasonably confident are going to be at home good? Yeah.
Unknown The more features it has, the more in-store good it is. The fewer features it has, the better at home good it it is, basically, is the way I would typically look at things. And the reason why is because, you know, when you're marketing a product, um people are often just they buy things because of all the stuff it can do. And they imagine themselves in the setting like, oh my God, this this turntable can do well, that's a bad example. But like this this Bluetooth speaker can like, you know, do s Alexa and this and that. Like you're just gonna use it for a speaker. But like, oh it can do it can I can like uh issue Alexa commands to it or I can do series stuff with it, or like it can hook up this way and that way, and it has batteries and like all this stuff. And and and like at some point you're like, what am I actually going to be using this for? And um in product development, I mean this is what I do. I develop software, right? So in product development, there's a limited amount of time and a limited amount of resources. And if you spread yourself so thin over 29 features or 45 features in a product, you could be pretty sure that most of them are going to be pretty mediocre. And so on any product on the shelf, you look at a product on the shelf, and you're like, this thing does a thousand things, like it's probably not going to do any one of them particularly that well. And that's not always the case, but it's often the case, versus a product that does a couple things well. You're like, they spend all their time on a couple things. And these are the couple things that I want this thing to do. So whenever I'm looking at something and it does a lot, I'm like, uh my red flag goes up pretty quick. I'm like this is, probably not what it's gonna really be. And uh so I think that's kind of it's funny because like I don't have a lot of complicated watches. Um I have mostly time only um watches for the most part or chronographs. I don't know if that's I haven't really thought about it, but I don't reason. I just like don't need all that stuff. And I feel like there's more opportunities for things to break, for things to go wrong, for me not to need the stuff, and then it's sort of in the way
Unknown . So I guess that's my technique is fig
Unknown ure out the or find the the products that do fewest number of things and uh go with those
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Unknown . One of the reasons we thought now would be a good time to uh have a chat with you is because you have a new book coming out. Um so the book is called It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work. Um and it does exactly what it does says on the tin. I read it, read it last weekend and uh that is exactly what the book is about. Uh do you wanna talk a little bit about the book and kinda how it builds on your your last two books, uh Remote and Rework
Unknown ? Sure. First of all, thanks for reading it. Hope you liked it
Unknown .
Unknown Oh good. So um this book called It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work is in response to everyone saying, oh my God, it's so crazy at work. Like I ask all my friends, you know, what uh how's it going? And they're like, oh my God, it's crazy at work. I'm like, well, what do you mean? Like, well, I'm working crazy hours. Um, I'm under unrealistic deadlines all the time. I'm working on the weekends. Um my s I have no time. Um I'm in meetings all day long. Uh I'm stuck at the office. You know, th these are the things I keep hearing from people and I'm sitting in my I'm sitting here thinking like that sounds horrible. Like that sounds like a horrible th life, in fact, because you spend most of the day at work, most of your day at work, and a lot of your sort of professional satisfaction comes from that. And you shouldn't be doing that all the time. And and to to do it under those circumstances just feels wrong. And so over the past twenty years at Basecamp, we've been thinking about how to build a calm company, a calmer company that works only forty hours a week, that doesn't work on the weekends, that doesn't expect immediate responses to things that you know we don't even we can't see each other's calendars, we all this stuff, right? So we said that, you know, we've learned a lot about how to do this, and we've learned along the way. We didn't come up with these ideas off the bat. We figured these things out as we went. Like let's put this stuff in a book. And Rework was our first major book, which was uh eight years ago. And that was about how we work as a company essentially. And then remote was about um how to work remotely since we're a primarily remote company. And this is the book this book's about how to work sanely, basically, how to work calmly. And um it pushes back hard on a lot of the modern day trends, a lot of modern day, let's call them best practices, which are probably worst practices. And sort of this notion that you must be hustling all the time, that you must be busting your ass all the time, that you must be working so hard, and that's the only way to get ahead. And I just don't believe that's true at all. And I think it's actually very dangerous and and unhealthy to do that. It's not sustainable. And if you're gonna be working for, you know, thirty, forty years in your life, you you gotta find something that's sustainable, otherwise you're gonna burn out and burn out miserably and be unhappy. So anyway, we wanted to put all this idea, all these ideas into a single book and share how we've sort of navigated these issues at our company
Unknown . Great. I mean you you say that the book kind of dispels best practices, right? How how do you think we arrived at the point we're at now where things like it always being crazy at work is just considered like not not only acceptable, but kind of like that means that means things are good, right
Unknown ? Right. Yeah, that's the thing is p like busyness is seen as a good thing. I think it's a bad thing. I don't think it's good to be busy all the time. What w when you have time to think? Like thinking is an important thing to do. W
Unknown ait, what for a variety of reasons.
Unknown But but think like who has time to think at work? When is the last time you've had time to think at work? Most people would say, uh think at work. Like I I have to do that on the weekends or I never get a chance to think. I'm always doing. Um how do we arrive here? Uh a couple things primarily. Number one, an obsession with growth. And I should say, by the way, that a lot of these problems are primarily American problems. Um a lot of people in Europe don't have these problems. Um a lot of companies in Europe work forty hours. In fact, there's some laws on the books in some of these countries, and they have a much better balance between life and work. So a lot of the stuff's American. However, unfortunately, it's beginning to be exported. This is our worst export, I believe. So anyway, um this obsession with growth that companies need to grow and grow and grow and grow faster and faster and faster. And primarily that's because of uh someone richer than you needs results um to show to to get even richer. So either an investor or this public markets or whatever it is, there's just this or this idea that we want to sell the company, so we need to increase a valuation to get no to get to get a higher valuation. If we get a higher valuation then we can sell. So let's just work our asses off to get this valuation and forget about profits, just get pump revenue up, pump top line growth up, because at some point uh we're gonna be able to sell this thing for hundreds of millions of bucks. Like that's a pretty common feeling these days, and I think that's one of the drivers. And the other thing is sort of this this um this I mean, there's a variety of things, but this feeling of um uh like this this hustle thing that's going on where it's it's busyness, it's feeling like people need to prove to the world that they're doing stuff all the time. Um this sort of obsession with uh gr growth requires people feel like growth requires this obsession with with um never ending work. And it's just unhealthy and you cannot sustain that over a long period of time and people burn out and you even see like great, great people burn out over this. It's n it's not like sometimes people think they can they can um suspend reality, but but physics and nature always wins. At some point, like your your brain can't think well enough. And that comes on pretty quickly. Sleep deprivation, the whole thing. Like this this all has an impact on every human being. You cannot avoid that. So um anyway, it's it's primarily though, I would say it's primarily growth, this this obsession with it. And that that moves everything uh down the wrong uh down the wrong path, I believe. Aaron P
Unknown owell Yeah. I mean it it strikes me that the book kind of divides it's it's sort of structurally divided into a bunch of chapters, each of which have a sort of main takeaway. Um and I I think these chapters kind of break down into two sort of subsets. Uh some that are are organizational and structural things and some that are much more individually focused uh decisions and and pra
Unknown ctices. And you know the, the
Unknown former, um, you know, it it strikes me as something where if you're a business owner, if you're an entrepreneur and you read this book, you potentially have the power to implement some of these organizational structural changes. If you're let's say somebody who's not the one in charge, not the one making the decision, what what of these kind of bigger structural takeaways do you think people should should kind of push hardest on and and how do you think they should approach kind of changing organizations ground up
Unknown ? Yeah and by the way, you're right. And and I want to be fair about that. Like um a lot of the recommendations in the book do require a certain degree of power to implement um But you know, I think at the end of the day, um, you know, i it's it's the old Gandhi quote, like you must be the change you wish to see in the world. So, you know, if you want people for example, one of the things we talk about in the book a lot are are interruptions and how interruptions are also at the root of of this problem, which is that people have less and less time to do work at work, even though they're at work longer and longer hours. It's a weird paradox. Like I'm at work all day, but I feel like I got nothing done. Well, the reason you got nothing done is because you're probably stuck in meetings all day. Meetings break up your day into smaller and smaller bits. People are interrupting you all day. Maybe you're forced to use chat at work, and so like everyone's hitting you up all all the the time. There's real-time conversations going on that you must follow all day long. And before you know it, your day is just chunked up into smaller and smaller bits. And you know, you just you're you you don't have any time, right? So you may not be able to change that at a macro level, but at a micro level, you could think about, well, how can I interrupt other people less? How can I not call perhaps a meeting or not ask someone a question? How can I maybe find the answer myself? You know, how can I do these things? So um how can I just decide that I'm gonna go home at five o'clock or five thirty because like I have to go home. I have a family, I have other things to do, like I I have to tell my boss that I have to go home. There's n you don't you know there's some of these things like and some people go, you can't tell your boss you're gonna go home. Like, okay, well maybe you can't do that with your particular boss, but some people can reason with people and c and say this just doesn't work for me. I can't I can't do this anymore. Um or like if you get an email on the uh you know on a Sunday afternoon or something, you can just not reply till Monday morning. And you'll find that the the world's not going to end and you're not going to get fired. And if you do, that's the wrong job for you to begin with. Like if if if the company feels like you are their property seven days a week, 24-7, like that's the wrong place you want to be, right? So you can begin to slowly not do some of the things that other people are doing to you and begin to change your local atmosphere. Maybe it's your own team. Maybe you have a team of three. Maybe you don't own the company but you work on a team of three. Maybe you're a team lead or maybe you're about to be a team lead. Like you can begin to implement some of these things in terms of um not expecting people to get back to you immediately when you ask them a question, but instead of waiting for them to get back to you when they have time. So I think that's the deal is is that there's different resolutions of of um implementation here. And uh you need to think about what can I do in my local area and how can I make my own little local world better. And then eventually hope,fully that'll bleed out because people will pay it forward in a sense. Like, hey, you know, um Steven's not bothering me so much. Maybe I won't bother him next time. And then like before you know it, like you've started to implement some change and some stuff's starting to leak out to other people and they're starting to pay attention to this and you might have some impact. It's not going to be company changing initially, but hey, if you can just change your local environment, which is frankly what most people have to deal with anyway. They don't have to deal with the company. They have to deal with their boss or their team. And so you have a much better chance of changing a smaller unit than you do a larger unit. So that's how I would recommend going about that.
Unknown Yeah. I mean you said a minute ago about expectations and I think that word is is really uh really important in the context of this book. I think, you know, a lot of the book is about changing expectations of ourselves and changing the expectations others have of us and that we have of others. I mean those are those are hard kind of cultural changes to make. Um how do you think about going going about making those changes in ways that are are sensitive to all of the just like baseline human dynamics
Unknown ? Yeah. So um you know the way I've always done it is just thinking about like what kind of like where would I wanna work? What kind of company would I want to work at? So I I own the business, so like yeah, granted I have some more power here to implement these things. But I I think to myself like if I did have a job that working for someone else, um what environment would I look for? What kind of things would matter to me? And I realize that like I do have a job and I do go to work every day. I just happen to work for myself, but I still have a job. And I wanted to create an environment. I want to create the company that I wanted to work at. And those benefits shouldn't be just for me. They should be everybody who for everybody who works here. So for me, it's more about like what do I want? It sounds very selfish, but ultimately that's what it is. Like what do I want out of a company? What do I want to do every day? Um I don't want to be bothered every day. I want to be able to focus on uh my attention on my work and I expect that everyone else would want the same thing. I would want a you know a really good fair salary and I would expect everyone else would want the same thing. I would I don't want people to be able to take time on my schedule and I would assume other people wouldn't want me to take time on theirs. So you just begin to use this sort of selfish notion to create the kind of place you'd want to work at, and then naturally a lot of great things I think fall from that, assuming that you have, I would say, values that would, you know, other people would like. Like there are some people who love to be in meetings all day and love to be bothered all the time and whatever and you know, they're gonna create a an environment in in their image that way. That's not the kind of environment that I want to create. So I always think about it from my point of view first, which again sounds selfish, but you know hopefully I think there's a number of people who would share my point of view on this and they work here. And so that ends up working out pretty well. And there's other times when um of course people bring things to us saying like, you know, hey, especially around benefits, we'd love to if you would you know, we used to have a charity match for a thousand bucks a year, we would match people's charitable contributions and people wanted more. So we said, okay, we'll match up to two thousand. They brought it to us. We thought about it, go say that's totally reasonable. Let's do that. So, you know, a lot of these things do bubble up from people who work here as well. But ultimately we want to make sure that we create an environment wheres people can do the best work of their lives. And you need to give people free time and autonomy and space to do great work. You cannot expect them to do great work if they don't have time to do it. And being at the office eight hours a day does not mean you have time to do it if the time is taken up by all these other things that are required of you. So we try to make sure that everybody at Basecamp has a full eight hours to themselves every day to do their own work their own way and keep interruptions to a minimum and keep meetings to a minimum. We basically don't have scheduled meetings 'cause I don't want to be in scheduled meetings. It's like that that's where it comes back to the to the uh selfishness. So anyway, that's basically how I look at it and and and sort of the model we followed for twenty years or so
Unknown . I I think for me the
Unknown the hardest piece of advice to follow in the in the entire book is the idea of saying no more. Um I think it's it's so ingrained that you say yes to everything. And right that the people who are ambitious and people who are passionate about their work and people who want to be good team members always say yes. You say yes to taking on more work, you say yes to going to the meeting, you say yes to grabbing coffee to chat about something, you say yes to everything. Um it strikes me that that you know changing those expectations is is hard and more of a group uh group effort um you know what what advice you know selfishly what advice do you do you have for people in kind of retraining your yourself and those around you to not think of no as such a bad thing
Unknown ? Yeah, that's that's a great one and it is hard. I I agree. It's very hard for people to say no, especially if they're new in their career. I mean, you know, if they're young in a business or brand new in the business or even if they've been around for a long time but they're new at a new job, it's it's hard to say no. So you've got to I think first initially establish yourself um and start to feel comfortable where you are um to me the beauty of saying no is that um no is very specific so when i say no to something i say no to one thing. When I say yes to something, I say no to a thousand things. Because when you say yes to something, you've just booked an hour or whatever or more for that one thing and now you can't d have your choice to do a thousand other things. So in fact, yes, when you say yes, you're saying no to a lot of things, but you're saying no indiscriminately. I prefer to be very precision-oriented with my no's. And that the other thing about that is it leaves me time to do I think better work because if I only have two or three things to do in a in a week, let's say, I can devote full attention to two or three things. If I say yes to a dozen things, I can't then expect myself to do a great job on those dozen things. It's just y you just really kinda can't. So you just basically do so do you do stuff, but you don't really give it full attention. And I've just gotten better over t over the years at at really valuing my attention and and understanding how much attention I actually truly have. So it's a bit about getting to know yourself and it took me a while to get there. But But no is very specific and very powerful and I think very fair. And that's the other thing. I think if you say yes to a lot of things, you're actually not being fair to any of those things and also to those people. Because you're always thinking about all the other stuff you have to do and when am I gonna get to these other things? And so you're not really giving anyone their full attention either. So I just think it's actually a very polite thing to say no. It's a very honest thing to do. Um but yeah, it took me a while to get there. So as far as advice on how to do it, uh uh gently, perhaps initially, um slowly, but um and and take stock of of what happens when you do it. And and you'll find I think over time that it really pays off
Unknown . A lot of these ideas seem very specific, but I know they they have roots that extend far beyond the the modern workplace and and beyond your your personal practice. Um I know you have an interest in in stoic philosophy. Um are are there other kind of like underlying ideas that you see as as kind of the the kind of undergirding philosophy of this of this book?
Unknown Yeah, you know, I think um ultimately it's about fairness. And I think a lot of companies are unfair to their employees in the sense that they demand excellence from them, but they don't give them an excellent environment in which to pursue that excellence. Everybody talks about we want the best people, we want to do the best work, or we are the best, or we're award-winning, or we're all these things, right? Yet you look at the environments, and the environments are are are very it's very difficult to do great work in those environments. So so people are pushed really hard and people burn out really quickly and or they're forced to do work really late at night or really early in the morning or on the weekends. And so I just don't think companies are actually fair and honest with their employees. Most of them. Of course there are many that are, but most of them I feel like are not. So I think the underlying message here is fairness. And think about what's actually fair, what's reasonable, what makes sense. And I for example, I don't think it's fair to make anyone work 60, 70, 80 hours. I just don't think it's fair, like or pay them that amount. Okay. But if you're going to pay a salary based on a a full work week, which is, you know, let's call it 40 hours. And like 40 hours is enough. It's enough time to do great work. And by the way, eight hours in a day is a lot of time. This is the thing that always blows me away when people are like, eight hours like or 40 hours a week, that's not enough time. And I say, okay, let's break it down. So that's about, you know, five days at eight hours a day. Um that's forty. Um and they're like, yeah, that's not that much time. And I said, like, well, okay. Um have you ever flown from, let's say, Chicago to London? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, that's a pretty long flight, isn't it? Feel pretty long? Like, yeah. Like I, you know, halfway through you look at your watch and there's still four hours to go. I'm like, well, that's an eight-hour flight. Like, an eight-hour flight feels long. Why is it that an eight-hour flight feels long and you can't wait for it to be over, yet an eight-hour workday feels like you got nothing done and you look at your watch and it's like 4 30, you're like, oh my God, the day's over and I got nothing accomplished today. It's the same amount of time. Problem is that at most offices and most workplaces, the environment is not fair to those eight hours. So it sucks those hours away from you and chunks them up into ways that they can't really be used efficiently. Unlike when you're sitting in a plane, there's not much to do. So you can either watch a movie, read a book, you could do some work, whatever, but you're not being interrupted. And that's the value of eliminating interruptions as you realize how much time you actually have. So getting back to it, fairness, um, being reasonable, and being honest about the environment itself and not just individual policies, but the environment as a whole.
Unknown I mean having having read your prior two books, uh I still I found this extremely exciting and engaging and thinks it think it brings a a new perspective and kind of fills out the picture a little better. Um so the book is called again, it doesn't have to be crazy at work. Uh you can pre-order it now. Um, it's out the beginning of October. Um it's really great. I personally recommend that you uh go pick up a copy and uh learn a little bit more about what Jason's talking about here.
Unknown Well thanks Stephen. I appreciate that. Let
Unknown 's uh let's finish the show like we always do with our our little uh hodinky radio questionnaire. Uh we have five kind of quick quick answer questions that we ask every guest, and then we have uh a bonus question that's just just for you, Jason
Unknown . Let's do it. Alright, so number
Unknown one, what is the best place you've traveled in the last year
Unknown ? Iceland. Oh, good
Unknown answer. Uh two, what's the best piece of advice you've ever received and from whom
Unknown ? Uh from my dad. Um no one ever went broke taking a profit
Unknown . There we go. Uh three, what's your guilty pleasure
Unknown ? Probably chocolate. Which is weird, but really I eat too much of it
Unknown . Number four. If you had to do something else for a living what do you think it would be
Unknown I'd probably be a gardener
Unknown and number five what's the thing you're looking forward to most right
Unknown now uh we have a new baby coming in a few days, in fact. So that's really on my mind right now
Unknown . And uh last thing, our bonus question. Uh when you're relaxing at the end of a work week, what is your signature drink
Unknown ? I love um I'm a big green tea drinker. So um I'm gonna change the question a little bit and just go with the morning. So I I start every morning with uh with a matcha, with a nice matcha I make at home. I love that ritual, love that routine and, and um that's the drink I look most forward to every day
Unknown . I think you and I could probably do a full hour on uh on green tea. We've definitely talked about green tea for more than an hour. A
Unknown aron Powell Yes. Let's do it sometime.
Unknown All right, great. So the last thing we always do is a little cultural recommendation. So what is something you recommend the listeners go check out after they're done listening
Unknown ? So I'm gonna tw like twist this one a bit if that's okay. Um I think it's really easy to go, you gotta do this, you gotta see this, you gotta hear that, you gotta check this out. I wanna just say like you don't gotta do any of those things. You don't gotta check this out, you don't gotta read this, you don't gotta listen to that. In fact, I think um it's kind of better sometimes just not to have anything that you have to do. I would say go take a walk. I would say look up. So go take a walk and look up. Look up at buildings, look up at the sky. We're also focused on looking down at things these days. Um that I think it's just kind of good to get outside and look up for a while. So I I will leave my recommendation with like not recommending anything other than looking up.
Unknown I'm not going to jump in and spoil that by by suggesting somebody go read a book or or a movie or something. So I'm gonna I'm gonna let you have this one
Unknown . Thank you. Thank you so much.
Unknown Uh thanks for joining us, Jason. It'
Unknown s great to talk to you as always and uh cong
Unknown ratulations on the new baby. I appreciate
Unknown that. Thanks again for having me on. This is a real fun thing to do
Unknown . Thank you to Jason for joining us. This week's episode was recorded at the Network Studios in Los Angeles and was produced and edited by Grayson Korjonen. Please remember to subscribe and rate the show, it really does make a difference. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next week.