REWORK was written by the founders of indie web shop 37signals. Jason Fried and the excitable Danish-man David Heinemeier Hansson.

Sample tweet from David Heinemeier Hansson

“Holy shit. Just got word that REWORK made the New York Times bestseller list!!”

REWORK is awesome. One of the most striking things about this book is that they cut the word count of the book from 57,000 words to 27,000 in the second-to-last draft. That is awesome. Bloviating writers have ruined many a book by taking a great 40-page book idea and turning it into 400 pages.

The book will call you out on your worst work habits. Why are you scheduling that meeting? Do you need to invite everyone? Would an email do instead of a phone call or interrupting them in their office? Planning is guessing. You can make time if you really want to.

Even its chapter titles are inspirational. You know there is going to be some worthwhile nugget in there when the title of the chapter is “Resumes are ridiculous” or “Press releases are spam.”

Their willingness to confront the obvious is just so gosh darn refreshing. Meetings do suck, planning is guessing, workaholics are bad for everyone. The way they address these concepts is as pleasant as a slap in the face can be.

My favourites

Emulate chefs

“What’s your ‘cookbook’? What can you tell the world about how you operate that’s informative, educational, and promotional?”

Some of the most well-known chefs out there are famous and respected because they share their secrets in cookbooks and TV shows. Of course, business models are a little different than recipes, but the idea is the same-there’s no need to be secretive about what you know and what you’re good at. Once you realize that nobody’s going to steal your “recipes” and put you out of business, you’ll be able to attract some fans by being a helpful resource.

Be a curator

“You don’t make a great museum by putting all the art in the world into a single room…The best is a sub-sub-subset of all the possibilities.”

Edit everything down to the bare essentials. Simplify things to showcase what you’re best at, instead of trying to take on everything. It’s easier to add than to take away.

This book isn’t just for entrepreneurs or software developers. If you work, you will find value here. It’s a quick read and one that will leave you energized about what you do.

Share this on

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at 4:05 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.