But after that—after that brief period of exploration at the beginning of a project—it’s time to focus in and get narrow. It’s time for tunnel vision!

One way we push back against this at Basecamp is by writing monthly “Heartbeats.” Summaries of the work and progress that’s been done and had by a team, written by the team lead, to the entire company. All the minutiae boiled down to the essential points others would care to know. Just enough to keep someone in the loop without having to internaliz

There are lots of ways to slice 60 minutes. 1 × 60 = 60 2 × 30 = 60 4 × 15 = 60 25 + 10 + 5 + 15 + 5 = 60 All of the above equal 60, but they’re different kinds of hours entirely. The number might be the same, but the quality isn’t. The quality hour we’re after is 1 × 60. A fractured hour isn’t really an hour—it’s a mess of minutes. It’s really har

Take managerial direction, for example. At Basecamp, we’ve designed the organization to be largely manager-free. This means people are generally responsible for setting their own short- to medium-term direction and will only get top-level directives. That can be an

Being effective is about finding more of your time unoccupied and open for other things besides work. Time for leisure, time for family and friends. Or time for doing absolutely nothing.

Office hours We have all sorts of experts at Basecamp. People who can answer questions about statistics, JavaScript event handling, database tipping points, network diagnostics, and tricky copyediting. If you work here and you need an answer, all you have to do is ping the expert. That’s wonderful. And terrible. It’s wonderful when the right answer

Work doesn’t happen at work Ask people where they go when they really need to get something done. One answer you’ll rarely hear: the office. That’s right. When you really need to get work done you rarely go into the office. Or, if you must, it’s early in the morning, late at night, or on the weekends. All the times when no one else is around. At th

We assess new hires on a scale that goes from junior programmer, to programmer, to senior programmer, to lead programmer, to principal programmer (or designer or customer support or ops or whatever role we’re hiring for). We use the same scale to assess when someone is in line for a promotion. Every employee, new or old, fits into a level on the sc

If you’ve only got three hours of work to do on a given day, then stop. Don’t fill your day with five more just to stay busy or feel productive. Not doing something that isn’t worth doing is a wonderful way to spend your time.