Quotes from Jason Fried

It's incredibly hard to get meaningful work done when your workday has been shredded into work moments.

What's bad, boring, and barely read all over? Business writing.

I think the story is important in every business. Why do you exist, why are you here, why is your product different, why should I pay attention, why should I care?

Hiring people is like making friends. Pick good ones, and they'll enrich your life. Make bad choices, and they'll bring you down.

[Facebook and Twitter] aren't the real problems in the office. The real problems are what I like to call the M&Ms, the Managers and the Meetings.

Respect the work that you've never done before.

Plans let past drives the future.

It's better to have people be happy using someone else's product than disgruntled using yours.

Press Releases are spam

Limited resources force you to make do with what you've got. There's no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative.

Teach and you'll form a bond you just don't get from traditional marketing tactics. Buying people's attention with a magazine or online banner ad is one thing. Earning their loyalty by teaching them forms a whole different connection. They'll trust you more. They'll respect you more. Even if they don't use your product, they can still be your fans.

If no one's upset by what you're saying, you're probably not pushing hard enough. (And you're probably boring, too.)

Good decisions don't so much need consensus as they need commitment.

WE ALL HAVE ideas. Ideas are immortal. They last forever. What doesn't last forever is inspiration. Inspiration is like fresh fruit or milk: It has an expiration date.

Any conversation with more than three people is typically a conversation with too many people.

Mark Twain nailed it: "Comparison is the death of joy.

To do great work, you need to feel that you're making a difference. That you're putting a meaningful dent in the universe. That you are part of something important.

If you constantly fret about timing things perfectly, they'll never happen.

Walk into a library anywhere in the world and you'll notice the same thing: It's quiet and calm. Everyone knows how to behave in a library. In fact, few things transcend cultures like library behavior. It's a place where people go to read, think, study, focus, and work. And the hushed, respectful environment reflects that. Isn't that what an office should be?

What's worse is that long hours, excessive busyness, and lack of sleep have become a badge of honor for many people these days. Sustained exhaustion is not a badge of honor, it's a mark of stupidity.

you can't let your employees work from home out of fear they'll slack off without your supervision, you're a babysitter, not a manager. Remote work is very likely the least of your problems.

That's the great irony of letting passionate people work from home. A manager's natural instinct is to worry about his workers not getting enough work done, but the real threat is that too much will likely get done. And because the manager isn't sitting across from his worker anymore, he can't look in the person's eyes and see burnout.

A business without a path to profit isn't a business, it's a hobby.

Don't make up problems you don't have yet. It's not a problem until it's a real problem. Most of the things you worry about never happen anyway.