Quotes from David Heinemeier Hansson

Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator. But it won't wait for you. Inspiration is a now thing. If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work.

You're better off with a kick-ass half than a half-assed whole.

It's a lot harder to pull your head up and ask why.

The answer is not more hours, it's less bullshit.

My whole thing was, if I can put in 5 percent of the effort of somebody getting an A, and I can get a C minus, that's amazing," he explains. "It's certainly good enough, right? [Then] I can take the other 95 percent of the time and invest it in something I really care about.

When you yet to do 100% of what somebody wants, you need a perfect match, and it's pretty rare that you have a perfect match between what you thought people needed and what they actually need. If you try instead to do 80 percent of what they need, there's a pretty good chance you'll hit a sweet spot.

Forcing everyone into the office every day is an organizational SPoF (Single Point of Failure). If the office loses power or Internet or air conditioning, it's no longer functional as a place to do work. If a company doesn't have any training or infrastructure to work around that, it means it's going to be unavailable to its customers.

Secret to productivity is not finding more time to do more stuff, but finding the strength to do less of the stuff that doesnt need doing.

Planning is not just guessing, it is harmful guessing, because it is a waste of time. All the time you spend doing your five year plan you can use to worry about tomorrow.

Most software has a tiny essence that justifies its existence, everything after that is wants and desires mistaken for needs and necessities.